The inca big myth

The Inca empire developed between 1400 and 1500 AD in an area which is now Peru. Before the 15th century the Andean region was populated by many different tribes of people. Under the military leadership of Pachacuti and his son Topa Inca, who were Inca emperors between 1438 and 1493, the Inca state expanded into a great empire.From a geographic point of view, the Inca empire was not a very attractive place to live. The north-western border is the coastal region of the Pacific Ocean, which is the driest desert on earth. Not a drop of rain has fallen there in over 500 years. The towering Andes Mountains begin east of the desert, with steep slopes that make agriculture a serious challenge. The Inca solved that problem by creating terraces and filling them with fertile earth brought up from the mountain valleys. To the east of the Andes, lay the vast and humid jungle of the Amazon River Basin, inhabited by fierce tribes whom the Inca never managed to conquer.

The Inca empire and culture was largely destroyed by the Spanish in the most brutal conquest seen on the American continent. Under the leadership of Fransisco Pizarro the Spanish stole over 280,000 kilograms of gold from the Inca, destroyed and prohibited all expression of native religion and culture. Yet many traditions managed to survive in the myths and culture of Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. The present-day Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes are the descendants of the Inca. They make up almost 45 percent of the population of Peru. They live in close-knit communities and combine farming and herding with simple traditional technology. Much of the agricultural work is done cooperatively. Even though Catholicism is now the official religion in these areas, in practice it is a blend of Western and native Andean religion and culture.

Pachacuti drastically reorganized the Inca religion. He claimed to be the direct descendant of the Inca Sun God Inti, which made his people extremely obedient. Their daily work tasks almost became a religious duty. Pachacuti created a cult around himself and the sun-god Inti. Every day the emperor would wear new clothes, the old ones from the previous day had to be burned, and he would only eat from golden plates. Inca society was a theocratic society, meaning that politics and religion were completely intertwined. The Inca religion combined features of animism, fetishism, and the worship of nature gods representing forces of nature. Inca rituals included elaborate forms of divination and the sacrifice of humans and animals.  

Every Inca citizen was assigned a very strict task in life, connected to their age, gender and social position. For example children over five years of age had the responsibility of carrying water up to the fields where grown-ups were growing crops. And women older than fifty had to weave cloth for making clothes. Even the physically and mentally disabled were given daily tasks that were attuned to their capabilities. One of these tasks was chewing maize or corn and spitting it back into a big bowl. By letting this substance ferment the Inca made their own special corn beer called Chicha which they drank on festive occasions.

 

All of the individual responsibilities were recorded by bureaucrats through a system called the Quipu. It was an intricate form of communication using colored strings tied into knots. This was the Inca alternative to writing since they did not develop a written language of their own. Emperor Pachacuti also created religious holidays for his people. Six times a month the entire empire was shut down for festivities, lectures and parades. The Inca were incredible builders and architects. Their irrigation systems, palaces, temples, and fortifications can still be seen throughout the Andes. They had an efficient road system which was mainly used for government and military purposes. Couriers would carry messages in the form of knotted cords all over the empire. Unfortunately, this road network was also used by the Spanish, which greatly facilitated their conquest of the Inca Empire.

The Maya Cosmic Prophecy

Maya Scholars, in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and North America, have been watching with amusement and dismay as self-styled experts proclaim that ancient Maya prophets foretold an earth-shattering happening to occur December 21, 2012. This predicted phenomenon gets described in contradictory but often cataclysmic fashion--as an ecological collapse, a sunspot storm, a rare cosmic conjunction of the earth, sun, and the galactic center, a new and awesome stage of our evolution, and even a sudden reversal of the Earth's magnetic field which will erase all our computer drives.

One even predicts the earth's initiation into a Galactic Federation, whose elders have been accelerating our evolution with a "galactic beam" for the last 5000 years. In sum, the world as we know it will suddenly come to a screeching halt. These predictions are alleged to be prophecies by so-called "Ancient Mayans" whose "astronomically precise" calendar supposedly terminates on that date. According to such accounts, these mysterious Maya geniuses appeared suddenly, built an extraordinary civilization, designed in it clues for us, and then suddenly, inexplicably, vanished, as if they had completed their terrestrial mission. These same experts claim special credibility for the Maya prophecies by asserting that these historic sages, with their possible extraterrestrial origins, had tapped into an astonishing esoteric wisdom.

Other stories

Other stories predicting disaster in 2012 says that the new planet, many described as Planet X, a planet / comet (unreasonable), or the planet "Nibiru" will pass close to Earth causing earthquakes and tidal waves and all sorts of destruction , perhaps even turning the earth completely reversed. These are urban legends that have been around for a long time, but for most of the stories of history, this should be happening in the month of May 2003, as any Internet search for "Planet X" will reveal. Apparently what happens is that Planet X supporters, perhaps ashamed or disappointed that 2003 passed without incident, heard about a much more popular story of the Mayan calendar, and decided that 2012 is close enough to 2003 that have the correct date and that the destruction of Planet X Maya may be what is predicted. Legend of the Planet X begins by misinterpretation of astronomical observations, combined with the ancient Sumerian carvings that have been mistakenly interpreted to describe a solar system with ten planets. Why the craftsmen who make carvings on the ancient Sumerian should be considered to have knowledge of the planets are superior to modern astronomy is not convincingly argued. If you are interested in any real science behind the Planet X story, there's no better resource than Phil Plaits's "Bad Astronomy" blog, which went into all the facts, rumors, and sources in detail.

