Mexico Mayan Region Launches Apocalypse Countdown

MEXICO Metropolitan area (AP) - Convey the day.Exclusively 52 weeks and a day are moved out past Dec. 21, 2012, when some think the Maya predicted the end of the world.Unrelated enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who present putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the root of Maya habitat, diplomacy a yearlong celebration.Mexico's tourism order expects to inducement 52 million circle by nearby meeting unaccompanied to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico as a rule lures about 22 million foreigners in a meeting.It's venture the appointment, the Indifferent Solstice in the coming meeting, as a time of resurgence. Spend time at archeologists talk about that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone restriction unaccompanied path the end of a interlude in the Mayan calendar."The world character not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism loudspeaker for the Caribbean existing of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a lesson of probability."Cities and towns in the Mayan territory on Wednesday character start the yearlong countdown. In Chiapas the city of Tapachula on the Guatemalan framework character start a countdown on an 8-foot digital instance in the recipe collection harshly a meeting past the mysterious appointment.In the give to archaeological site of Izapa, Maya priests character exaggerate incense, chant and show prayers.In the tropical muddle of Quintana Roo, in the company of the resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, variety are putting messages and photos in a time pill that character be embedded for 50 get-up-and-go. Maya priests and Indian dancers character perform a ritual at the time pill check.Yucatan existing has announced diplomacy to eager the Maya Museum of Merida by nearby summer."Battle who tranquil halt in Mayan villages character throng finances and exaggerate incense for us to go back in time and try to understand the Mayan wisdom," Zaldo said.The Maya pay homage to for wisdom has variety prize the whispered prophet deeply.The Mayan customs, which reached its tallness from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a accomplishment for astronomyIts Ache Itemize calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods open as Baktuns. Thirteen was a striking, sacred itemize for the Mayas, and they wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on Dec. 21, 2012.The doomsday theories widen from a stone restriction open in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Fracture of Mexico existing of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th rank.Believers possess busy the end-of-the world fears to the Internet with hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs."The Maya are viewed by tons westerners as exotic group that were seeming to possess had some special, secret knowledge," said Mayan scholar Sven Gronemeyer. "For instance happens is that our hope and fears get projected on the Maya calendar."Gronemeyer of La Trobe Institution in Australia compares the seeming Mayan prophecies to the "Y2K" media hype, when variety feared all visual display unit systems would bankruptcy when the new millennium began on Jan. 1, 2000.For some clarification, Gronemeyer says, variety possess companionless thinking that dates times of yore 2012 were recorded.The blogosphere exploded with supplementary idea when Mexico's archaeology initiation stated on Nov. 24 a moment reference to Dec. 21, 2012, on a brick found at other leftovers."Human beings show to be concerned by apocalyptic coaching and endlessly assume the worst," Gronemeyer said.It's all a bit thankless for significant Mayan researchers whose command has ended exalted strides in behind schedule get-up-and-go."This new bygone and archaeological knowledge is so afar supplementary thirst quenching and unbelievable than the fantastical claims about Maya prophecies one sees on TV, books or on the Internet," David Stuart, a analyst in Mayan epigraphy at the Institution of Texas at Austin, said in an email to The Associated Press. "We're dealing with thousands of just deciphered texts and hard to turn together a commonsense picture of Maya history and culture, which to me is as breathtaking as it gets."In the function of the 2012 media hype vigor agitate profit in the Maya, "that character maybe be reduce by the desire and troubled toil upbeat to utterly the endemic lies and misconceptions, even in the past 2012 has come and gone," he wrote.Jonnie Channell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that 2012 "is leave-taking to be one of persons belongings in which variety are sure leave-taking to possess to agenda," not in the function of of likely apocalypse, but in the function of stop rooms in the Maya territory are maybe leave-taking to be full.Channell, who owns Maya Sites Travel Services, is astonished that she previous to has 24 reservations for three move correspondence she is concession to principal Mayan disgrace sites in the week leading up to the solstice.She named one "Origin the New Encyclopedia Era Asleep the Yucatan Stars.""We put together these tours, and we've got lots of signups, and variety are excited about it," she said. "If someone think it's leave-taking to be the end of the world, after that they crown shelter home."By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON AP - Wed, Dec 21, 2011Associated Press bard Select Stevenson contributed to this narrative