Mayas hope for better Baktun, complain of government banning rituals at archaeological sites

Mayas hope for better Baktun, complain of government banning rituals at archaeological sites - Mayan priests started off ceremonies aimed at marking the end of the current era in the Mayan long-count calendar Thursday, with dancing, incense and rituals designed to thank the gods.

The Mayas performed the "New Fire" ceremony at a park in Mexico City, but complained they have been barred by authorities from performing rituals at their ancestral temples in the Maya region.

The Mayas measure time in 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, and 13 is considered a sacred number for the Maya.

The estimated 800,000 surviving Mayas in Mexico are hoping for a better new Baktun than the one now ending, which began around 1618. It included the painful aftermath of the Spanish conquest in which Mayas and other indigenous groups saw their temples and sacred writings systematically destroyed and their population decimated by European diseases and forced labour.

"This is the ending of an era for the Maya, an era which has been very intense for us, in which we have had suffering and pain," said Mayan priest Jose Manrique Esquivel, 52, who wore a feather headdress and body paint for the ceremony. For the new Baktun, he said, "we are praying the wars, the conflicts, the hunger to end."

The Maya survived all of that suffering with their pride intact.

"We were not conquered, we are still here, we are alive and so is our culture our language, our food, our history," Manrique Esquivel said.

The priest, who is in agreement with most archaeologists and astronomers, doesn't believe the ancient Mayas predicted the world would end with the close of the current Baktun. Some bloggers and astronomy enthusiasts have suggested the Mayan calendar would "run out" on Dec. 21.

Despite the generally festive atmosphere at the ceremony, there was some discontent that the government won't allow Mayan priests and healers to perform their ceremonies inside archaeological sites like Chichen Itza, Coban and Tulum that their ancestors built.

"We would like to do these ceremonies in the archaeological sites, but unfortunately they won't let us enter," Manrique Esquivel said. "It makes us angry, but that's the way it is ... we perform our rituals in patios, in fields, in vacant lots, wherever we can."

Francisco de Anda, the press director for the government's National Institute of Anthropology and History, which oversees archaeological sites in Mexico, said there were two reasons for the ban on ceremonies. "In part it is for visitor safety, and also for preservation of the sites, especially on dates when there are massive numbers of visitors."

For example, he noted, at the spring equinox in 2011, about 35,000 people visited Chichen Itza on a single day. Throngs of that size create potential hazards on stairways and in other steep or narrow spots, and holding ceremonies with fire or incense might add to that, he said.

"Many of the groups that want to hold ceremonies bring braziers and want to burn incense, and that simply isn't allowed," De Anda added.

Moreover, they probably couldn't perform rituals on the temple platforms where their ancestors worshipped, because the structures could deteriorate under the weight and the foot traffic of the gatherings.

"For conservation reason, there is a ban on climbing up about 80 per cent of the structures at Chichen Itza," De Anda said.

De Anda said a big spike in visitors was also expected at sites like the ruins of the Mayan city of Coban and the seaside ruins at Tulum, where similar rules are in effect.

Saul Ancona, the tourism secretary for Yucatan, the state in southern Mexico with the largest Mayan population, said the Mayas would be very much present in what is being billed as the "Festival of the Maya Culture" planned to coincide with Dec. 21.

He said that a presentation called "Sacred Moments of the Maya" would be performed by about 250 Mayas in the Yucatan city of Valladolid and that the state was promoting the date as a chance for visitors "to enjoy Mayan culture and get to know the Mayas."

Ancona is so sure the world isn't going to end that the state tourism department is already planning the 2013 edition of the festival. "What we have done is to plan a series of festivals, to celebrate a new era, a new beginning," he said. ( The Associated Press )

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What Was Behind Mysterious Collapse of the Mayan Empire?

A temple in Tikal, one of the Mayan city states

What Was Behind Mysterious Collapse of the Mayan Empire? - The city states of the ancient Mayan empire flourished in southern Mexico and northern Central America for about six centuries. Then, around A.D. 900 Mayan civilization disintegrated.

Two new studies examine the reasons for the collapse of the Mayan culture, finding the Mayans themselves contributed to the downfall of the empire.

Scientists have found that drought played a key role, but the Mayans appear to have exacerbated the problem by cutting down the jungle canopy to make way for cities and crops, according to researchers who used climate-model simulations to see how much deforestation aggravated the drought.

"We're not saying deforestation explains the entire drought, but it does explain a substantial portion of the overall drying that is thought to have occurred," said the study's lead author Benjamin Cook, a climate modeler at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a statement.

Using climate-model simulations, he and his colleagues examined how much the switch from forest to crops, such as corn, would alter climate. Their results, detailed online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggested that when deforestation was at its maximum, it could account for up to 60 percent of the drying. (The switch from trees to corn reduces the amount of water transferred from the soil to the atmosphere, which reduces rainfall.)

Other recent research takes a more holistic view.

"The ninth-century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán peninsular region were the result of complex human–environment interactions," writes this team in a study published Monday (Aug 20) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team, led by B.L. Turner, a social scientist at Arizona State University, concurs that by clearing the forest, the Mayans may have aggravated a natural drought, which spiked about the time the empire came to an end and population declined dramatically.

But this is just one contributing factor to their demise, Turner and colleagues write, pointing out that the reconfiguration of the landscape may also have led to soil degradation. Other archaeological evidence points to a landscape under stress, for instance, the wood of the sapodilla tree, favored as construction beams, was no longer used at the Tikal and Calakmul sites beginning in A.D. 741. Larger mammals, such as white-tailed deer, appear to have declined at the end of empire.

Social and economic dynamics also contributed. Trade routes shifted from land transit across the Yucatán Peninsula to sea-born ships. This change may have weakened the city states, which were contending with environmental changes. Faced with mounting challenges, the ruling elites, a very small portion of the population, were no longer capable of delivering what was expected of them, and conflict increased.

"The old political and economic structure dominated by semidivine rulers decayed," the team writes. "Peasants, artisan – craftsmen, and others apparently abandoned their homes and cities to find better economic opportunities elsewhere in the Maya area." ( LiveScience.com )


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In escape from Japan doomsday, capital takes flight

In escape from Japan doomsday, capital takes flight -- Hiroshi Kosaka has an unorthodox pitch for his realty business: instead of pictures of swanky condominiums his website features Japanese debt statistics and budget meltdown scenarios usually left to credit rating agencies.

His firm is part of a cottage industry that has sprung up to help worry-prone Japanese savers get out of the yen and find property overseas that could serve as a safe haven in a financial disaster. The trend comes against the backdrop of a deepening pessimism about Japan's economic future that has made "Escape from Japan" a hot-selling business book and helped drive sales of second homes from New Zealand to Malaysia.

