VIEW FROM ELSEWHERE: Phew! Mayans didn't expect world's end this year

The Commercial Appeal

It's scientifically safe to make plans for 2013. The world will not end on Dec. 21 or the default date of Dec. 23, according to a newly discovered Mayan calendar.

If an incomplete ancient Mayan calendar, enthusiastically embraced by New Age cultists and those of an exceedingly gloomy pessimism, were to be believed, it didn't matter who won the November election because none of us would be around for the inauguration.

If the Mayans were so smart, you might ask, how come their civilization is no longer around, having collapsed in 900 A.D., leaving behind spectacular, if overgrown and crumbling, ruins and at least one calendar to terrify the gullible?

A team of scientists, led by archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, however, has found the workshop of an ancient Mayan calendar maker, in the unexcavated Guatemalan city of Xultun.

In a small, relatively intact building, Saturno found extensive columns of figures, tracking the movements of the moon, Mars and Venus.

Each column was headed by a representation of one of the three moon gods -- a jaguar, a woman and a skull.

The calendar spans 7,000 years and we seem to be halfway through, meaning doomsday is still 3,500 years off.

"So much for the supposed end of the world," said Saturno.

-- The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., May 18

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