The End of The World

I am still glad I did not read in to all of the "The world is ending!" nonsense. To me, it was all rubbish that acted as a topic of conversation to discuss and argue about, distracting people from what was really going on in our world. It is still intriguing to me how so many people were so strongly influenced by the idea that the world was coming to an end. An article from the Huffington Post, a leading online newspaper, explains the Mayan myths of the end of the world.

http://on.rt.com/f0uq73
This is a picture of people celebrating the continuation of the world on December 21st, 2012.  

Q: Where did the rumor of the world ending in December 2012, start?

A:  The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012”. This explains how people believed the end of the world was going to occur on in December of 2012, because the Mayan calender ending at that time. To me, this was just a major misunderstanding caused by the rumors and insights of the Mayan's own beliefs.

Q: Why did people trust the Mayan’s when they created the idea of the world ending?

A: The Mayans were known for their interesting beliefs and insights about life, which caused people from other cultures to follow what the Mayan people predicted. Some of their theories were crazy and unrealistic, but the prediction of the world ending had the biggest impact on people’s beliefs. Michael D. Coe published “The Maya” back in the 1960's, and when he suggested that the Mayan calendar would end in 2011 or 2012, people took that as he was predicting the end of the world.

Q: When the predicted day of the world ending past, how did people react?

A: December 21st started out as the predictive day some had believed would be the end of the world, and ended up being more comical than ever. People gathered around the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, chanting and dancing with t-shirts that read “The End of The World: I Was There.” For some reason, the doomsayers who had predicted the apocalypse were nowhere to be seen, just a ton of excited dancing people thankful the world was continuing on.  

Questions:

1) Were you one of the many people that believed the world was going to end?

2) If so, what influenced you to have these beliefs or opinions and how did it effect you?

3) If not, did anyone you know believe the world was coming to an end?