If you're reading this sometime over the weekend, I can only assume the world didn't end on Dec. 21.

That, of course, is when the Mayan calendar ends, something that really shouldn't concern us, considering it was drawn up more than 5,000 years ago. But you know how we are. We need to keep ourselves entertained, and what better entertainment than ever so often predicting the end of the world?

Why did the Mayan calendar maker suddenly stop? Well, somehow, he knew how the world was going to end and figured why add another day that wasn't going to happen?

My theory, which nobody seems interested in, is that he decided to take a break, wandered outside and was eaten by whatever creature was roaming the South American jungle at the time. And nobody else could figure out what in the world he was doing.

After years of study, somebody somewhere came up with the realization that on Dec. 21, 2012, everything in our galaxy would line up perfectly with the sun, like a can't miss shot on a pool table. Some think this means the sun's gravitational pull will pull everything into it and we'll all be burned to a cinder in a matter of seconds.

Or at least that's the way I understood it.

More scientific study over the years showed this happens once every 26,000 years or so. Not something to set your watch by. Now, we have computers and telescopes and seriously smart people who can look at patterns and figure out how stuff like this happens, when it happens and even why it happens.

How did the Mayans, with none of the modern day trappings we have, figure out something that had last happened 21,000 years earlier and decide to end their calendar on the day it's supposed to happen next?

End of the world predictions are nothing new. Some addled preacher from out west predicted it twice this year. Neither panned out, but that didn't stop people from giving away their life savings and going somewhere to…. Well, get a better view of the end of the world, I suppose.

End of the world predictions date back as far as 634 BC when the Romans thought it was time to cash in their chips. But since 1776, when America was officially birthed, the end of the world was predicted in the following years: 1780, 1789, 1792-95, 1805, 1806, 1814, 1836, 1843 (three times), 1844 (twice), 1847 (twice again), 1853-56, 1862, 1863, 1873, 1874, 1878, 1881, 1890, 1892-1911 (some guy named Charles Smyth was really determined), and 1899.

In the 1900s, the end was predicted in 1901, 1908, 1910, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1935, 1936, 1941, 1943, 1947, 1954, 1959, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1980 (all of the 80's basically) and all of the 90's (that millennium thing really psyched doomsday predictors).

We've gotten a good start on the next thousand years, with predictions so far in 2001, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 and, yes, 2012.

What do all these predictions have in common? No fair peaking. None of them happened, but I'm sure you figured that out.

Granted, most of these predictions came from fringe religious groups making bizarre interpretations out of whatever holy text they considered sacred, and most weren't taken very seriously at all.

But ever so often, a prediction comes along that captures the public fancy, and the end of the Mayan calendar has certainly done that. But the Mayan calendar doesn't predict the end of the world, at least as far as I know. Please correct me if I've misinterpreted something. It's just a calendar that stops.

What will happen Dec. 21? You'll get up and go to work (if you're not off for the holiday), go home, go to bed and get up the next morning and think, "Hey, only three days to Christmas!"

I'm sure there will be lots of jokes about missing the end of the world, but it'll quickly be forgotten and end of the world scenarios will be back in the hands of the fringe.

I do have one question. Thanks to the International Date Line, Dec. 21 for us is Dec. 22 for the other side of the world. I know the Mayans were on our side of the globe, but does that make a difference? I'd hate for a bunch of Europeans to be breathing a sigh of relief, only to have their day ruined because the Mayans, while somehow understanding the universe, didn't know there was another side to the world.

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575