2012 December 12th 11:12GMT in the Mayan Long Count calendar

The Mayan calender is actually a combination of 3 calenders. There is a religious calender a solar calendar and the long count calendar which can point to any date in history. The Mayan Long Count calendar is the one making the date of December 21, 2012 world famous to this day.

First of all we should appreciate the significance of the Mayan calendars. Our modern western or gregorian calendar was introduced in Europe in 1582 and yet the Mayan Calendar introduced at least 3,000 years prior to ours is more accurate than our calendar today. While the Gregorian calendar will need to reajust by a day every 4 years the Mayan calendar does not need adjusting at all. It is unlear whether the Mayans invented the Long Count calendar themselves, got it from their Olmec predecessors or if it is even older altogether.

The number system used for the Long Count is completely different than our decimal, 10 based number system. Instead, the Mayans used 5 sets of numbers separated with a decimal. A typical Long Count number would look like this:

12.15.14.16.14

The first day of the Long Count is labeled 0.0.0.0.1 which is the equivalent to August 11th, 3114 BC. on our current Gregorian Calender. The Long Count calender ends at 12.19.19.17.20 which is the equivalent to December 21, 2012 The Mayan Long Count Calendar records 5126 years of individual dates before it resets and starts over. It last started on August 13th, 3114BC and will now come to an end and restart on december 21st 2012.

In Mayan mythology each Long Count cycle is a world age in which the gods attempt to create pious and subservient creatures. The First Age began with the creation of the Earth, and it had upon it vegetation and living beings. Unfortunately, because they lacked speech, the birds and animals were unable to pay homage to the gods and were destroyed. In the Second and Third Ages the gods created humans of mud and then wood, but these also failed to please and were wiped out according to Mayan Mythology. We are currently in the Fourth Age and while many state that the Mayan Calendar predicts the end of the world it only predicts the end of the Long Count Calendar and the beginning of a new age.

The additional contribution to our end of world theories provided by the Mayans is that this particular end of the Long Count Calendar is more than the usual end of a Long Count cycle which will occur on December 21, 2012 at 11:12 GMT. It's a phenomenon that the Mayans referred to as the "Sacred Tree" and it happens every 25,800 years. At that time our Sun will line up directly with the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. For thousands of years, our solar system has been hovering around the top of the galactic plane and this galactic alignment could have huge effects on our solar system.

While the Mayan Calendar is clearly a main contributor to the 2012 theories, many other mythologies and our own astrological observations tell us that we are entering a new age. If nothing else we are entering the age of aquarius and starting over the precession of the equinox or the great year which coincides with the mayan 25,800 year Sacred Tree prediction.