The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012

1: Introduction: How Dylan got me started

 On December 21, 2012 (or December 23, 2012, depending on how you align their ancient calendar with ours), the odometer of ancient Maya timekeeping known as the Long Count will revert to zero and the cyclic tally of 1,872,000 days (5,125.3661 years) will start all over again. When I first became attracted to Maya studies over forty years ago I could not possibly have imagined that I would write a book about this event. Blame Dylan. Three years ago I began receiving e-mails from a troubled Canadian high-school student, Dylan Aucoin, from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He had been reading Web articles about the end of the world that would supposedly fulfill the Maya prophecy about what might accompany the Long Count’s great turnover in 2012— or Y12 as I have come to call it. Dylan confided to me that he was worried—at times even horrified—by the predictions he had come across: apocalypse, holocaust, world destruction. After encountering one particularly frightening doomsday article, Dylan asked me: I n t r o d u c t I o n : H o w d y l a n G o t M e S t a r t e d 1 IntroductIon: How dylan Got Me Started  “Is there anything to fear about 2012 and the New Age ideas of destruction and consciousness shifting? I thought I had it all figured out but this article has brought it back like gangbusters. I ask you, is it worth fretting about? Is there really any validity?” At first I thought he was putting me on but there was a sense of urgency in the tone of Dylan’s words that spurred me to respond. Webeganajointreadingprogramandconversation.Iwasimpressed with Dylan’s motivation to investigate things for himself, a quality I admire when I see it in my students. Dylan told me of an encounter with an old man who came into the Blockbuster store where he worked near Halifax, Nova Scotia. In casual conversation the old man told him his whole family was brilliant, with IQs topping 150 and that he himself was a member of an ancient mystical order that derives its truths from psychic teachings. You had to have “the gift” to know the deepest truths, he told Dylan. Although skeptical, Dylan listened to the end-of-the-world prophecies the old psychic spouted. Dylan told me that whenever someone discusses anything with such passion he gets motivated to investigate the subject. A film buff, Dylan wondered why many famous celebrities bought intotheideaofpsychicphenomena,especiallyastheyrelatetogreat world transformations—from actress Shirley MacLaine to baseball star Darren Daulton. We discussed actor Billy Bob Thornton’s film The Gift, about his mother’s life as a psychic, and the Jim Carrey film The Number 23, about a man who becomes obsessed with the way everything numerological in his life, like the number of letters in his name, seminal dates—and the sum of 20 + 1 + 2 in 2012— added up to 23. Coincidence? Dylan and I wove our way through a panoply of Internet sites on 2012 and a pile of 2012 texts and articles, many of which he recommended to me. Meanwhile, I tried to fill him in on what I knew about the Maya calendar and cosmically provoked disasters. After a year of correspondence I could see the spark of natural curiosity inherent in the now seventeen-year-old really catch fire. Dylan wrote me a neat little passage on his acquired view of skepticism .Skepticismislabeledbybelieversofbizarretheoriesasoutright IntroductIon: How dylan Got Me Started  rejection and arrogant self-appointment—“a buzzkill” as he put it. “But skeptics aren’t just stubborn people who don’t want to believe. Good skeptics want to listen. They just want evidence—and that’s where a lot of claims made by psychic prophets fall short.” Wise words from a man so young. “I wish I’d been exposed to critical thinking earlier in my life,” he added. Dylan was getting the picture . Real skepticism is about self-criticism, questioning, and the passionate search for evidence. Never be satisfied. Dylan’s words inspired me to share the skeptical view with a wider audience. As the fateful day draws nearer I continue to receive more e-mails and I feel duty-bound to field more questions about the meaning of 2012 at lectures and conferences. The head of an Ask the Experts site based...