Mayan Apocalypse Fears

Mayan Apocalypse Fears, Unless your head has been under a rock, you likely know that the world is supposed to end today, according to the Mayan calendar. Or maybe yesterday, since in some parts of the world Friday began on our Thursday.

And while there is still time for the world to end today, a greater mystery to many who actually study Mayan culture is how the idea got started in the first place. A cycle in the Mayan calendar does end today, but the end of the cycle didn’t imply the end of the world to the Maya, according to scholars.

“No. I don’t think there’s anything in Mayan culture or Mesoamerican culture that predicts the end of the world,” said University of Georgia anthropologist Stephen Kowalewski, who studies Mayan culture.

Historically, doomsday predictions are as common as dirt.

Some early Christians thought Jesus would return within a generation of his death, and predictions of end times have followed regularly. A Wikipedia list of doomsday prophecies takes up more than 15 printed pages, including recently four 2011 end of the world predictions.

Greene County’s Nuwaubian Nation said it would happen May 5, 2000.

Jerry Falwell said God would pour out his judgment on the world Jan. 1, 2000.

Pat Robertson looked to April 29, 2007, as the day God would destroy the world, according to the article.

The witch-hunting New England cleric Cotton Mather predicted the world would end in 1697. Like many seers, when he was wrong he tried again, and picked two more wrong dates before giving up.

Some doomsday predictions have had tragic results.

In 1998, Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven’s Gate cult, said a spaceship was following Comet Hale-Bopp, and that only by committing suicide could their souls reach the spaceship and salvation. Applewhite took his own advice, along with 38 of his followers.

Even though the Mayan Apocalypse is the latest in a long line, it’s been one of the more popular ones.