2012

[Guest Laurent.]

Just to get back on topic: anyone knows what were the Mayans exact predictions for 2012? Or was it just the beginning of a new cycle? How much of it was added by new-agers and other alien-enthusiasts? I try to search a few sites discussing the 2012 predictions but mostly all of them are just pseudo-science, almost cultist, propaganda. I can't find any hard historical/archaeological proof of anything.

[hippyroo]

It's a new cycle.. a new earth on that date. The Mayan got a lot of their stuff from the Olmec. You might want to check them out as well. It's amazing how they knew that the earth/sun/milky way would line up!

[Guest Ebdim9th]

So far, both Encyclopedia Britannica, which offers only the beginning of an article, and Nature.com, which supplies a full article (boy does it!) both seem to indicate, that although humans evolved directly from chimps, or so it appears, some DNA evidence is too contaminated by age to tell, Neanderthals are listed as man's closest relative, although there are no direct links to indicate the extent of their interaction, if any. The only mention of Cro-Magnon seems to be indirectly, referring, in the Nature.com article, which is where I got the main of my information, to other hominids that went extinct around the same time as the Neanderthal. The researchers say the mtDNA of the Neanderthal and the human are nearly identical, but they can't find an actual match that proves that the Neanderthal contributed to the human genetic lineage. That's what I've got so far... but, then again, this needs to meander it's way back to the study of the Mayan calander and its signifigant dates, namely 2012 doesn't it?

Edited September 30, 2007 by Ebdim9th

[Guest Noah]

I've been following this thread for some time, and now I want to throw in my two cents.

As to human nature, for some reason I find it hard to believe that we have changed so much in our nature as some of you suggest. Certainly, the rules of society have changed, yet some of the biggest atrocities have been committed in the last hundred years. Of course, man (and I include women here too) is not corrupted by society - because man is society, man is corrupted by other man. And it's happening, everyday, everywhere. This summer five people were found shot at a train station here in Germany. They were part of a mafia clan family and shot by members of a rivalling one - a vendetta where the police counted more than seventy shots fired at only five people; many of them had multiple wounds, when a single one of these was enough to kill them. And it will continue.

When I try to imagine living in caves, in cold and rain and snow, without food for my family, killing rivaling tribes to bring my family through doesn't sound all that bad. It's always a matter of perspective. And from today's perspective, with what we know and what we have forgotten about it, it's always easy to condemn the past. What makes any of us so sure we would not kill were it for our immediate survival? We kill and let die for far lesser reasons every single day.

And to get back on topic: Recently I saw a documentary on Nostradamus. And it was interesting how his prophecies were sought after especially in times of perceived crises. There has been a rise in sales numbers of Nostradamus books since the 1980s. Far more than each man thinking he lives in a very important time, I think each generation likes to believe we live in a time close to the end of the world, or at least human civilization.

I'm still waiting for the first connection to be made between global warming, the bird flu and 2012. Don't you agree that in 2012 the polar caps will have melted to an irreversible point, entire regions will be flooded to a degree that we're all close to drowning - and to top it all of, the avian flu will finally have mutated into a highly dangerous human variant. And then it's Christmas season 2012, and we will all find ourselves wet and sick, stacked with books that will no longer help us, and soon, scientist have found out, an asteroid the size of England will hit the earth, but at least we know that our end has come because the Mayan predicted it; because sun, earth and center of our galaxy are all neatly ligned up. And it's probably for the better anyway. Happy 2013!

To sum it all up: I think it's easy to take anything and find precisely what you were looking for in that - like predicting future events from a single text because certain letters appear at every 3. position of a sentence, or something like that. (Funny how these things always predict those events that have come to past, isn't it?) It's easier to claim the Mayan - or anyone - predicted the end of the World, the coming of a (new) God in ten years or a hundred than it is to open your eyes and try to understand why things are the way they are right now, and why some of them scare us while others really should. It's easier to believe an asteroid out of the blue will kill us, or a deadly flu that suddenly appears, than it is to see that, if the end were near, we ourselves had brought it upon us ...

Oh yeah, and lest I forget: Have a nice Sunday.

Edited September 30, 2007 by Noah

[Guest Laurent.]

Far more than each man thinking he lives in a very important time, I think each generation likes to believe we live in a time close to the end of the world, or at least human civilization.

That's why I first was interested in the 2012 mayan prophecies. It seemed strange that they would give such a precise date and especially so far away from their own time.

[hippyroo]

I have posted this before, but it IS an interesting topic

https://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html

I just read a few or the recent rambling posts about cavemen and human violence and global warming all in one typing. All I cac say is wow. The study of a few ancient bones is mostly about trying to fit these fragments into a theory. There isn't much proof of anything. There is still legitamate debate about whether Neanderthals have human DNA at all. Recent discoveries about what is called homo erectus has now thrown most time tables out of whack .. .... yet again. I find it much more reliable to look at what the ancients wrote or drew, instead of looking at a jawbone and a few teeth and speculating.

[Guest Ebdim9th]

That was actually one of the interesting things I noted that kept coming up in the Nature.com article was just how much DNA evidence is corrupted irretrevably by age, and how easy it is for a researcher's own DNA somehow to get scraped off and mixed into the research process by accident, contaminating the sample. And that's just a couple of ways that evidence can be rendered useless or be minimal to find in the first place.

