The Mayans used Cobol!

I've heard, here and there, claims that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end in December of 2012.

Being me, I've been rather more than a bit skeptical.

Today I finally ran across an explanation that makes sense.

According to this article, the Mayans had a long form calendar that used a finite number of variables, each with a finite number of possible values. The beginning date (lowest value for all variables) being known, the latest date (largest value for all variables) can be calculated and comes out to December 21st, 2012. All well so far, and somewhat interesting.

The article then goes on to claim that therefore the Mayans knew that an apocalyptic event would happen at that point.

By this argument, COBOL programmers in the early computer age knew that an apocalyptic event would happen on December 31st, 1999, at midnight (or technically at one minute after midnight, depending on how you look at things). Our precision in predicting such things has certainly improved, hasn't it?

Did the Mayans know something we don't? Possible. They apparently whipped up a nice calendar without the instruments we'd need to produce something like it.

Y2K came and went with scarcely a whimper, though I wish I'd taken the chance to buy a cheap, near-new generator in January of 2000. :-) I suspect that December 21st, 2012, will be little different.