2012 - Science Or Superstition?/GH/3

The Maya were avid stargazers and appear to have inherited a body of astronomical knowledge from the Olmecs before them. And so, it's in the Olmec monuments that we get the first hint of a calendar system. And that calendar system is perfected into a fine-tuned device by the ancient Maya. And like so much of ancient thought, it is cyclical in nature, that there are repeating periods of history - just over five thousand years in length. And it's just a fact that the latest cycle of the Mayan calendar begins somewhere before 3000 B.C. and culminates on the 21st of December, 2012.

For the Maya, the idea that what was there before is lost and then returns, would have made perfect sense. And it's this sense of a cyclical cataclysm linked to a cyclical rebirth that I found most eerie, really - and spooky - in Mayan tradition.