So the world didn't end in 2012, why not? Quite simply, it was never meant to. Proponents of the Mayan end of the world theory who based the idea on the long count calender didn't consider the most important thing with translating ancient text/script... the meaning of the words and the fact that the meanings of words are not necessarily fixed in stone. English dictionaries grow more every year as our capacity for acquiring and using complex communication systems expands.
Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can actually be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later stages to have occurred. While the Bantu languages, which include Swahili, Zulu, Shona, and hundreds of other languages are spoken throughout Africa and Semitic languages which include Arabic, Amharic, and Hebrew are far older, the most common (and more recent) languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Hindi belong to the Indo-European family.
It seems the fact that languages express meaning by relating a sign form to a meaning, or its content may not have been a consideration in regards to translating the end of world predictions. Sign forms must be something that can be perceived, for example, in sounds, images, or gestures, and then related to a specific meaning by social convention. With the basic relation of meaning for most linguistic signs being based on social convention, linguistic signs can be considered arbitrary in the sense that the convention is established socially and historically, rather than by means of a natural relation between a specific sign form and its meaning.
Below is an Ancient Egyptian carving on the wall of the Temple of Isis at Philae, Aswan, Egypt. If the Egyptians vanished the same way the Mayans supposedly did, and left everything without a frame of reference (ie. the Greeks) contemporary translators could have mistaken the carving below to mean dog house rather than it being representative of the Jackal headed god Anubis, patron of mummification,
and keeper of the dead on their path through the underworld for the "weighing of the heart" (afterlife judgement).
So when the translators of the more recently developed language groups translated the ancient texts/scripts from the original, there was no consideration the actual meaning of the words from ancient times could vary from similar to completely different. Human languages also employ grammatical and semantic categories, such as noun and pronoun, verb, present and past tense, to express exceedingly complex meanings (the way run could mean physical movement or management of a company or political campaign)
Human language is also the only known natural communication system that is modality independent, (it can be used not only for communication through one channel or medium such as vocalization, but through several writing, pictograph, sign languages and braille which uses the tactile (touch) modality.
The study of language (linguistics) has been developing into a science since the first grammatical descriptions of particular languages in India more than 2000 years ago. Today, linguistics is a science that concerns itself with all aspects of language, examining it from all of the theoretical viewpoints.
No blame can be held against contemporary scholars if you think about it, they have analysed Nostradamus 2012 predictions, scholars from various disciplines quickly dismissed predictions of concomitant cataclysmic events as they arose. Professional Mayanist scholars stated that no extant classic Maya accounts forecast impending doom, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented Maya history and culture, while astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience easily refuted by elementary astronomical observations. Yet somehow the idea his end of the world prediction taking place took root despite the fact that his book Les Propheties (The Prophecies) never mentions the end of the world, let alone the year 2012.
THE MAYAN'S CONCEPT OF THE END OF THE WORLD
To put it simply, the Mayans referred to ages/long periods of time as worlds. In the Mayan belief system, it is believed there have been five worlds (ages) when humanity grew from humble hunter gatherers to more sophisticated and complex societies (implementing usage of tools, animal husbandry and growing crops to understanding medicine, mathematics, science, ect.) between each of which humanity experienced massive changes due to environmental/cosmic cataclysm. Simply put, the "world" that the Mayans believed would come to an end December 21 2012 was actually the end of the current (now previous) age, referred to as the fifth sun.
everything from sceptical to open minded, anticipation and excitement to deep anxiety and terrifying fear, the Mayans marked the end of the era (the Fifth World) and 5,200-year solar cycle at Guatemala's Jaguar Temple and aapparently it was quite a party, did they know something the West didn't? (lol)
REVELATIONS AND THE APOCALYPSE
In the Revelation of John, the "revelation" is of Jesus Christ as Messiah and the present tribulations leading to the ending of this age and the coming of God's Kingdom. Hence the term 'apocalypse' had come to be used, very loosely, for the end of the world.
However, the word Apocalypse literally translates from Greek as a disclosure of knowledge hidden from humanity during an era dominated by falsehood and misconception. The idea of the lifting of the veil of ignorance or providing the revelation did not enter English until the 14th century.
The Biblical prophets' revelations show God's justice as taking place in the future (or as imminent now) The genre of revelation aims to show God's way of dealing with humankind and His ultimate plan, and its writers often reveal the meaning of present events in connection with the ending of the present age, not the cataclysmic end of the world as we know it.
The World Is Still Here... So Now What?
Life goes on. The sun will rise and fall, the seasons will change and the fantastic voyage that is life on Earth will continue. Happily, there was a growing movement of many who subscribed to the idea Humanity was to enter an evolutionary change, hopefully the fact nothing happened on the day of won't leave those who expected change to be drastic and immediate so disappointed as to fall back into old (and often destructive) mentalities. Even the evolutionary leap from the australopithecines to the genus Homo took millions of years.
By the way, I've already heard the recalculated date for the end of the world is Jan 1st 2017. Recalculated? Sounds familiar. Can you recall the three revised dates for the Rapture much?
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