New Mayan Calendar Discovered

Much has been made of the Mayan calendar that ends this year. Some say the calendar ends just because the calendar's carver ran out of room on the stone. Others take a much more apocalyptic view -- saying the Mayans had some kind of mystical knowledge and it meant that the end of the world would come this December. There has even been a rather bad movie made about the world ending in 2012 -- a fulfillment of the Mayan "prophesy".

Modern-day Mayans have denied that their ancestors ever predicted the end of the world -- for this or any other year. Now there may be some proof that they were right, and all the apocalyptic theorists were wrong. At the Mayan Xultun ruins in Guatemala, a previously unknown part of those ruins has been discovered -- and this part pre-dates all the other Mayan ruins found, being dated in the 9th century.

Among the remarkable finds at Xultun are some remarkably preserved wall paintings and another Mayan calendar (part of which is pictured above). But this newly-discovered calendar doesn't stop in 2012. In fact, it goes far into the future -- about 7,000 years into the future.

Dr. William Saturno of Boston University says, "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."

It was always a silly apocalyptic myth, and now it's been busted. Ancient Mayans did not predict the end of the world -- not in 2012 or at any other time.