Did the Mayans predict the end of the world?
That belief is very much in dispute. The Mayan "long count" calendar progresses using a cycle of approximately 394 years known as a baktun; the calendar ends after the 13th baktun, which closes on Dec. 21 of this year. A stone tablet recovered in Mexico in the 1960s made an oblique reference to a god of war descending from the sky at the end of the 13th baktun. That artifact has fed widespread theories that the world will end that day, and archaeologists last November identified an ancient brick fragment inscribed with what could be another reference to the same portentous date. But anthropologists unanimously agree that the Mayans saw time as cyclical, not linear; Dec. 21, 2012, simply represents the end of one cycle and the start of a new one. "There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture," said Jesús Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests.