Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012?
Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012. I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on Dec. 31, 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.
