End of the World Postponed, Again

The world isn't going to end after all, at least not this December.

That's the word from a group of archaeologists who have found a Mayan calendar that doesn't end at 2012. No, if early reports are anything to go by, it will take these brave diggers a few generations just to untangle the delicate bob and weave of the complexity of this newly discovered calendar. (The Maya couldn't make things easy, could they?)

See, this intrepid bunch of doomsday-naysayers (not really, but I couldn't resist the phrase) were digging in and around and under the ancient city if Xultun, which is in present-day Guatemala, the northeastern part, when they found traces of ancient paint. That's not so much of a surprise, except that the ancient paint was on a depiction of a Maya king and another nearby painting wasn't a painting at all but a calendar.

This calendar had the usual cycles and cycles and more cycles that we're used to seeing on these sorts of things. So the baktun (400-year cycle) that ends on December 21 isn't the last one after all. It's just the one that ends on that day. The next one begins on the next day. Experts in this sort of historical timekeeping had long speculated exactly that, but the doomsayers among us had rushed to their judgement (day) long before that. And really, what sells better than the End of the World?

So, go ahead and book your Christmas holidays because you will be around to enjoy them. (And, if this is some sort of conspiracy by the Deniers, then you won't have to worry about forfeiting all that Christmas cash anyway because you — and the cash — won't be here.)