Dire statistics on Japan's public debt, which tops two years' worth of its economic output, make a convenient talking point at Kosaka's seminars in Tokyo. Many people are wary of the government's plan to raise taxes and have lost trust in high-tech Japan's nuclear energy after last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami wrecked a plant in Fukushima, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

"A lot of people tell me they are worried about nuclear radiation. People also tell me they are worried about an economic disaster in Japan," Kosaka says.

Even if the outflow of funds remains a relative trickle, it challenges the consensus that Japan will avoid a Greek-style debt crisis because Japanese investors have shown a strong "home bias" and fund almost all of the government's $10 trillion in debt. But that could change if more Japanese become willing to plan a future abroad.

"At my age, I think a lot about having a family, and I also think about living abroad," Miki Akutsu, a 28-year-old employee at an advertising agency, said at a seminar on buying Malaysian real estate.

"If Japan's finances collapse, social order would collapse as well. That would be a tough environment to raise children."

The Japanese have been buying real estate overseas in the past, but what has changed since last year's earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear crisis is that it is no longer the province of the rich and the retired.

Increasingly, the middle class and younger people are opening bank accounts in Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore to buy condominiums and homes that they plan to rent out for a few years before they eventually move in themselves.

"Since November, I've helped around 25 people buy condominiums at a development in Malaysia. I would classify only three of these people as rich," Kosaka says, pointing to a spreadsheet on his notebook PC.

The name of his firm, Kuratabi, means to live and to travel. Business has picked up for Kosaka, who first moved to Malaysia part-time five years ago.

LOW COSTS, NICE WEATHER AND GROWTH

Akutsu was one of 30 people who crammed into a small office in Tokyo to hear Takeshi Uchimura, managing director of Asia Network Research Sdn Bhd, explain how to obtain a Malaysian second-home visa to buy real estate near Kuala Lumpur.

The pitch is simple. The yen is strong and cost per square meter is about a third of what you pay in Tokyo. You can also borrow from a bank in Malaysia.

If you rent out and park that income in a Malaysian bank account, you will earn more than in zero-interest-rate Japan.

And if you decide to relocate to Malaysia, the cost of living is low, international schools affordable, crime is low, the weather is warm all year, the population is still young and there is more potential for economic growth.

Japan overtook Iran last year as the country that is applying most for Malaysian second-home visas. Japan also leads the pack as of March this year, Malaysian Tourism Ministry data showed.

For many, nuclear radiation leaks at Fukushima served as a catalyst to take another hard look at Japan's economic woes - massive public debt, an ageing population, low economic growth and deflation - and made them seem more insurmountable than before.

In the fourth quarter of last year, households poured 578 billion yen ($7.28 billion) into foreign securities, according to the Bank of Japan, the first outflow in two quarters.

That may be a drop in an ocean compared with some $15 trillion in Japanese household savings, but could mark a shift in perceptions about relative risks and advantages of moving assets abroad as opposed to keeping them at home.

"The government would be worrying about this the most because they would lose tax revenue," said Masayuki Kichikawa, chief Japan economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Tokyo.

"Flows out of the banking sector would mean banks have less capacity to invest in Japanese government debt, so we would see higher yields."

For now, capital is flowing both ways. Foreign ownership of Japanese government debt has risen to 6.7 percent of outstanding debt in December from a trough of 4.6 percent in early 2010 because many investors still see Japanese bonds as relatively safe. The concern is those flows can reverse quickly, driving up borrowing costs.

Yusuke Nozaki, chief executive of Nozaki Asset Management Inc which specializes in New Zealand properties, says interest in real estate around Auckland has increased threefold since the March 2011 earthquake.

"Our business is experiencing explosive growth," Nozaki said in a telephone interview from Fukuoka, southern Japan, where his company is based.

"In the past year and a half I've increased my staff threefold. I don't expect this growth to slow."

Since last year there has been a jump in inquiries from housewives, he says. The logic is they can take the kids and move abroad, even if only temporarily, and the husband can join later.

BOOM FOR GLOOM

Sensing a growth market, publishers have ramped up their offering of books telling readers exactly how to transfer their savings into foreign currencies, open overseas bank accounts and buy property, often with alarmist titles warning of sovereign meltdown and a mass exodus of personal assets.

To be sure, publications predicting doom and gloom for Japan have featured regularly in bookstores for decades. Sakkyo Komatsu, a science-fiction writer, had a hit in 1973 with "Japan Sinks," a novel that tapped into the pessimism around the time of the first oil shock with a plot that hinges on the efforts of Japanese to escape as the archipelago slips into the Pacific.

The new wave of books is touching a raw nerve in a nation still unsettled by the Fukushima crisis, publishers say, and advertisements for such "how to" books grow more prominent with each passing month.

One book that went on sale about a month ago, called "Escape from Japan," has been an instant hit for the publisher, Asa Publishing Co.

About 40,000 copies have sold so far, some three times as much as Asa Publishing normally sells when it launches a new title. The publishers expect sales to increase further and are considering publishing more books on the same subject.

"Publishers have issued books before that talk about Japan's dire economic situation, but these books are basically a bunch of economists who pose a lot of questions about Japan's future but don't offer any answers," said Yuiko Furukawa, an editor at Asa Publishing.

"That leaves people asking themselves what they should do. We wanted to try to provide people with a practical guide for what they should do." (Reuters)

($1=79.4150 Japanese yen)

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UFO filmed flying around passenger plane in Seoul, Korea

UFO filmed flying around passenger plane in Seoul, Korea -- A video purporting to show an unidentified object flying around a passenger plane in Seoul, South Korea, on April 7 was posted to YouTube. The video is generating some controversy as some allege it is genuine while others say it is fake.

The video was uploaded to YouTube by a user called "Crazybreakingnews." The clip shows the UFO flying alongside a passenger plane, then it increases speed and altitude and disappears from sight.

The passenger who filmed the alleged UFO appears to be filming the view from the plane's window when he suddenly notices the white flying saucer as it comes into view. The person makes a startled sound when he sees the saucer and just as he tries to zoom in for a closer look, it gathers speed and zips out of sight.


The uploader commented on the alleged sighting: "It looks a little bit strange and not really similar to the other videos. If it's really real and not a fake, it looks like a kind of military drone."


Some viewers on YouTube believe the flying object may be a military drone, but others think the footage is fake.


Daily Mail reports that a viewer who thinks the video is fake commented: "When stabilized, it is easy to see what is going on with the video. The edges of the UFO are not blurred like all of the other background objects, it seems like a separate effect from the background, and in fact you can see edge noise on the shape of the UFO indicating it's a fake. It doesn't even look right if you start to look at it hard, especially slowed down frame by frame."


Another viewer, vicariousjojoe, said: "People, you should know by now what is fake and what's not. You can always tell by the way the camera moves and zooms."


