Why December 21, 2012?

1. Introduction

Here is an idea worth considering:

Thousands of years ago humankind had attained a high-level of technological achievement. They understood laws of nature that are still unknown to us today. They explored Antarctica and mapped the entire globe. They made monuments that we would have difficulty recreating with our modern techniques and equipment...

Then tragedy struck in the form of a global cataclysm. They were not expecting it. The disaster was so terrible that most humans perished and many animal species became extinct. Those humans that did survive were forced to live like animals while the Earth recovered. Memories faded, and knowledge disappeared. Society began again from scratch, returning to pagan beliefs and simplistic lives. But there were some that survived who managed to remember their past, that retained some of the advanced techniques and ideas that others had forgotten - and had the foresight and dedication to warn future generations of the next cataclysm. Knowing that it would be more than 10,000 years before the cataclysm recurred, they had to allow for certain possibilities: that in the year 2012 we could be speaking a brand new language, following unpredictable religions and using any sort of numbering system. If they were to leave us clues to help us survive, those clues would need to be big and solid enough to last 10,000 years; and coded so as to be unambiguous - regardless of the culture that interpreted them. Some modern humans, of various backgrounds and disciplines, are working towards deciphering what they have left us.

We are on the verge of cloning humans, of aping God. Regardless of ethics and laws, it will happen - for whenever scientists have had the ability to do something, they haven't been able to resist - it is in their nature. On the other side of the coin, when there are not enough clues to solve a puzzle, when none of their predecessors have made quality in-roads, they have rattled off stock answers and moved on to something easier. These unsolved mysteries are typically of a historical nature - our scientists have been unable to observe the processes in real-time, and have chosen not to make guesses. These tasks have by default been given to the independent researchers, the untrained pseudo-scientists, the men and women with imagination, verve and daring. The rebels.

This book pulls together a number of these mysteries. They all relate to the potential for a global cataclysm that may be just around the corner.

Most of the topics are much debated, with radicals and the establishment taking opposing views. Is the Sphinx 5,000 or 12,000 years old? Did the biblical flood really happen? And if it did was it regional or global? Did modern man once live in the ocean? How was it that separate ancient societies all had the ability to shift giant blocks and why did they all build pyramids and underground chambers? Is a race of "mysteroius elders" involved in our DNA, and our destiny?

We shall look at ideas that have been endorsed by great thinkers, yet are ignored by the esteemed scholars of today. The idea of a pole shift had the agreement of Einstein; the existence of Atlantis was described by Plato; global cataclysms were hinted at by Darwin.

And we will see evidence that orthodox science has chosen to ignore, evidence that fails to fit their precious paradigms. Artefacts showing human civilisations existing 100,000 or even millions of years ago. Proof of a cataclysmic poleshift 12,000 years ago. And evidence that is strangely missing, such as the missing links of evolution.

Helping bind these topics together I will present some new information concerning mythical creatures and cosmic rays. And I shall explain how a global network of monuments was created for a common purpose - to warn us of our potential extinction. Hopefully these ideas will spark enough debate so that the things we treasure, and the species that we are, continue for a long, long time.

The Mayan Calendar

Will the world end in 2012? No, it won't.

Will there be a major cataclysm in 2012? Quite possibly.

Although this book concentrates on a potential global catastrophe at a random date within our immediate future, the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar is a powerful argument for that date being Dec 21, 2012.

2. The Mayan Calendar

The Maya

The Maya civilisation inhabited a region encompassing southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize & western Honduras, and flourished between the third and tenth centuries AD, but by 1200 AD their society had collapsed for reasons we can only guess at. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived, descendants still occupied the area, and still spoke the Mayan language, but were unaware of the cities their forefathers had created.

It wasn't until the late 18^th century that explorers first investigated the dense Guatemalan rainforest and came across plazas, monoliths, temples and pyramids, each decorated with pictures and hieroglyphs. The ancient Maya had been keeping historical records - using a script which mixed ideographic and phonetic elements. Some of their writing still exists on stelae (stone monuments) that recount civil events and record their calendric and astronomical knowledge.

Spanish Conquest

Diego de Landa was a Spanish priest who visited Mexico on a charitable mission, became the Franciscan provincial of Yucatán in 1561 and is infamous for his destruction of priceless Maya documents and artefacts.

Although Landa was very interested in the Mayan culture, he abhorred certain aspects of their practices, particularly human sacrifice. In July 1562, when evidence of human sacrifice was found in a cave containing sacred Maya statues, a bout of religious self-righteousness saw Landa order the destruction of five thousand idols. He decided that their books were also the devil's work and saw to it that they were burned, with only three books surviving. Consequently the majority of Mayan knowledge and history was lost.

Yet despite his actions, we are also indebted to Landa for his acute and intelligent opus on Mayan life and religion, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (1566), which remains the classical text on Mayan civilisation. This book, which was not printed until 1864, provided a phonetic alphabet that made it possible to decipher roughly one-third of the remaining Mayan hieroglyphs.

The most important of the surviving books was what is now called the Dresden Codex, named after the city where it was lodged. It is a strange book, inscribed with hieroglyphs, which no one understood until 1880. At that time Ernst FØrstemann, a German scholar who worked at the same Dresden library, managed to crack the code of the Mayan calendar making it possible for other academics to translate the many dated inscriptions found on buildings, stelae and other ancient Mayan artefacts.

He discovered that the Codex contained detailed astrological tables, which calculated the year to be 365.2420 days long, more accurate than the Julian calendar that we use today. The tables were used exclusively by the Mayan astronomers to predict the solstices and equinoxes, the path of the planets in our solar system, the cycles of Venus and Mars, and other celestial phenomena.

Other information we have today has been gleaned from the Popol Vuh and Chilam Balam - books written just after the Spanish arrived. The knowledge found in these books and codices, combined with the uncovering of mysterious pyramids, demonstrate that the Maya had knowledge to rival the Greeks and Egyptians.

Mayan Calendar

The life of the Maya revolved around the concept of time. Priests were consulted on civil, agricultural and religious matters, and their advice would be derived from readings of the sacred calendars. Time was of such importance that children were even named after the date on which they were born.

Maya math uses only three symbols - a shell-shaped glyph for zero, a dot for one and a bar for five to represent units from zero to 19. For instance, the number 13 was represented as three dots and two bars.

Zero was an advanced concept in those days, something that the Romans were not aware of. Yet the Maya were comfortable enough with it to use a shell as its symbol, a tangible object representing an abstract concept. The Maya also used metrical calculation and place numeration, which were very clever for a culture that didn't use the wheel!

Although they had many calendars, they marked the passage of time with three cycles that ran in parallel.

The first is the scared calendar known as the Tzolkin. It combines the numbers from 1 through 13 with a sequence of 20 day-names. It works in a similar manner to our named days of the week, and their date within each month. So you might have 5-Chikchan (like our Sunday the 5th) followed by 6-Kimi (as we would have Monday the 6th). After 260 days the same number/name combination will re-occur, and the calendar starts anew. Their use of the vigesimal (base 20) numbering system probably relates to fingers and toes, whereas the 13 nicely fits the growth phase of the moon which isn't visible when new and appears full for two days on end, thus appearing to have a 13 day growth cycle. Alternatively, the length of the Tzolkin may be related to the human gestation period of nine months (273 days). It has been suggested that 260 days is the time between a woman suspecting her pregnancy (she doesn't menstruate) and when she gives birth.

The second is