Ok, lets put this in perspective. The Mayan calender ends on the winter solstice of this year, Dec 21. Why does it end there? This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican long count calender. Somehow pre-Colombian civilizations, most likely the Olmec, figured out that the polls of our planet were precessing. What is precession? As the earth spins on it's axsis it wobbles. If you were to trace this wobble it would make a single revolution every ~26,000yrs. At some point in this motion the axis points directly toward the center of our galaxy. Some people seem to believe that the world will go into kaoss upon this alignment. Of course this makes good headlines and sells print, but the facts are, that this planet has been here for ~4.54 billion yrs. so that would mean that this occurrence of alignment has happened ~174,615 times before with no earth ending event as of yet, so what is different this time? I'm betting nothing. Congress is way more of a threat statistically.
The interesting thing here is how did these guys figure this out? For one to observe that the polls are precessing one would have to observe a particular celestial body rise or set over a particular prominent land feature at a distance of one mile, change it's position by 1 foot in 70yrs. Hmm no written language to speak of... so how did they observe this phenomenon and how was this very subtle change passed down over 2-3 generations of people?
More amazing is, how did these people figured out the particular point in time when the axis would point directly into the Milky Way and create a calender using geared wheels, (that were not yet invented) to calculate this event.
Unfortunately I don't hear discussion about these facts, just the bull....
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