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Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History now says Mayan ruins show a second reference to the apocalypse occurring in 2012 but said that rumors of the world ending late next year were a Western misinterpretation.The story at The Register (we love The Register):
On Thursday, the institute released a statement saying that the date of the apocalypse had been found on the carved or molded face of a brick at the Comalcalco ruin in the southern part of the country.
Most experts had previously said there was only one reference in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco....MORE, including video
Boffins find new 2012 glyph on 'secret' Mayan brick
Cryptic 1300-yr-old inscription ≠ doomsday, they insist
... In a statement ahead of a planned meeting of Mayan experts, the Institute says:The Tortuguero glyph is well known, and is the source of much of the hoopla regarding the Mayan calendar and possible doomsday in 2012. The Comalcalco glyph, probably inscribed in the 7th century AD, is less commonly known and many experts doubt that it refers to December 2012 at all: it might refer to the same point in a different 394-year-long "Baktun" during the present 5,200-year long count....Of the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts discovered so far in different parts of the Maya area, in only two inscriptions is there mention of 2012: Monument 6 at Tortuguero, and a fragment found at Comalcalco, Tabasco, archaeological sites relatively close together.
...The Mexican archaeological institute seeks to downplay the significance of the expiration of the thirteenth and final Baktun of the current long count on or about December 21 next year. However its statement does say:
According to the Maya concept, every 13 baktunoob (which together account for 5,200 years) the cosmos is regenerated, completing a cycle of creation.Which might be cause for alarm. Similarly US space agency NASA has issued several rather equivocal denials that there's any truth to the 2012 apocalypse theories, saying that while mega solar flares and/or colossal "super volcanoes" most likely won't destroy the entire Earth, they could certainly cause titanic disasters and suffering on an immense scale.
Naturally it is one of firmest editorial principles here at the Reg that we deplore this type of baseless speculation, and as such we would much prefer not to give it the oxygen of publicity. Regrettably we also have a still firmer principle that it is important to make a living, so in this case we have given the Mexican statement (translated by Google) a quick blast from the old oxy bottle anyway.
