Maya and Aztec

Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations

Posts Tagged ‘2012’

What will not happen in 2012

Category: Articles, Maya

Epigraphers await 2012 with trepidation. There will be ill-founded claims, bad Hollywood movies (one now in production), silly reportage, and much distortion of what 2012 meant for the ancient Maya. Every imaginable anxiety will apply to this key event in the Maya calendar. If we are candid, too, there will be renewed interest in our […]



What did the Maya prophecies actually say?

Category: Articles, Maya

As detailed in the accompanying downloadable PDF presentation, only a few fragments of Mesoamerican prophecy survive to enlighten us, and few of these are Maya. All we have are splinters, tatters, a tiny fraction of what was once a vast and substantial literature. The ancient prophecies we have pretty much reduce to two categories: Stone […]



Is the world really going to end? Did the Maya really believe the world would end?

Category: Articles, Maya

There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012. The notion of a “Great Cycle” coming to an end is completely a modern invention. Maya inscriptions that predict the future consistently show that they expected life to […]