Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media.

Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived. The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion.Jenkins also associated the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology. I am far more concerned about issues, such as climate change, which we can have control over, but without our intervention could bring about disastrous consequences. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in British Anthropological Reports, his name is composed of the elements "nine", ʼOK-teʼ (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god".

Potential consequences include difficulty navigating by compass and disruption to the migration habits of birds, Lepo admits.In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the La Corona site in Guatemala. An article in The Daily Telegraph attributed the widespread fear of the phenomenon in China to the film, which was a smash hit in that country because it depicted the Chinese building "survival arks". By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence event, Argüelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology.

Only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected windfall failed to materialise. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200 Maya protested the celebration because they felt excluded.She began publishing her own books and eventually developed a following of as many as 100,000 believers. Critics argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, was in fact moving farther away from it. Debunking Doomsday And Exploring Maya Science The ancient Maya had many scientific accomplishments: they tracked the Moon and the planets, knew a solar year was 365 days, and even invented the concept of zero.

Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of Rtanj, in the Serbian Carpathians, attracted attention, due to rumors that it would emit a powerful force shield on the day, protecting those in the vicinity. Halley’s comet passes by the Earth approximately every 76 years, but the nearness of its approach in 1910 created fear that it would destroy the planet, either by a celestial collision or through the poisonous gasses it was rumoured to contain. In February 2012, American automotive company General Motors aired an advertisement during the annual Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drove Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse. He's all the way in Guatemala, and he's going to be joining us as soon as we can get the phone lines working down to Guatemala. Perhaps the most far-fetched doomsday scenario I’ve encountered is the idea that the Large Hadron Collider, would create a black hole, which, in turn, would consume the Earth.

NISAR will study changes to ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice in fine detail, as climate change warms the air and ocean. Swenson says there is no record of the Maya referring to this period as the end of the world, and that “unfortunately, the doomsday thing has been a complete appropriate of Maya philosophy and cosmology.