Many naysayers have proclaimed that nothing will happen on December 21, 2012 with such asinine statements as “This has been predicted before,” and “how would the Mayans know?”

What these nonbelievers fail to understand is that the Mayans rely on ancient wisdom that is different from any of the false predictions made before. Therefore, it seems that the Mayans hold the truth on when the end of the world will occur.

Freshman Sunash Sharma said,”I think it started with the Mayan calender stopping in 2012. But once enough people began to publicize the event, more people started to believe it since it satisfied the idea of an apocalypse that many other religions predicted.”

The Mayan calendar was based on a “short count” calendar and “long count” calendar and saw the long count calendar as of ultimate importance. The Mayans saw the world as being a series of cycles, with each cycle of the world coming to an end in some cataclysmic way. As of now, the world is in the middle of the fourth cycle and according to the Mayans, the long count calendar will run out on what the Gregorian calendar sees as December 21, 2012.

Although the actual method of the world’s end is not predicted by the Mayans, leading scholars believe that the Earth may collide with a passing asteroid, or may be sucked up by a black hole.

The idea behind an apocalypse predicted by Mayans has a long and illustrious history in western literature. In 1975, the ending of the Mayan calendar became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a planetary apocalypse. The date of 2012 corresponds to an important astronomical phenomenon known as “precession” where the Sun completes a full, 360-degree backward circuit through the zodiac.

Many serious media producers, such as those behind the film 2012, have taken the Mayan astrological predictions seriously and created a film that helps to educate people on the best methods by which they can secure the survival of their family and loved ones. Although some claim that the whole phenomenon is a fraud, can they truly deny the mathematical prowess of the Mayans? These were the same people who, hundreds of years ago, were able to deduce the existence of 0 and predict the movement of stars for years into the future. People should take the warnings of the ancient Mayans more seriously to give themselves a better chance of survival when the apocalypse comes.