A magnified view of the UFO appears to support the assertion that the video is computer-generated imagery (CGI). Yahoo! News notes it looks more like a plain ivory colored bowler hat than a sophisticated flying machine. ( digitaljournal.com )

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Thousands queue for UFO rescue at Pic de Bugarach

Thousands queue for UFO rescue at Pic de Bugarach -- Thousands of "New Agers" are flocking to the village of Bugarach in France to prepare for the end of the world on December 21. The people are expecting that aliens will come to save them from doomsday apocalypse by beaming them aboard their spaceships.

The villagers at Bugarach, with a population of just over 200, are bewildered at the steady stream of New Agers ("esoterics") arriving daily in vans with camping equipment. The motley collection of esoteric New Age groups converging on Pic de Bugarach all share the belief derived from the Mayan apocalypse theory that the Mesoamerican Long Count calender predicts, in connection with special astrological alignments, the end of a 5,125-year cycle of history on December 21, 2012.

According to The Inquisitr, the pilgrims, already over 20,000, believe that when Doomsday comes on December 21, aliens will appear in UFO ships at Pic de Bugarach to rescue all people awaiting them in the area and fly them off safely to a place of dawn of a new age and era. BBC reports that for years, there have been rumors circulated on Internet that Pic de Bugarach is home to powerful aliens and that on apocalypse day, December 21, the top of the mountain will open and the UFOs will emerge to rescue those gathered in the area.

UFO cults and the mystery of Pic de Bugarach

The Pic de Bugarach at 1,230 metres, is the highest in the Corbieres mountain range and many believe that mystical forces, energies and powers are resident at the mountain, like the biblical Mount Sinai. According to The Independent, "New Agers" have been making pilgrimages to the mountain because they believe it has special mystical "magnetic waves." Rumors authenticating the sacredness of the site also claim that the late French president Francois Mitterrand flew to the peak by helicopter. Other rumors claim the Nazis and later Israel's Mossad have carried out mysterious digging rituals at the peak.

The mountain is called the "upside-down mountain" because, according to geologists, its top layer is an overthrust from the Iberian plate, and is older than the bottom ones. According to French tradition, the mountain inspired Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Independent reports that a man called Jean, who set up residence in the forest at the foot of the mountain a few ago, in preparation for the end of the world, said: “The apocalypse we believe in is the end of a certain world and the beginning of another. A new spiritual world. The year 2012 is the end of a cycle of suffering. Bugarach is one of the major chakras of the earth, a place devoted to welcoming the energies of tomorrow.”

French authorities jittery

The local authorities have grown nervous about the goings-on in the area, fearing the possibility of a mass action such as suicide. They have asked the French government to move troops into the area for security. According to The Independent, more than 100,000 are expected to come to the mountain in time for the 21 December "beaming up" of believers aboard UFOs. BBC reports that a special parliamentary committee has warned that the sects may commit mass suicides in 2012 if the spaceships do not come to save them. A report alleges some people have bought land in the mountains and are planning to building bunkers where they may survive the expected catastrophe at the end of the world. The Independent also says there have been reports of strange "rituals" at the site, with "esoterics" climbing to the top of the mountain, some naked, carrying a strange ball with a golden ring strung together by a thread.

BBC reports the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, confirmed that sect members have been ascending the mountain to conduct secret rituals and strange ceremonies in outlandish white outfits. Others have been holding secret meetings in the forest near the village.

BBC reports a wall painting depicting the expectation of the "esoterics" at Bugarach. The painting shows a UFO picking a man off a mountain top. The mayor says the villagers are worried about these goings-on: “We’ve seen a huge rise in visitors. Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach is ‘un garage à ovnis’ [an alien garage]. The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After 21 December, this will surely return to normal.”

And of course, entrepreneurs are busy making profits, with American travel agents offering special one-way deals to Armageddon, The Independent reports. ( digitaljournal.com )

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France's Bugarach Peak Draws Believers Who Await Alien Rescuers

France's Bugarach Peak Draws Believers Who Await Alien Rescuers - Sects of doomsday believers have starteddescending on the tiny French town of Bugarach in the belief that it's the only place in the world that will survive the apocalypse they expect will occur on December 21, 2012, the BBC reports.

Many spiritual groups believe that Bugarach, a farming village of just 200 residents nestled on the French side of the Pyrenees, has magical powers that emanate from the overlooking mountain, the Pic de Bugarach, according to Time Magazine.

For years, Internet users have speculated that the mountain is inhabited by extraterrestrials that will emerge on the December 21, 2012 and take followers with them as human civilization comes to an end.

Since the beginning of the year, over 20,000 people have climbed to the top of the mountain to stake out the site and perform rituals, according to the town's mayor Jean-Pierre Delord.

"They think Pic de Bugarach is 'un garage à ovnis' [an alien garage]," Delord told The Independent. "The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After December 21st, this will surely return to normal."

As more and more New Age visitors trek to the mountain, government watchdog agencies have begun tracking the sects as the town becomes increasingly vulnerable to scammers looking to capitalize on the growing apocalyptic fervor, Reuters reports.

A 2011 report by the watchdog agency Miviludes found that one messianic group had established no less than six settlements in the area surrounding Bugarach. The group, known as the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment, claims to follow the mystic teaching of an ancient warrior named Ramtha who battled the residents of Atlantis over 35,000 years ago and discovered the secret to immortality.

Another group profiled in the Miviludes report includes the Raelians, a religion founded by race car driver Claude Vorilhon that focuses on the belief that life on earth was designed by extraterrestrials.

Miviludes President president George Fenech told Reuters that in the months leading up to December 21st -- during which the population of Bugarach could balloon to 100,000 -- government agencies are taking special precaution to prevent mass suicides and other dangerous activities.

"I think we need to be careful. We shouldn't get paranoid, but when you see what happened at Waco in the United States, we know this kind of thinking can influence vulnerable people," Fenech told ( Reuters )

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Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch?

Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch? - When Hector Siliezar visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza with his wife and kids in 2009, he snapped three iPhone photos of El Castillo, a pyramid that once served as a sacred temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan. A thunderstorm was brewing near the temple, and Siliezar was trying to capture lightning crackling dramatically over the ruins.

In the first two images, dark clouds loom above the pyramid, but nothing is amiss. However, in the third photo, a powerful beam of light appears to shoot up from the pyramid toward the heavens, and a thunderbolt flashes in the background.

Siliezar, who recently shared his photographs with occult investigators, told Earthfiles.com that he and his family didn't see the light beam in person; it appeared only on camera. "It was amazing!" he said. He showed the iPhone photo to his fellow tourists. "No one, not even the tour guide, had ever seen anything like it before."

The photo has surfaced on several Mayan doomsday discussion forums. But was the light beam a sign from the gods — a warning about Dec. 21, 2012, the date that marks the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, and when some people fear the world will end? Or is it simply the result of an iPhone glitch?

