00:00:03
History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic
predictions – all of which were wrong – yet
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some people still think that this time ’round
in 2012 is the real deal.
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Why 2012?
Because of ancient Mayan calendars. Obviously.
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Mayan calendars not only recorded the days
and years, but also longer cycles of about
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5 Millennia.
So they could easily make calendars that went
00:00:22
1,000s of years into the future. But, of course,
1,000s of years in the future from 1,000s
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of years ago brings us to current times when
the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.
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Modern new-agey people decided that the wise
Mayans stopped making calendars because they
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knew when the world would end.
And because new agers are happy – though
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scientifically illiterate – people their
vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening
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or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding
nonsense that the Mayans, who spent time puling
00:00:45
strings of thorns through peoples’ tongue,
probably didn’t have in mind.
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To a normal person the thought that: calendar
finishes therefore end of the world is an
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odd conclusion to draw.
After all, the amount of time in the Universe
00:00:56
is infinite and the amount of stone is limited.
So, at some point the Mayans had to stop carving
00:01:01
calendars.
But never mind.
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What should have stayed a fringe belief turned
into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster
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movie that swept the academy awards and the
numerous emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries
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The History Channel.
What happened to you guys?
00:01:15
Anyway. After this NASA became so inundated
with questions that they had to take time
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away from their busy robot building, frontier
pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization
00:01:22
inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining
that no, a human-sacrificing, stone-age society
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with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass
to make telescopes, didn’t know more about
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science at the dawn of history than real scientists
do today.
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But the parade of crazy marched on anyway
making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth
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including:
• Geomagnetic Reversal (a process that unfolds
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on a geologic timescale, not a single day)
• A collision with mysterious Planet X (That
00:01:45
no astronomers have found)
• A local star going supernova (Despite
00:01:48
there being no such candidates)
• An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous
00:01:51
on the face of it… or is it?)
• And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever
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the hell that is.
A sane person, at this point, would wonder
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how the Mayans were able to predict astro-physical
anomalies thousands of years in advance and
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millions of miles away yet didn’t foresee
the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.
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And that’s because the Mayans never predicted
apocalypse. The only people to claim the Mayans
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knew about the end of the world were distinctly
not Mayans.�
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