Movie spurs interest in mayan calendar

LOS ANGELES — As the person who is widely credited with helping usher in the 2012 Doomsday Craze, John Major Jenkins says he doesn't want to spoil the party, but the world won't end on Dec. 21, 2012.

An author of 10 books on Mayan culture, Jenkins says the end of the Mayan calendar did not prophesy Armageddon, but simply reflected their belief in the "birth of a new age."

Interest in the Mayan calendar has been peaking recently with the upcoming release of the $200 million disaster film "2012" and an Internet campaign meant to promote hysteria surrounding the Mayan beliefs.

"It's really interesting right now because there is a lot of hype around this date, especially with the movie '2012' coming out," said Jenkins, who will speak today at a conference at the Glendale Hilton. "But the idea that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012 is actually not the case."

The ancient Mayans, known for their sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, saw the end of the 5,125-year period as a time of "destruction and renewal," some Mayan scholars say.

"Rather than simply the end of the world, the Maya would no doubt have viewed the end of this great cycle as an important and powerful time of reordering and renewal of the world," said Eleanor Harrison-Buck, a Maya expert and an assistant professor of archaeology at the University of New Hampshire.

As the movie and hundreds of books, Web sites and blogs have piqued interest in ancient prophecies — especially those connected to 2012 — astronomers, archaeologists and prophecy scholars have found themselves busy debunking much of the apocalypse hysteria.

E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory and author of "The Great 2012 Scare" in this month's issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, said, no, there is no scientific evidence to suggest the Earth's magnetic poles will flip, California will slide into the sea or a rogue planet called Nibiru will smash into the globe in 2012.

"These are the hallucinatory visions of all-night talk radio and the World Wide Web," said Krupp, who will give a free presentation on 2012 at the observatory on Dec. 4.

"The Earth is no more vulnerable to catastrophe in 2012 than it ever is, but the human imagination is probably more vulnerable to premonitions of catastrophe thanks to those who have exploited the traditions of the ancient Maya and distorted our understanding of modern astronomy."