According to Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions, it is almost definitely the latter. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments, and is fully versed in the wide range of potential image artifacts and equipment errors.

He says the "light beam" in the Mayan temple photo is a classic case of such an artifact — a distortion in an image that arises from the way cameras bounce around incoming light.

It is no mere coincidence, Hill said, that "of the three images, the 'light beam' only occurs in the image with a lightning bolt in the background. The intensity of the lightning flash likely caused the camera's CCD sensor to behave in an unusual way, either causing an entire column of pixels to offset their values or causing an internal reflection [off the] camera lens that was recorded by the sensor." In either case, extra brightness would have been added to the pixels in that column in addition to the light hitting them directly from the scene.

Evidence in favor of this explanation is the fact that the beam, when isolated in Photoshop or other image analysis software, runs perfectly vertical in the image. "That's a little suspicious since it's very unlikely that the gentleman who took this picture would have his handheld iPhone camera positioned exactly parallel to the 'light beam' down to the pixel level," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries.

It's more likely that the "light beam" corresponds to a set of columns of pixels in the camera sensor that are electronically connected to each other, but not to other columns in the sensor, and that this set of connected pixels became oversaturated in the manner described above.

"That being said," Hill said, "it really is an awesome image!" ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch?

How Earth's Next Supercontinent Will Form

How Earth's Next Supercontinent Will Form - The Earth has been covered by giant combinations of continents, called supercontinents, many times in its past, and it will be again one day in the distant future. The next predicted supercontinent, dubbed Amasia, may form when the Americas and Asia both drift northward to merge, closing off the Arctic Ocean, researchers suggest.

Supercontinents are giant landmasses made up of more than one continental core. The best-known supercontinent, Pangaea, was once the world's only continent — it was on it that the dinosaurs arose — and was the progenitor of today's continents.

Conventional models of how supercontinents evolve suggest they form on top of the previous supercontinent, known as introversion, or on the opposite side of the world from that supercontinent, known as extroversion. Under these models Amasia would therefore either form where Pangaea once was, with the Americas meeting with Asia to close off the Atlantic Ocean, or form on the other side of the planet from where Pangaea was, with the Americas merging with Asia to close off the Pacific Ocean.

Now, geologists suggest that Amasia might emerge sideways from where Pangaea once existed, in what is now the Arctic, a process known as orthoversion. Moreover, this new model seems consistent with models of how past supercontinents formed, said researcher Ross Mitchell, a geologist at Yale University.

Which way did it form?

The introversion model, on the one hand, assumes that the oceanic plate between continents that formed when a supercontinent pulled apart has stopped spreading. As such, there is nothing to keep the continents from drifting back together and forming another supercontinent. The extroversion model, on the other hand, proposes that the oceanic plate that formed when a supercontinent pulled apart would keep spreading. The continents then drift away from it, meeting up on the other side of the planet to merge.

The new orthoversion model from Mitchell and his colleagues bases its motion of continents on where the edges of past supercontinents were. For instance, when Pangaea broke up, its rim dove or subducted downward into the earth. This subduction zone, which encircles the Pacific Ocean, is known as the Ring of Fire, and is where many of the largest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions now take place.

The orthoversion model proposes that the subduction zone surrounding a one-time supercontinent drives where its former components end up going. This suggests that modern continents will slide either north or south around the Ring of Fire. Since the Caribbean Sea between North and South America and the Arctic Ocean between the Americas and Asia appear transient in nature, the researchers suggest the Americas and Asia will go north instead of south, meeting at the Arctic to form Amasia.

To see which model of the supercontinent cycle might be right, the researchers tried to see which best matched data on how past supercontinents formed. These included Pangaea, as well as Rodinia, which existed between 750 million and 1.1 billion years ago, and Nuna, which existed between 1.5 billion to 1.8 billion years ago.

Rock records

To see how the components of supercontinents moved, scientists analyzed the impact that Earth's magnetic field has on ancient rocks. Magnetic minerals in molten rock can act like compasses, aligning with the planet's magnetic field lines, an orientation that gets frozen in place once the rock solidifies. Since these lines generally run north-south, looking at the way these minerals point can shed light on how the landmasses they are a part of might have drifted in space over time.

The researchers found that Pangaea apparently formed at nearly a 90-degree angle from the direction along which Rodinia fragmented — that is, Pangaea formed neither where Rodinia once was nor on the opposite side of the planet, but somewhere nearly exactly between those spots. Rodinia seemingly emerged in a similar manner from Nuna. Both findings support orthoversion as the explanation for how supercontinents form and fragment.

"Now that we have a clear picture of what the supercontinent cycle actually looks like, we can begin to answer the questions of why the supercontinent cycle operates as it does," Mitchell told OurAmazingPlanet. "Why a supercontinent breaks apart remains an unanswered question."

When to expect Amasia

These findings could also help scientists better understand the history of life on this planet, by figuring out where landmasses were and how organisms might have dispersed.

"Continents with similar fossil records likely share an evolutionary ancestry, but actually establishing a land bridge by juxtaposing those continents is finding the smoking gun," Mitchell said.

As to when Amasia might form, that is "difficult to answer, because the supercontinent cycle is not as regular as the seasonal cycle, for example," Mitchell said. "But we can get a clue from Earth's history — the cycle is speeding up, such that the recurrence interval between successive supercontinents has become less and less. Knowing that Pangea formed 300 million years ago, we can predict a range of Amasia ages from 50 to 200 million years from now." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - How Earth's Next Supercontinent Will Form

2012 predictions from Chinese masters

Riding the Dragon: 2012 predictions from Chinese masters - Want to know what's in store for 2012? Who will win the US election? Will the eurozone implode? China's feng shui masters tackle the big issues with their predictions for the Year of the Dragon.

As Chinese communities around the world prepare to ring in the new year on Monday, astrologers and geomancers are predicting the dragon will bring natural disasters and financial volatility, especially to crisis-hit Europe.

"The world economy will be unstable in the Year of the Dragon, because the economies in Europe and the US are still suffering from the effects of the recession," Hong Kong feng shui master Anthony Cheng says.

Celebrity astrologer Peter So says the United States will provide some good news late in the year, but his charts for Europe make grim reading.

"Europe will not recover so soon -- it is expected to suffer at least until 2014. But what I can say is this, a recovery for the US economy is possible in 2013," he says.

If you're prepared to ride the dragon and invest in 2012, Russia and China could be your best bets. The two emerging markets will be the best performers in a volatile year, says Cheng.

But be prepared for surprises, especially out of China where the Communist Party will hold its 18th Congress to select a new generation of leaders.

"In the second half of the year, a scandalous corruption case will be exposed in China," warns Cheng, refusing to elaborate about who will be implicated.

