Here's another brightly-colored feather for your jaunty caps, Doomsday fans. The 2012 Mayan Apocalypse just got a much-needed credibility boost.
Kind of.
The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History recently revealed a brand spankin' new reference to our impending extinction. Namely, an inscription on a brick found at the picturesque Comalcalco temple ruins.
Comalcalco, for those who may be a little rusty on their ancient Mayan history, is a hop, skip and a jump from the infamous Tortuguero site in the proud, spicy state of Tabasco. Archaeologists at Tortuguero once discovered fragments of a glyph-riddled tablet which was - until now - considered the one surviving reference to the End of the Days.
According to its translators, the Tortuguero tablet explicitly references the end of the 13th b'ahktun - or 'era' - which is set to expire on December 21st, 2012. A single b'ahktun roughly equates to a 394 year period. Some of the supposedly prophetic inscribings on this (incomplete) fragment include the vaguely unsettling terms 'it will happen' and 'he will descend'. 'He' is most likely your boy Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god linked to both war and creation and, presumably, one very confused and conflicted deity.
The newly announced Comalcalco Brick is a somewhat different beast. Researchers have made the argument that Tortuguero makes reference to the Big Event in future tense, whereas the fragmented etchings on the Brick are apparently obtuse enough that they could very well refer to some long-past historical happening. But both artifacts undoubtedly mention something serious going down at the end of b'ahktun number 13. So there's definitely some sort of connection there... if a fairly tenous one.
The (arguably) interesting part? The folks at the Institute of Anthropology and History claim to have discovered the Comalcalco inscription several years ago. Only now - with Internet speculation on 2012 at a fevered, frothing pitch - do they decide to clue the rest of us in. For all we know, these savvy bastards are giving us just a little taste of their sweet, sweet knowledge - you know, to get us hooked. Whet our Apocalyptic appetites. Perhaps they know more about this whole mess than they're letting on.
Probably not, though.
Whatever they may indeed know, the Mexicans are all set to cash in on the world's fascination with its loosely foretold annihilation. The Institute is currently organizing a round table of 60 Mayan experts, to be held next week at the Palenque archaeological site. This convention is intended to - and I quote - 'dispel some of the doubts about the end of one era and the beginning of another, in the Mayan Long Count calendar'. If you ask me, this sounds like a flimsy excuse to throw up some concession stands, book some ads on local radio and fire up the old cotton-candy maker. Make a pricy spectacle out of the whole thing. After all, if there's one thing archaeologists know, it's how to stack some serious paper.
Can you say ka-ching?
So - to summarize...
A whiles back, some smart science-y types dug up some vaguely suggestive glyphs, authored by a cabal of half-naked, mushroom-eating blood worshippers from 1300 years ago. Said glyphs make an exceedingly vague (and incomplete) reference to the end of an era. Word gets out once the Internet is invented, and a bunch of paranoid shut-ins work themselves up into a spastic frenzy. Now some other guys come across some more glyphs which purportedly say, more or less, the same thing. And the Internet prepares itself for another goddamn conniption.
Still... our species now has two converging reports, ripped straight from the bowels of ancient history. Two scratched-up hunks of rock, one message - you're all going to die. If you ask me, that's some pretty concrete evidence of an impending Apocalypse right there. Might as well start stockpiling the ammunition, canned goods and toilet paper, people.
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