This is one reason people are afraid of 2012. Around 500 years ago, Copernicus Hipparchus confirmed what has been observed in 2200 BC: the axis of the Earth, which rested on the 23.5 °, to complete a full rotation every 25,765 years. This means that in 12,000 years, Christmas will come to Australia in the winter and the northern hemisphere would describe Santa in Bermuda shorts. Astrologers call this period the Great Year, and they were divided into 12 of the month or astrological "old", each about 2147 years old. Every day in accordance with one of the signs of the zodiac. We are in the Age of Pisces, and like the song says, we will soon enter the Age of Aquarius. According to the official delineations from the edge of the modern constellations, we will move into a new era in the year 2600. But there are some disagreements, and some places it on the astrologer in 2595, 2654, or 2638. Some put it much earlier, soon after 2150 or even 2062. However, after news broke about the Mayan calendar, the majority of people leaving the constellation astrology official definition and stated that the Age of Aquarius will begin in the year 2012. So, you can call this the three main reasons why the world will end in 2012, but you have horrible loose with astrology, and you also have to think of several reasons why the dawn of the Age of Aquarius may be brought at the end of the world. I have not found any plausible claim to what may have this effect.

So that's a lot of reasons, weak, though they may be, to predict that we will all die in the year 2012. However, there is one important fact that all the doomsayers seem to forget 2012: Despite all 2012-ish variety of predictions for the end of the world, there are far more stories of doom with a different date. For example, the popular interpretation of Nostradamus to find predictions for the end of the world in July 1999, December 1999, June 2002, and October 2005. This also has said that his writing could mean dead will rise from their graves in the 2000, 2007, or 7000 years. Nostradamus never said anything about 2012.

Many Protestant Christians believe that the end of the world will come in the form of what they call the Rapture, when the righteous will all be taken to heaven. Shaker believe the Rapture will come in the year 1792. Seventh Day Adventist first calculated it would happen in 1843, then when nothing happened, they found errors in their calculations and corrected to 1844. Jehovah's Witnesses make firm predictions for the years 1918, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1984, and 1994. A book was published in 1988 called 88 Reasons the Rapture is in 1988. Some biblical scholars found firm evidence that the biblical Rapture will occur in October 2005. Thousands of Koreans gave all the money and their possessions in preparation for the Rapture on October 28, 1992. Even Sir Isaac Newton made the calculation based on the Scriptures that show the Rapture can not occur before 2060. Some Jewish scholars place the "end of days" through Armageddon in the year 2240. I can not find the 2012 mentioned in this story.

In fact, James Randi's magnum opus publication of An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural lists 44 different end of the world predictions that all came and went was not satisfied. Why do we have to think that the legend of 2012 different? Any examination of the science behind each story, even glib examination, revealed a complete logical foundation. Planet X is only a story, which is the most easily faked as concrete depend on astronomical observations that proved false, the proposed mechanism offers to exactly how this "end of the world" to be achieved, the suspect gravitational collapse. Both the Mayan calendar, or the Age of Aquarius people, has offered any claims to how or why the world will end, only that their particular legend points to a rollover in some ancient calendar. My calendar rolls over every time the ball dropped in New York, and I have not seen this planet of natural disaster, except those who have to mop out drunk at the NYPD's.

Many people tend to put more faith in the ancient neolithic tradition than in the observations of modern science. There is nothing wrong with learning and respect for our predecessors' history for what it is, but when you turn things over and began to believe that scientific knowledge is only decreased the natural world from time to time, you're not doing anyone favors.

Maya empire

Maya calendar associated with the seasonal agricultural cycle central to the survival of the ancient. Planet X on Collision Course With Earth some say that's out there: the mysterious Planet X, aka Nibiru, on collision course with the Earth-or at least disrupt the flyby. Could such an unknown planet really going into our road in 2012. 

There are no objects out there, said NASA astrobiologist. That's probably the easiest thing to say. The origins of this theory really ahead of broad interest in 2012. Popularized in part by a woman who claimed to receive messages from extraterrestrials, that Nibiru doomsday originally estimated for the year 2003. If there is a planet or a brown dwarf or anything that would be in the inner solar system three years from now, astronomers will learn about it for decades and will be visible to the naked eye now. 

In 2012 several disaster scenarios, our own sun is the enemy. Our stars are environmentally friendly, it was rumored, would produce deadly eruptions of solar flares, turn on the heat in the Earth. Solar activity waxes and reduced in accordance with the approximately 11-year cycle. Large flares can indeed damage the communications and systems of other mundane, but scientists have no indication of the sun, at least in the short term, will issue a storm powerful enough to fry the planet. It turned out that the sun did not fit the schedule, NASA astronomers said. Hope that this cycle may not reach its peak in 2012, but one or two years later.