People have a vast misunderstanding of the Mayan Long Count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoameric ... her_ordersDespite the publicity generated by the 2012 date, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that "We [the archaeological community] have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.[15] "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday event or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."[16] "There will be another cycle," says E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute (MARI). "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this.
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I know Susan Milbrath quite well; her ethnoastronomy course at Florida was one of my favorites.
The Mayans counted with incredibly long units of time.
http://www.calendarhome.com/converter/mayan.htmlAn alautun is 63 million years. There are stela dates on Mayan monuments that refer to years vastly in the future; one indicates the year 4772 CE (our calendar).
It's absolutely silly to think they thought the world ended at the end of a 5000 year cycle, when they had much longer ones.