It's the end of an era - not the apocalypse

The end of the world is nigh. More precisely, it's December 21 this year according to some interpretations of a prophecy by the extinct Mayan civilisation in Mexico.

But no, that's all wrong, Dr Jesus Galindo said in Hong Kong last week.

Mayan carvings did not predict December 2012 to be doomsday, says the Mexican astronomer-archaeologist, but merely the end of an era, and the start of another.

Galindo, a researcher from the Institute of Aesthetic Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, gave three talks on Mayan archaeoastronomy (the astronomical knowledge of prehistoric cultures) to clarify the feared prediction.

The ancient Mayans were masters of time and keepers of good calendars, he said, but 'it is important that people know the Mayan predicted that a planetary cataclysm is only a fantastic legend. It's very similar to what happened in 2000, when people were afraid the world would end. In fact, it's nonsense. It only marked the end of an era,' he said at the Space Museum theatre.

The Mayan long calendar count begins in 3,114BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called baktun. Mayans held that the number 13 is sacred and the 13th baktun - which takes the form 13.0.0.0.0 - ends on December 21, the winter solstice, this year.

Some people have interpreted the prophecy as predicting an apocalypse, but he said it signifies the end of a five-millennia cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar, not the end of the world. 'The end of the world will come - but not this year. It will be 4,500 billion years later, when the diameter of the sun will increase, and the temperature of our planet will rise so much that all the liquids will evaporate,' he said. 'But that's not something we should care about now.'

Nonetheless, the Maya did make prophecies about the future, but they were of war, drought and famine, 'which weren't special, because these events have always occurred in the history of mankind'.

Although the prophecy 'totally departs from the way our universe nowadays works', it has given about a dozen archaeoastronomists specialising in Maya, like himself, the chance to show the world the science and culture of the civilisation.

'The culture still has a lot to offer,' he said. 'In Mexico, we have a mixed culture. In the five centuries since the European conquests, we have obtained many things from the West, and now indigenous culture, for example Maya, is not a principal part of our culture. Studying the Maya gives us the opportunity to show people about it.'