Phew! This Mayan Calendar Doesn't Stop at 2012

We've got thousands of years left, according to new discovery
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 10, 2012 5:17 PM CDT
Phew! This Mayan Calendar Doesn't Stop at 2012
Artwork, the first to be found on walls of a Maya house, adorn a dwelling in the ruined city of Xultun in northeastern Guatemala.   (AP Photo/National Geographic, Tyrone Turner)

Everybody can calm down now: Looks like the Mayans didn't think the world would end this year after all. Researchers have discovered astronomical calculations on the wall of an ancient Mayan site that suggest "dates thousands of years beyond" 2012, reports National Geographic. The find came at the Mayan ruins known as Xultan in Guatemala, where archeologists discovered a small room used by 9th-century record-keepers.

"So much for the supposed end of the world," says the lead author of the study in Science. "We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Archeologists are still deciphering many of the hieroglyphics, and the find is expected to yield far more about Mayan society than the debunking of the 2012 myth. "To be uncovering glyphs and reading them right off the wall—to be the first one in 1,200 years to read something?" says another scientist. "I mean, it's pretty wild." (More Mayans stories.)

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