Future Millennium Event!(?)

[Guest fledgling666]

what boggles my mind about all this is that the mayan calendar is 26000 years long, while their civilization only lasted a breif period of that 26000 years and toward the latter part of it. why did they build a calendar of 26000 years if the duration of their civilization was only a couple thousand in the last 1/5th of that period? the fact that the constellations relate to the oroboros, that the oroboros relates to a beginning and end or to a continuous cycle, depending on who you talk to, and the fact that the calendar is based on the movement of constellations is all part of this, no doubt, but the fact that the mayans built a calendar for a time period much more vast than their civilization is the most puzzling part of this for me. yes, we do this TODAY, but why would they have any reason to do it then? maybe the idea begins and ends with the oroboros, as snakes were an integral part in mayan mythology, as they were in egyptian mythology, mesopotamian, chaldean, babylonian, chinese, native american, celtic and other mythologies. maybe the oroboros was the beginning. then they built the calander from it, having already named the constellations they would use as the beginning and the end, serpens and the rattle. then, they just had to figure out how long it took for them to complete a cycle in reference to the earth, which is 26000 years. but WHY? that's too much math to tell them when to plant and when to harvest, when to sacrifice and when to make war, when to leave their cities and head into the mountains. so, why?

as far as what i believe? the quote is milton, from paradise lost, if i'm not mistaken, and it means more about life to me than it does about any sort of heaven or hell.

[Guest blondton13]

Wow, fledging...you make my brain hurt! :Gehenna_demon:

Just kidding- all of your questiions are very intriguing and begging for answers: one thing I would say with relative confidence is that you question why they would make a calender stretching so far into the future. I see it as a simple answer--why wouldn't they? Kidding aside, every cilvilization feels to some point they are immortal-that is, their people will continue on indefinitely. Even now, many do not even consider the fact that the earth will one day change in such a drastic fashion that life will cease to be as we know it. As for the rest, I wonder about answers to these things, too. Maybe someone here has some good theories!

[Guest fledgling666]

good theory, BUT, there is a humongous problem with it. the mayan calender doesn't stretch into the future, it stretches into the past. well, ok, it DOES stretch into the future, not much into OUR future, but well into THEIR future, but, still, nowhere near how far it stretches into the past, both ours and theirs.

[Guest CyberDude]

First of all I'd like to come back and ask why does one think that the mayan calendar ends? Do we run out of numbers? It has only different units that the Gregorian one and ours doesn't end, mathematically speaking of course, because it will probably end when there will be nobody left to keep it... wait a minute!!! I'm sure you didn't think about this aspect... but... will it actually end because there will be nobody left to keep it beyond our 2012??? Jeez!

I think the common news that it ends comes from the "machineries" they used to keep it, machineries that were probably built in such a manner that they couldn't go beyond the end of the 26000 years cycle. Something like our Y2K problem with our computers. Why did they choose to build them in this manner? Well I think because they either thought that there is no point in keeping further dates since the world will end OR they thought that after that date a whole new era will begin and there will be need for different means of time calculation...

As for the question on why did they built a calendar that starts way into their past and stretches a lot in their future(this part is rather irrelevant because they couldn't have known how long their civilization would last)... every calendar looks to find a fixed reference point, for example the gregorian calendar has the birth of Christ as reference. Generally it's down to religious beliefs, which I think it was the mayan case too. Religious beliefs at that time were strongly related to astrology so it seems rather normal that by observing the movement of stars and galaxies to make a calendar based on that movement. That's OK of course but why did they choose that exact point for the calendar to start( because they could have chosen any moment for that matter, the time flows "relatively" uniform anyway)? Something, maybe someone, suggested that their calendar should start at that exact stellar configuration... but what/who? This is really an interesting matter.

I would suggest the writings of Robert Charroux on this matter.

