Mayan End of World - Dec 21 2012
The Mayan Calendar was created thousands of years ago. It was meant to last generation after generation. And it ended on Friday, December 21, 2012 - exactly on the Winter Solstice.Technically, their calendar, known officially as the "Maya Long Count", ran for a collosal 1,872,000 days. Sort of like how our calendars normally run for 365 days and then start fresh. We don't normally expect the world to end when we call out Happy New Year on December 31st :). We just start a new calendar.
Some people claim the Mayan-induced date of December 21, 2012 is incorrect because the Mayans didn't know about leap years. That's true - but they weren't perfect in a variety of ways. Heck, they thought a year was 360 days long. When we modern humans decided to count, we counted actual physical days from when they began in the equivalent of August 11, 3113 BCE on the Gregorian calendar, or September 6, 3114 BCE on the Julian calendar. So if we take that starting point, and then add in 1,872,000 actual physical days -completely ignoring what they were called or not called - we do in fact end up on December 21, 2012.
Here's a fun image showing the state of mind leading up to this momentus date :).
Also please note that the below image is of the AZTEC CALENDAR and not the Mayan Calendar!! So many people are distributing this image to go with the Mayan end of the world. They were completely different cultures!
Astrology Basics Main Page