"I can also predict that in Hong Kong and in mainland China, a number of high-ranking officials will be forced to step down. Some may be thrown behind bars, or even pass away."

Many Chinese take such predictions seriously and adjust their lives accordingly. Feng shui, the ancient study of the forces of chi, or life energy, is a daily part of life in the Chinese world.

One of Hong Kong's largest brokerages, CLSA, releases a Feng Shui Index every year, offering its "tongue-in-cheek" predictions for global markets and world affairs.

Lest anyone takes it seriously, CLSA admits that feng shui's "original purpose was to locate auspicious burial spots, not call the twists and turns of the equity markets or individual sectors".

But it has a stab anyway, even if some of its predictions are less than audacious. For example, it says the stars point to a "job opening" for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the man everyone expects to become China's next ruler after the 18th Congress in October or November.

As for US politics, the soothsayers are more cautious. When asked who will win the US elections, So refuses to make a prediction without precise information about the dates and times of the candidates' births.

"Sometimes luck depends on the country itself, rather than an individual president," he says enigmatically.

"For the US, they are starting to have luck on their side again, so it is going to be a good year no matter who's elected."

The five Chinese elements are wood, fire, earth, metal and water, and 2012 is tipped to be big on water. This could mean riches and abundance, but it could also spell disaster.

Well-known Hong Kong astrologer Alion Yeo says we should brace for storms and floods. "Expect to see a lot of flooding in areas like Thailand and South East China," he says.

So sees similar portents, but with an earthy twist.

"Indonesia, Pakistan, India and places in China like Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou are particularly disaster-prone. They are likely to experience frequent earthquakes," he says.

While the ancient Chinese were developing their systems of astrology and geomancy, people across the Pacific were finding other ways to predict the future.

The Mayans of modern-day South America purportedly had a calendar that showed the world would come to an end on December 21, 2012.

Like the historians who rubbish such interpretations of Mayan belief, So says there is no need to fear the end is nigh.

"Doomsday is just a bunch of make-believe," he says. ( AFP )

READ MORE - 2012 predictions from Chinese masters

Good Heavens! Oldest-Known Astrologer's Board Discovered

Good Heavens! Oldest-Known Astrologer's Board Discovered - A research team has discovered what may be the oldest astrologer's board, engraved with zodiac signs and used to determine a person's horoscope.

Dating back more than 2,000 years, the board was discovered in Croatia, in a cave overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The surviving portion of the board consists of 30 ivory fragments engraved with signs of the zodiac. Researchers spent years digging them up and putting them back together. Inscribed in a Greco-Roman style, they include images of Cancer, Gemini and Pisces.

The board fragments were discovered next to a phallic-shaped stalagmite amid thousands of pieces of ancient Hellenistic (Greek style) drinking vessels.

An ancient astrologer, trying to determine a person's horoscope, could have used the board to show the position of the planets, sun and moon at the time the person was born.

"What he would show the client would be where each planet is, where the sun is, where the moon is and what are the points on the zodiac that were rising and setting on the horizon at the moment of birth," said Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

"This is probably older than any other known example," Jones said. "It's also older than any of the written-down horoscopes that we have from the Greco-Roman world," he said, adding, "we have a lot of horoscopes that are written down as a kind of document on papyrus or on a wall but none of them as old as this."

Jones and StašoForenbaher, a researcher with the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, reported the discovery in the most recent edition of the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

A 'King Tut experience'

In 1999, the team was digging near the entrance of the Croatian cave, a site well known to archaeologists and people at the nearby hamlet of Nakovana who simply called it "Spila," which means "the cave," Forenbaher told LiveScience.

But what nobody knew at the time was that the cave had a section that had been sealed off more than 2,000 years ago. Forenbaher's girlfriend (now his wife) burrowed through the debris, discovering a wide low passageway that continued in the dark for nearly 33 feet (10 meters). Forenbaher described going through the passageway as "the unique King Tut experience, coming to a place where nobody has been for a couple of thousand years."

Stepping into the cavern "there was a very thin limestone crust on the surface that was cracking under your feet when you went in, which meant that nobody walked there in a very, very, long time," Forenbaher said.

The team would later determine that it had been sealed off in the first century B.C., possibly in response to a military campaign waged against the local people by the Romans.

When the archaeologists investigated they found the phallic-shaped stalagmite, numerous drinking vessels that had been deposited over hundreds of years, and something else. "In the course of that excavation these very tiny bits and pieces of ivory came up," said Forenbaher, "we didn’t even realize what we had at the time."

The team went to work. "What followed was years of putting them together, finding more bits and pieces, and figuring out what they were," Forenbaher said. In the end they found themselves staring at the remains of the oldest-known astrologer's board.

How did the board wind up in the cave?

Archaeologists are not certain how the board came to the cave or where it was originally made. Astrology originated in Babylon far back in antiquity, with the Babylonians developing their own form of horoscopes around 2,400 years ago.

Then around 2,100 years ago, astrology spread to the eastern Mediterranean, becoming popular in Egypt, which at the time was under the control of a dynasty of Greek kings.

"It gets modified very much into what we think of as the Greek style of astrology, which is essentially the modern style of astrology," Jones said. "The Greek style is the foundation of astrology that goes through the Middle Ages and into modern Europe, modern India (and) so on."

Radiocarbon dating shows that the ivory used to create the zodiac images dates back around 2,200 years ago, shortly before the appearance of this new form of astrology.

Researchers are not certain where the board was made although Egypt is a possibility. The ivory itself likely came from an elephant that was killed or otherwise died around that time, they suspect. Being a valuable item, the ivory would have been stored for several decades, or even a century, before it was used to construct the zodiac. These signs would then have been attached to a flat (possibly wooden) surface to create the board, which may have included other elements that didn't survive.

At some point it may have been put on a ship heading through the Adriatic Sea, an important route for commerce that the cave overlooks. The people who lived in Croatia at the time were called Illyrians. Although ancient writers tended to have a low opinion of them, archaeological evidence suggests that they interacted with nearby Greek colonies and were very much a part of the Mediterranean world.

It's possible that an astrologer from one of the Greek colonies came to the cave to give a prediction. A consultation held in the flickering light of the cavern would have been a powerful experience, although perhaps not very convenient for the astrologer.

"It doesn't sound like a very practical place for doing the homework for the horoscope like calculating planetary positions," Jones said.

Another possibility is that the Illyrians traded for or stole the astrology board from someone, not fully understanding what it was used for. The board, along with the drinking vessels, would then have been placed as an offering to a deity worshipped in the cave whose identity is unknown.

"There is definitely a possibility that this astrologer's board showed up as an offering together with other special things that were either bought or plundered from a passing ship," Forenbaher said. He pointed out that the drinking vessels found in the cave were carefully chosen. They were foreign-made, and only a few examples of cruder amphora storage vessels were found with them.

