1. Who are "the Maya"?
The term "the Maya" is about as nebulous as "the Americans" or "the Europeans." Technically, "the Maya" refers to a wide variety of Maya peoples, both ancient and modern, whose cultural heritage includes one of about thirty different Mayan languages. Their native territory is located in eastern Mexico (especially Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula), Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and western El Salvador. Although it is impossible to say for certain what languages were spoken, archaeologists trace the origins of Maya culture back at least 3000 years on the basis of continuities in pottery styles, architecture, burials, and other features. Contrary to popular beliefs, the descendants of ancient Mayans never disappeared or "went away." In fact, there are probably more Mayan speakers today than at any time in history: About six million altogether. During what's known as the Classic Period (AD 200-900), the ancient Maya were organized into polities similar to ancient Greek city-states, including a rivalry between two main centers--Tikal and Calakmul--that was as heated as that between Athens and Sparta. What we call "the ancient Maya" were never unified under a common government or religious system. They were organized as warring states whose ideologies differed and were modified according to the needs of individual rulers. The beliefs and traditions of different Maya settlements varied enormously. That makes it difficult to say much with certainty about "the Maya" belief systems. In fact, the very concept of "the Maya" is a modern convention of questionable value for describing the complexity of these cultures.
2. What is the Long Count calendar and what does it have to do with 2012?
The ancient Maya tracked time according to increasingly larger cycles. How they did this has been understood in detail since the late 19th century, when American journalist Joseph T. Goodman successfully deciphered the complicated system of the Maya calendar. He published his results in 1897, describing a "Long Count" system of a "count of days" based on several units or periods of increasingly larger size: the k'in (1 day), winal (20 days), tun (360 days), k'atun (7200 days), and bak'tun (144,000 days). The ancient Maya kept track of time using this system, which was combined with additional counts of 260 days (the tzolk'in) and 365 days (the haab) to produce Long Count dates. Goodman believed there was also a larger "Great Cycle" of 13 bak'tuns (1,872,000 days) and determined that the start of the present Great Cycle was on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Cumk'u (that is 13 bak'tunob, 0 k'atunob, 0 tunob, 0 winalob, and 0 k'inob, followed by counts on the tzolk'in and haab). Later scholarship showed that this was a sacred "Creation" date for the ancient Maya, who referred to it in their mythology as a kind of "birth" of the present world. The Gregorian equivalent of this date is August 11, 3114 BCE. The next day was 0.0.0.0.1, with each day clicking another unit in the count. According to scholars who support Goodman's idea of a 13-bak'tun Great Cycle, the current period will conclude on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in, the Gregorian equivalent of which is December 21, 2012 (or possibly December 23, or yet something else...)
It's important to remember that calendars are complicated! The Gregorian calendar system, currently used in the Americas, Europe, and other countries with heavily Western influence, is one that carries with it the legacy of many changes, some of which originated with the Roman (Julian) calendar with modifications under Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585), the head of the Roman Catholic church at the time of the Spanish Conquest (for whom the calendar is named). Explaining the magical or divinatory aspects that many people believe about them is even more complicated, but it is a problem literally as old as time.
3. Does the Maya calendar end on December 21, 2012?
No. It's not even clear that the date will represent the end of a 13-bak'tun cycle. Goodman's theory was that the present 13-bak'tun Great Cycle was the 54th in an even larger Grand Era, comprised of 73 Great Cycles. However, some ancient Maya daykeepers appear to have favored counts in 20-bak'tun cycles. The Maya calendar does not end with a 13- or 20-bak'tun count. The Maya projected dates far into the future. For example, one inscription predicts that the anniversary of the coronation of K'inich Janaab' Pakal, a 7th century Maya king of Palenque, will still be celebrated in AD 4772. Epigrapher David Stuart has pointed out that there are Maya dates that project farther into the future than modern astronomers project backward to the origin of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Scholars are currently divided over whether the correct Gregorian correlation with 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in is December 21 or December 23, 2012 or even some other date. The date of December 21 has been especially popular for many intepretations because it happens to fall on a solstice (winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern). Whether this was intentional or fortuitous remains a matter of debate.
4. What's the origin of the claims about the end of the world?
Shortly after Goodman's work was first published, German scholar Ernst Förstemann interpreted the symbols and images on the last page of an pre-Hispanic Maya book called the Dresden Codex as references to the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood that he interpreted as "destruction of the world," "apocalypse," and "the end of the world." Förstemann's ideas were repeated by American archaeologist Sylvanus Morley in a 1915 book on ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing. Morley added his own embellishments, writing "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a Great Flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's popular book The Ancient Maya (1946). Mayanists disagree about these interpretations, with some suggesting that the image represents the annual arrival of the rainy season, not a cataclysmic flood.
The ideas of Goodman, Förstemann, and Morley influenced American archaeologist Michael Coe, of Yale University, who also interpreted elements of Aztec mythology, particularly the "Legend of the Five Suns" (first recorded in the 1550s) as evidence for ancient beliefs in cyclical periods of destruction. He summarized his ideas in a popular textbook, The Maya (1966). In each edition (there have now been eight), Coe associated the completion of the 13th bak'tun with "Armageddon," a reference from Christian beliefs expressed in the New Testament (in the Book of Revelation) that there will be a final, world-destroying battle associated with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. He also noted (based on Aztec beliefs) that the present world would be destroyed by earthquakes. Coe never thought this would actually occur. He was simply trying to express what he thought the ancient Maya actually believed using Cold War lingo so as to grab the imagination of his readers.