[Guest Noah]

I understand what you mean, but at the same time I am doubtful that we will ever fully understand ancient drawings and texts because our frame of reference is so radically different. When we try to interpret this drawings and texts, we can also only speculate. I believe ideas and interpretations can be as easily - and less obviously sometimes - contaminated as actual samples. Just think of paradigm shifts in practically all sciences. And there are bound to be more. And in addition, of course, you cannot use drawings and writings for the same purpose as DNA samples.

To get back to the 2012 issue: I am surprised that it has not really caught on in the media. At least it hasn't here. And right now, TV stations are competing hard to bring the worst-case-scenario ...

... but as Y2K I would still put the whole 2012-will-bring-the-end-of-the-world issue into the new-age-let's-make-some-money category. And I came across this quote on wiki, and I really liked it:

"For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."

[Wiki/Long Count Calender and 2012] Edited October 1, 2007 by Noah

[Guest Ebdim9th]

And from what I understand, 2012 was not nearly the last cycle ending recorded on, or predicted by, Mayan calanders.

[wolvesevolve]

Thanks for a well-reasoned reply, ~~Wolvesevolve, I didn't come back 'til now, because, far from offended, I was just afraid you'd be, offended that is, and dreaded reading the reply. Turns out I shouldn't have. And part of me knew that all along, too. Though I have religious beliefs, I am much concerned with the purity of the scientific method, unsullied by politics and overzealous fundraising drives. I think the study of religious culture, history, and writings benefits from vigorous peer-review and consistency of study/follow-up study/conclusion and on rather than suffers marginalization from it. Anyway, I hope you read this soon and want to follow up with the next post here...

I'm glad you did return to the thread/forum! I thought you (and others) might have been seriously offended not getting any other replies other than hippyroo's....but jaja guess we both unnecessarily feared negative backlash! so let me comment on some of the off-topic flourishing with this post:

Re: politics, religion, science....unfortunately neither science nor religion escape any sort of political arena, right? Sad really, that basic fundamentals of understanding the world we live in...sometimes they do not progress (or gets modified) as a result of those famous $$ signs. With science there's never much doubt about peer review (though the politics that can come into play among academics can really inhibit some research), but I agree with you Ebdim9th, and hope that the religious community (Christian especially) can also follow a similar model of science, of having a more inclusive and multi-dimensional view of history, culture, a deeper and not entirely literal view of religious texts....which is not an easy task but I think it's necessary in the times we live in, if "religion" wants to keep up with a more secularized society.

Re: modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals - there's really no hard evidence that Cro-Magnon man killed off the Neanderthals, that's a very speculative matter. I guess I should clarify, killed as in genocide via warring. What seems more likely the case is that modern humans/Cro-Magnon likely had distinct advantages over the Neanderthals, as the latter probably did not have speech (or at least not one as complex as ours) and other mental development/sophistication to deal with specific problems. In harsh environments as an Ice Age Europe, the Cro-Magnons might have just been much better at surviving than their "caveman cousins". In fact in Europe there's little evidence (so far) that humans and Neanderthals had any contact, that maybe they died out before modern humans started migrating into the continent. Only in the Middle East do we find contemporaneous archaeological sites of both Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. Another question too, that hasn't been answered by scientists yet, it whether there might have been interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals, that maybe their species, while dying off, also was incorporated into our genome.

And maybe just one more comment about other Hominid species...having known a few physical anthropologists and paleoarchaeologists, they have a very tough job in even trying to locate some of the fossilized remains, and as hippyroo pointed out, usually not much to more than a some teeth and a jawbone, or femur, etc. And it can get a little ridiculous what *SOME* researchers have passed off as being a new species with very little data. At the same time, regurgitating a bit of what I learned of some of the most recent published work, there are some great strides being made in just the past decade in understanding some of the earliest hominids and pre-hominid primates relationships and history. Throw away the old human evolution charts. What's becoming more clear now is that the development of the hominid family (the larger group that would encompass genus and species) is much more complex than previously thought, that all the specimens we have of Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Australophicines, and older pre-homonid species....there is probably little to no linear relationships between the species (hypothetical ex. Australopithicus robustus->Homo erectus->Homo habilis->Homo sapien), especially when going further back in time. The exact picture is of course not known, but with more and more species being found (many of the new species are distinguishable by looking at the attributed of the bone structure and how it would be related to locomotion, looking at the decreased jaw size to make a flatter "more human" face, among other things), the idea is now that the hominid family is a tree with many many branches, many of the species scientists have been looking at went extinct and hence are not related to any modern primates, including humans. Another reality one must take into account is that most fossils usually found in killsites, meaning the creature(s) had been predated by other mammals. So what we're seeing by in large of these early primate "ancestors" are species that largely were not successful surviving, so there is a need to look much harder to figure out where and how our successful human ancestors lived....as if it isn't hard enough just to find the few predated species' remains already discovered, finding the remains of species that died of "natural causes" will be like finding a needle in a haystack the size of a few continents!

(ouch that was a long comment!)