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No Mayan apocalypse expected next year

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No Mayan apocalypse expected next year
Photo: DPA

The world won’t actually end next year despite widespread fears that Mayans long-ago predicted humanity’s demise in 2012, according to a German expert.

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Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan culture from North Rhine-Westphalia said that his decoding of an old stone tablet referencing 2012 has shown that the Native American civilization merely expected the return of one of their gods next December. It doesn’t predict the world’s destruction, the Spanish newspaper ABC reported on Wednesday.

The date of December 21, 2012 has been cited by many lay-theorists as the Mayans’ prediction of the beginning of worldwide catastrophes that will eventually lead to the destruction of the earth.

The tablet, which is thought to be more than 1,000 years old, has reinforced that fear. It clearly references 2012, and some have interpreted it for catastrophic predictions.

Archaeologists and other researchers have downplayed those interpretations and organised a special conference this week at an archaeological cite in Mexico’s Chiapas state to attempt to put them to rest once and for all.

At the conference Gronemeyer told reporters that Maya rulers believed they should “prepare the ground for the god Bolon Yokte” on December 21 next year, according to the ABC newspaper.

Bolon Yokte, who was the Mayan god of creation and war, is supposed to return on that date, following a 13th set of 400 year periods called “Baktuns.”

But nothing on the glyphs indicate he or anyone else will destroy the world, instead pointing to the necessity of a proper welcoming of Bolon Yokte, he said.

“That date is loaded with a symbolic value as a reflection on the day of creation," Gronemeyer said, according to the paper.

The Local/mdm

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