The Mayans did not predict the end of the world and their calendar was cyclical, in other words, it never ended. There are only two mentions of 2012 in Mayan writing and they reference the end of the 13th Bak’tun (1 Bak’tun was equal to 394.26 years) which ends on the winter solstice 2012 or Dec 21st, 2012, it merely marks the end of a cycle.
The Mayans used 3 different calendars to track time.
- Tzolk’in – Organized into a 260-day yearly calendar
- Haab’- Organized into a 365-day yearly calendar.
- Long Count – A mix of base-20 and base-18 hieroglyphs representing the number of days since the start of the Mayan era.
All of the Mayan calendars were cyclical and none predicted the end of the world. In fact, some Mayan text talks about celestial events taking place in the year 7000 ad. The Mayans did not predict the terrible floods, giant earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions that were depicted in the movie “2012″.