"It almost seems that somebody was bringing out wine there, pouring it and then tossing the amphora away because they [the amphora] were not good enough for the gods, they were not good enough to be deposited in the sanctuary," Forenbaher said.

The phallic-shaped stalagmite, which may have grown on the spot naturally, appears to have been a center for these offerings and for rituals performed in the cavern. Forenbaher cautioned that all stalagmites look phallic to some degree and it's difficult to determine what meaning it had to the people in the cave. "It certainly meant something important," he said.

"This is a place where things that were valued locally, were deposited to some kind of supernatural power, to some transcendental entity or whatever [it was]." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Good Heavens! Oldest-Known Astrologer's Board Discovered

A baby boom for Chinese across Asia

A baby boom for Chinese across Asia - When Alicia Loo got pregnant 12 years ago, her husband's family was thrilled - the baby would be born in the year of the dragon.

Like most Chinese around the world, they believed that this was auspicious.

The dragon, the only mythical creature among the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, is regarded as a symbol of might and intelligence. In ancient China, the dragon was associated with the emperor.

Boys born in the year of the dragon, especially, are said to be destined to be successful and wealthy.

The next year of the dragon begins on 23 January, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, and lots of dragon babies are set to make an entrance.

Chinese Astrology

• Chinese new year falls on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar
• There are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac: the rat, the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the ram, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig
• Exact origins of the Chinese zodiac are unknown, but common folklore has it that these are the 12 animals to reach Heaven in a race

In previous dragon years, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and countries such as Singapore with a strong Chinese diaspora have experienced baby booms. In 2000, Hong Kong saw more than 5% rise in the number of births, according to official data.

Last month, state news agency Xinhua reported that China was anticipating a 5% increase in the number of babies this year.

Makers of baby products and companies offering pre-natal and infant care services are fired up by the business prospects.

A Bloomberg report, citing Euromonitor International, estimated that sales of nappies in China will grow about 17% to 28.4 billion yuan ($4.5bn, £2.9bn) this year.

Dragons' school race

Paying for nappies, however, is not the biggest worry for parents of dragon babies.

''It might affect this birth cohort when they get into school, go to the labour market because more people means more competition,'' said Dr Tong Yuying, assistant professor, department of sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Schools may increase their capacity, but it still means more children battling it out in national exams to get into top schools.

''It was a blessing, and not so, at the same time,'' said Alicia Loo, whose son Timothy, born in Singapore, was the fourth dragon in the Malaysian Chinese family.

Taiwan saw its lowest fertility rate last year at 0.9 babies per female - the lowest in the world

Timothy has to sit for the national Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) in Singapore this year. His results will determine which secondary school he attends.

''He is not stressed at all, being his usual dragon self,'' said the dance teacher and mother of three. ''But I am worried about secondary school.''

The race for school among bumper dragon cohorts is similar in Taiwan, if not more pronounced.

''Competition is definitely more intense for kids born in this year,'' said Dr Chen Shee-Uan, director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the National Taiwan University Hospital.

He believes there will be an increase of 20 to 30% this year in the number of babies delivered at the hospital. He is also expecting the same spike for in vitro fertilisation treatments at his clinic.

In fact, he added, this has already started happening in the last three months, as couples tried to get a headstart in the process.

''The dragon is really a special year,'' he said.

Population issues

This would be a boon to Taiwan, which had the lowest fertility rate in the world last year. The average number of children born to women was 0.9, a drop from 1.03 the previous year. Similarly, Singapore also saw its lowest fertility rate in 2010 with 1.15 babies per female.

Famous 'Dragons'

• Bruce Lee: (born 27 November 1940) The American Chinese martial arts instructor and movie star was the founder of the Jeet Kune Do form of martial arts. His Chinese screen name means ''little dragon'' but he is arguably one of the best known dragons in the world. He died shortly after filming Enter the Dragon (1973).
• Deng Xiaoping: (born 22 August 1904) China's 'paramount leader' from 1978 to 1992, the late statesman was the reformer whose legacy was leading the country towards a market economy. Several other former Chinese leaders, such as Zhu Rongji and Li Peng, were also born in a dragon year.
• Maggie Cheung: (born 20 September 1964) The Hong Kong born multilingual actress and former beauty queen is the first Asian actress to win an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for her role in Clean (2004).
• Lee Hsien Loong: (born 10 February 1952) Singapore's PM since 2004 and the eldest son of founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, he has a first-class degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. His Chinese name means 'the dragon emerges'.

In China - the world's most populous nation, with 1.3 billion people - though, it would be a different story.

''One downfall of the dragon baby boom is that this will put a lot of pressure on hospitals, kindergartens and schools in China,'' said Dr Zhang Yanxia, a visiting research fellow at the East Asian Institute in Singapore.

Mainland Chinese mothers already go to Hong Kong to deliver their babies to circumvent the one-child policy, and for rights of abode and education for their child.

Last weekend, Hong Kong mothers pushing strollers staged a protest, amid fears of a further influx. Authorities have taken steps to limit the number of deliveries by mainlanders and foreigners in both public and private hospitals.

But the boom is not expected to last. Coming years - especially the year of the snake in 2013 - will likely see a decline in births.

''The dragon baby boom seems unlikely to have a significant impact on the total fertility rates in the long run,'' said Dr Zhang.

'Best times'

Nonetheless, the baby dragons are coming, by all indications.

''When the dragon wants to do something, there will be no stopping him,'' said Master Wong, president of the Malaysian Fengshui Association. ''I should know; I'm a dragon too.''

This is the year of the Water Dragon and so it is auspicious regardless of whether one has a boy or a girl, said the international Fengshui expert.

Traditionally, it is believed that female dragons, while wise and talented, will face some difficulties in their lives, particularly in the area of romance.

The best times for babies to be born was either in May, he added, or towards the end of the year when the energy is more vibrant.

Many younger, well-educated parents, especially in Chinese communities in the West, say they do not subscribe completely to astrological beliefs.

''The younger, British-born Chinese don't mind if they have a dragon baby in the family, or not,'' said Perry Fung, a manager at the Chinese Community Centre in London.

''But the older generation will still be very happy. There is a saying in Chinese - we are the descendents of the dragon.''

In fact, the lure of the dragon is so attractive that some prospective parents from other cultures find themselves drawn in as well.

Betty Kioroglou-Poulos, a Greek American living in Boston, is excited that her first child, due in March, will be a dragon baby.

''I guess you could say I half-believe it,'' she said.

''Nothing is ever guaranteed in life, but I figured if the Chinese have been following this and have believed in this for as long as they have, maybe there is some truth in it?!'' ( bbc.co.uk )

READ MORE - A baby boom for Chinese across Asia

Mayan Ruins in Georgia? Archaeologist Objects

Mayan Ruins in Georgia? Archaeologist Objects - The textbooks will tell you that the Mayan people thrived in Central America from about 250 to 900 A.D., building magnificent temples in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and southern Mexico.

