Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi. My name is Ronn Pineo and I'm Chair of the History Department at Towson University.
Well, we're in the year two-thousand-and-twelve. The year that some believe the
Maya calendar predicts is the end of time.
It isn't,
I think.
The Maya, you'll remember, were the great civilization, of Guatemala,
Central America,
and in Southern Mexico, as well, with their Classic Period from for three-hundred to
nine-hundred A.D.
And then the
decline to the Post-Classic Period from nine-hundred to around fourteen-hundred A.D.
Of great cities, the population, at its peak, of about
twenty-million individuals.
Noteworthy for their great achievements, and not the least of which was their calendar.
They went far back in time, over three-thousand B.C.,
beginning the opening day of the calendar
and they thought
that the end of time would be coming sometime around now.
Well, the Maya had an unusual religion, at least to us here. And one of the things they did was practice human sacrifice.
I would say, that unless you're a practicing Maya, which I hope you're not,
there's no need to fear that this is the end of the world this year
and I predict that things will be fine throughout the end of the year.