[Guest fledgling666]

First of all I'd like to come back and ask why does one think that the mayan calendar ends? Do we run out of numbers? It has only different units that the Gregorian one and ours doesn't end, mathematically speaking of course, because it will probably end when there will be nobody left to keep it... wait a minute!!! I'm sure you didn't think about this aspect... but... will it actually end because there will be nobody left to keep it beyond our 2012??? Jeez!

ok, the calendar returns to 13.0.0.0.0, which is it's end date. if it were meant to turn over like an odometer, i guess it will, but there is no evidence to suggest that.

As for the question on why did they built a calendar that starts way into their past and stretches a lot in their future(this part is rather irrelevant because they couldn't have known how long their civilization would last)...

how does that make it irrelevent? the fact that their civilization lasted from 300-900 AD, but their calendar starts in 23,000-something BC should say something. i don't know, i'll get back on this later, i'm fried trying to look up more info.

[Guest CyberDude]

By irrelevant, I was referring to the "stretching in the future" part. You can't say something it's stretching a lot into your future since you have no way of knowing how long will YOU exist into that future.

The part with "stretching a lot in their past" is absolutely relevant! And I quote myself:

why did they choose that exact point for the calendar to start?[...]Something, maybe someone, suggested that their calendar should start at that exact stellar configuration... but what/who? This is really an interesting matter.

Sorry if I made that unclear...

[Guest Noah]

I may come a little late, and my remark is a little off-topic - but when I read this thread (not entirely, though, I have to admit) I was very ammused and immediately had to think: Wouldn't it be the perfect occassion for MM to return?

The show initially was only able to go so far, last so long - until the turn of the millennium that is. Afterwards, the world would either come to an end - or everything go on as normal (more or less). (And from this remarks, you might see that I don't know how the story goes on after season two.)

Either way, that's what I thought. If 2012 appears to be such a big think in Mayan fate, it might as well be for us - and the Millennium group.

As to the Mayan calender, I am not very familiar with it (apart from the occasional tv documentary on Mayan culture), but from all I understand the year 2012 only marks the end of one cycle. (Or doesn't it?) Most Indian cultures (all?) do believe in history not as linear, but as circular, recurring events and episodes. I believe it suggest that the world will not come to an end in seven years, but that certain (cosmic) events will start again (whereas in our view of history, it will simply go on towards an indefinite point with the events happening having certain similarities with what might have happened before, but never being the exact same event).

That's how far I came up this morning. If it's total nonsense, I'm excited to learn more and revise my view ...

So long, my best regards ...

PS: The date - 12/21/2012 - is still interesting, even in our calendar.

[Guest blondton13]

I may come a little late, and my remark is a little off-topic - but when I read this thread (not entirely, though, I have to admit) I was very ammused and immediately had to think: Wouldn't it be the perfect occassion for MM to return?

Definitely agree!

The show initially was only able to go so far, last so long - until the turn of the millennium that is. Afterwards, the world would either come to an end - or everything go on as normal (more or less). (And from this remarks, you might see that I don't know how the story goes on after season two.)

Either way, that's what I thought. If 2012 appears to be such a big think in Mayan fate, it might as well be for us - and the Millennium group.

Need to check out season three, dude!

As to the Mayan calender, I am not very familiar with it (apart from the occasional tv documentary on Mayan culture), but from all I understand the year 2012 only marks the end of one cycle. (Or doesn't it?) Most Indian cultures (all?) do believe in history not as linear, but as circular, recurring events and episodes. I believe it suggest that the world will not come to an end in seven years, but that certain (cosmic) events will start again (whereas in our view of history, it will simply go on towards an indefinite point with the events happening having certain similarities with what might have happened before, but never being the exact same event).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think the majority of us agree with you on that observation-this forum is so long because there were a lot of sidebar topics that were discussed in relation to this whole Mayan Calender/cosmic event thing!

[hippyroo]

The Aztec and the Mayan were predated by the Olmec. The Olmec, depending on who is doing the speculating were a. put here by the alians b. came from Africa, c. were the lost tribes of the morman bible, or d. an ancient culutre of humans.

They began the advance math, star gazing and dating the past and future with circular calendars. The mystery begins with them.

The thing is, with all the information available to us we still suspect that the acnients had hidden knowledge that we have somehow lost with our concentration on reason as the only way to understand.