But could they possibly have left stone ruins in the mountains of North Georgia? Richard Thornton thinks so. He says he's an architect by training, but has been researching the history of native people in and around Georgia for years. On Examiner.com, he wrote about an 1,100-year-old archeological site near Georgia's highest mountain, Brasstown Bald, that he said "is possibly the site of the fabled city of Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto failed to find in 1540."

This might all be fairly arcane stuff, except that an archeologist he cited, Mark Williams of the University of Georgia, took exception. In the comments section after Thornton's piece, he wrote, "I am the archaeologist Mark Williams mentioned in this article. This is total and complete bunk. There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia. Move along now."

Immediately the story exploded. In comments on Examiner, as well as on Facebook and in emails, users piled on. One woman called Williams "completely pompous and arrogant." A man wrote he was "completely disrespectful to the Public at large." Another said he would urge the state of Georgia to cut off funding for Williams' academic department at the university.

All of this left Thornton, who writes often about the Maya for Examiner.com, "dumfounded."

"I actually was giving Williams a plug," he said in an interview with ABC News. "I've got a regular readership, but this thing just went viral."

Thornton, who said he is Georgia Creek Indian by birth, volunteered that doing research about Mesoamerican culture in the U.S. has been a difficult way to make a living. For nine months before the Examiner hired him, he said he was so poor he had to live out of a tent. He said he now makes money by writing online and lecturing.

Some of his conclusions about the Mayan connection to the southern U.S., he said, are based on oral history. There are place names in Georgia and North Carolina, he said, that are very similar to Mayan words. And the ruins near Brasstown Bald, he said, include mounds and irrigation terraces similar to those found at Mayan settlements in Central America.

Williams, the doubting archeologist, had many online defenders. "While there are many, many compelling parallels between Central American and North American indigenous mythologies," wrote one, "that does not mean there was direct evidence that the post-Classic Period Collapse Maya emigrated all the way to Georgia."

Williams stood his ground against Thornton's suggestion that Brasstown Bald has any Mayan roots. "The sites are certainly those of Native Americans of prehistoric Georgia," he wrote in an email. "Wild theories are not new, but the web simply spreads them faster than ever." ( Good Morning America )

READ MORE - Mayan Ruins in Georgia? Archaeologist Objects

Major Doomsday Predictions That Did Not Come True!

Major Doomsday Predictions That Did Not Come True! - With the latest big screen offering, “2012” a $200m production, based on myths that have their origin in the Mayan calendar, talking about the end of the world, there is no better time than this to write about such predictions.

Here are the top ten doomsday predictions that did not happen, based on a column by Benjamin Radford, in Live Science.

The Hen of Leeds (1806)

Throughout the centuries, there have been several people who claimed that Jesus Christ would return, but what happened in Leeds, England is the strangest proclamation ever. It is said that a hen started laying eggs on which “Christ is coming” was written. This was huge news in those days and people were totally convinced that doomsday is nearing. But one fine day, it was discovered by a local that it was all nothing but a hoax. The eggs were taken out, written on with corrosive ink and put back.

Millerites Mania (1843)

William Miller, a New England farmer, after going through the bible carefully told people that God’s chosen time to end the world is going to be on April 23, 1843. He managed to convince people to an extent that it gave birth to Millerites, his followers. Many people believed his predictions to be true, so much so that they even went to the extent of giving away or selling their possessions. But April 23 came and went with no sign of Jesus. The Seventh Day Adventists are people from this group who have divided after the prophecy failed.

Mormon Armageddon (1891)

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, held a meeting in February 1835 to tell church leaders that he had spoken to God and during the conversation he was told that Jesus would return within the next 56 years.

Televised Threat (1982)

In May 1980, televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson shocked and alarmed his audience around the world by saying that he knew when the world would come to an end. He said, “I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world.”

Comet Catastrophe (1910)

In 1881, an astronomer found that comet tails contain cyanogens, which is a deadly gas related to cyanide. This was just another bit of news until it was discovered that that Earth would pass through the tail of Halley’s comet in 1910. There was a lot of speculation that the Earth might be bathed in the toxic gas when it passes through the tail of the comet and it caused panic, until scientists intervened to tell people to calm down and that no such thing is going to happen.

Credit: Bostankorkulugu (via Flickr)

Alien Tailenders (1997)

In 1997, with the appearance of comet Hale-Bopp, there were rumors that an alien aircraft was following this comet. Heaven’s Gate, a UFO cult, based on these rumors, concluded that the world would end soon. However, the world ended only for 39 of the cult members on March 26, 1997, when they committed suicide.

Nostradamus Revisited (1999)

For hundreds of years, people have found the metaphorical writings of Michel de Nostrdame intriguing. One of his most famous predictions read as, “The year 1999, seventh month/From the sky will come great king of terror.” Devotees were concerned that this was the vision of Armageddon.

Y2K Bug (2000)

Towards the end of the last century, with the coming of the computers, people began speculating that computers will trigger doomsday. They believed that PCs will not be able to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900 dates, and suggested problems leading to N-holocaust.

Ice Age (2000)

“5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster” written by Richard Noone says that by the year 2000, there would a three-mile thick mass of Antarctic Ice. It was said that on this day, the planets would also be aligned in the heavens, and would somehow lead to a global icy death.

God’s Church Ministry (2008)

God’s Church minister Ronald Weinland predicted in 2006 that there will be death of millions of people by the end of 2006, and the world will face the worst times in human history within two years after that. One of his predictions also said that the United States would no longer be the world’s most powerful nation.

Many people now say that these prophecies may not really happen. However, when a new prediction is made, we can be sure that speculations will begin all over again. ( dirjournal.com )

READ MORE - Major Doomsday Predictions That Did Not Come True!

Mayan Calendar Predicts Doomsday in 2012. Or Not

Mayan Calendar Predicts Doomsday in 2012. Or Not -- It sure is a good thing that the Mayan calendar says the world is going to end this year -- because at least, after the apocalypse comes on Dec. 21, you won't have to read another word about it.

Or maybe you will. The beginning of 2012 has brought a new flurry of reassurances that the Maya never did predict anything would go wrong this year, and that even if they had, we're probably misreading their calendar anyhow.

"There's no real prophesy that says this is going to be the end of the world," said Christopher Powell, an archeologist who studies Mayan culture, "not from the Mayan ruins, anyway."

At Yahoo News, writer Lisa Hix quoted Bruce Love of the Archaeological Institute of America: "Whatever the significance of the date is, it is significance we are putting on it; it's not the significance the Maya are putting on it. It's not coming from anywhere in the literature or in the Mayan hieroglyphic writing."

