Do you guys remember back in 2012 when there was that big conspiracy theory going around claiming the world was going to end on December 21?
The actual method of extinction wasn’t exactly clear — some believed it would be a great natural disaster, like a giant tidal wave or a global earthquake, while others thought Earth was going to catastrophically collide with a mysterious “Planet X,” resulting in a black hole swallowing up our solar system.
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But of course, in the end, absolutely nothing happened, and we all simply moved on with our lives.
That original prophecy came from a reading of the ancient Mayan calendar which predicted doomsday as happening on 2012-21-12.
The Mayan calendar is actually three calendars known as the Long Year, the Solar Year, and the Tzolk’in, which were used by the religious civilization of the Mayans.
The Long Year measured long periods of time (giving us the 2012 prediction), the Solar Year resembled the Gregorian calendar most of the world uses today, and the Tzolk’in was largely just used for religious purposes.
The year 2012 was mentioned in the Long Mayan calendar, inspiring conspiracy theorists to proclaim this meant the end of the world. However, sources now say the year actually marked the end of the 13th baktun , meaning the calendar simply reset itself.
So now that we know the Mayan calendar, let’s talk about why it’s popping up in the news again.
According to The Sun , a now-deleted tweet from the since-deleted Twitter account of scientist Paolo Tagaloguin claims that a re-reading of the calendar has shown doomsday is actually slated to happen next week, which is why it didn’t happen back in 2012 as expected.
Honestly, with the way the year 2020 has been going, I really wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.
As Tagaloguin reportedly explained, the original reading of the calendar was wrong.
“Following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012,” he wrote, as per The Sun . “The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days… For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years.”
Okay then.
So, if you didn’t follow all of that, Tagaloguin is saying that, once lost time is all added up (because their calendar didn’t include leap years), we should actually be in the year 2012 and not in the year 2020 — meaning June 21, 2020 is really December 21, 2012. Hence, doomsday.
Now before you go panicking and readying your doomsday bunkers, let’s remember that conspiracy theories are just that — *theories*.
One day after 2012’s Armageddon turned out to be a huge flop, NASA explained that the whole thing was bogus and entirely void of any scientific evidence.
“For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence?” the agency implored.
“There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact.”
“There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.”
