will this happen?

The credibility of those claims deserves rational attention-which is what I intend to provide. Neither mystic nor prophet, I am a Mayanist. More specifically, I am a professional art historian and an epigrapher (less formally, a glypher), one who can read and write Maya hieroglyphs. For over a decade, I have focused my scholarly research specifically on Maya culture and writing, making some surprising discoveries that can present a more definitive perspective on the prophecies of the ancient Maya seers. As we approach the critical year, it is time to offer a more viable account of the Maya prophecy and expose both the fallacies and ethnocentricism tainting the current sensational accounts.

Here I intend to explain what we actually know about (1) Maya knowledge and attitudes, both ancient and modern, (2) the date 13.0.0.0.0. and (3) their many Creation stories and prophecies. I shall draw from recent decipherment, ethnography, interviews with Maya priests and knowledge-keepers, and especially from their surviving prophetic literature. That literature includes The Books of Chilam Balam, among others, the pre-Columbian Codices, and ancient inscriptions. The evidence is sometimes fragmentary and often puzzling to us moderns, at least at first. But I believe the effort will be worth it.

First, let me affirm that the year 2012 does hold particular significance in Mayan scholarship. Those of us who study the ancient and modern Maya — anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, linguists, historians, amateurs, collectors — have been anticipating the end of the Maya Great Cycle for some time. We write it 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in. We have known for half a century that this date probably correlates to December 21 (or December 23) in the year 2012 in the Gregorian calendar.