Over at Discovery News, Ian O'Neill, a physicist by training, has written a piece that says, "there's no evidence to suggest the Mayans believed the end of their Long Count calendar would spell doomsday."

The Maya, who lived in Central America between A.D. 250 and 900, had a cyclical calendar that ran approximately one human lifetime, or 52 years (life was shorter back then). To account for events more than 52 years away, they devised another calendar, one that ran 5,126 years, and apparently began in the year 3114 B.C. Do a little math: 5,126 minus 3,114 equals 2,012.

"I believe the Mayan calendar was based on some incredibly good astronomy, said Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012." "They were really good at knowing when. They weren't so good at saying what's going to happen then." Joseph said he worries about an outbreak of solar flares in December, enough to fry the world's electric grid.

But does any Mayan calendar really predict anything will happen? Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said, "Western messianic thought has twisted the cosmovision of ancient civilizations like the Maya." It said the Maya believed that time started and ended with regularity, with nothing apocalyptic occurring at the end.

O'Neill blames the viral marketing campaign in 2009 that promoted the Roland Emmerich disaster movie "2012." The film got mediocre reviews but sold a lot of DVDs. And social scientists say the mythology of a doomsday prophecy fits an old pattern: When times are tough, it's almost comforting for people to blame higher unseen powers.

"It's almost like you're out there looking for evidence of a looming apocalypse," said anthropologist Wade Davis, an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, "and I think it also ties into a lot of uncertainty that exists in our world today."

But 2012 does promise to be a heck of a year, with a still-shaky global economy, a stubbornly high unemployment rate and a presidential election. The scientists say we can take stock on Dec. 22.

"I can think of a lot of reasons to cash out and run away with your family these days to a desert island," said Davis, "but this Mayan prophesy isn't one of them." ( Good Morning America )

READ MORE - Mayan Calendar Predicts Doomsday in 2012. Or Not

Mayan Calendar Runs Out In One Year; What True Believers Are Doing

Mayan Calendar Runs Out In One Year; What True Believers Are Doing - No one knows exactly what will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, the day that the Mayan Calendar runs out, but it's safe to say there will be a lot of hype regarding what might happen.

And a lot of people could make big bucks by capitalizing on the folks who are concerned enough about perceived threats, real or imagined, to make a change in their life, such as Robert Richardson, who runs Off Grid Survival, a website that helps people prepare for worst-case scenarios such as, well, the end of human civilization as we know it.

Richardson's business caters to all sorts of survivalists, but admits that he's seen increased traffic as the calendar comes closer to the Mayan Calendar end date.

"It's going to be a huge year in the preparedness market," Richardson told HuffPost Weird news. "It will be bigger than Y2K."

Richardson doesn't claim to be a full-on 2012 believer, but thinks there may be something to the claims that it will cause a big change on Earth.

"There is something to it," he said. "It's interesting that strange things are converging -- political tensions, weird weather, economic problems -- but it may all be a self-fullfilling prophecy."

On the other hand, some people are making prophecies that they don't believe are self-fullfilling such as Peter Kling, a 2012 survival advocate and author of "Letter to Earth: You Can Survive Armageddon!" (Eloquent Press).

Kling, whose website calls him "The Einstein of Biblical Prophecies," wants people to understand that nothing is going to happen on Dec. 21, 2012.

"No, it's the end of a cycle. The coldest day of the year isn't the shortest day of the year, it takes time for things to happen," Kling said.

What kind of things? Well, Kling says the end of the Mayan Calendar marks the end of a 5,000-year cycle that he claims is associated with big floods. In addition, the date also loosely corresponds with the return of Elenin, a comet that takes thousands of years to orbit that recently came within 22 million miles of Earth.

The possible effects have been the subject of debate among many 2012 conspiracy theorists -- including Kling -- even though NASA experts like Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., insist any effects of the comet are minimal at best.

"My subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean’s tides than comet Elenin ever will,” Yeomans said.

Somehow, Kling isn't convinced.

"NASA insists it's nothing but an ice ball, but every time it's been aligned with Earth, we've had a major earthquake," Kling said.

Kling also claims NASA scientists ares predicting there will be major solar storms that could collapse the power grid for weeks and months.

To be fair to NASA, the special doomsday FAQ they set up to dispel 2012 fears says that while solar storms could have an effect on communications, they promise to warn electric companies and other appropriate busineses when if they get intense enough to affect the power grid.

It looks like NASA will have its hands full dealing with doomsday predictions based on the reaction to the upcoming calendar date by Kling and Betsy Balaga, a psychic near Toronto.

"It's not the end of the world, but there will be tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes where people don't expect," she told HuffPost Weird News. "Part of this is because of a pole shift caused by the arrival of a planet Nibiru."

Some would say it's the same for NASA scientists who have had to answer questions about the mysterious planet Nibiru for years , only to run into new believers. Their response can be summarized by this explanation from a doomsday FAQ page on their website.

"There is no factual basis for these claims," according to NASA. "If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist."

Balaga sees it differently.

"I believe that the Mayans knew all of this," she said. "I think a lot of ancient knowledge has been ignored."

Since natural disasters seem to be the big fear behind 2012 -- and those, admittedly, are hard to predict -- preparing for the worst makes sense to people like John Kehne, who runs December212012.com, a "clearinghouse" for all the doomsday-related data.

"We do have a shelter here in Louisville that is built for tornadoes just in case anything does happen," Kehne told HuffPost Weird News. "I do think some sort of change is coming. There's been a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of earthquakes this year. Based on my records, we've had more intense disasters than any time in memory."

Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, admits it's been an unusual year weather-wise, but bases it on various factors.

"We've had several record-setting events, such as the earthquake on the East Coast, the drought in Texas and the tornadoes earlier this Spring, but that's consistent with a warming planet," Seitter told HuffPost Weird News. "in addition, there was a confluence of events on, say 50-year cycles and 25-year cycles and sometimes those events will happen at the same time.

"However, no legitimate scientist would credit these things to the end of the Mayan Calendar."

Meanwhile, if you're unsure of who to believe about how to deal with the end of the Mayan Calendar one year from now, you could always do what travel writer Joshua Berman did: Ask the Mayans themselves.

He's the author of Maya 2012: A Guide To Celebrations In Mexico, Guatemala, Belize & Honduras (Moon Publishing), and says there are 10 million Mayans still living in the region and most of them are looking at the next year, not as the end of the world, but as the beginning of a cash cow.

"I haven't spoken with a single Mayan or Mayan expert who believes there will be an apocalypse," Berman told HuffPost Weird News. "Instead, there is going to be a lot of celebrating and parties. They hope to increase tourism by 10 percent this year. ( december212012.com )

READ MORE - Mayan Calendar Runs Out In One Year; What True Believers Are Doing