When will people stop predicting the end of the world?

[Wernazuma III]

Sorry it was the Mayan's. They stopped their Calendar on Dec. 21, 2012 and I forget the time of day.

BS, they didn't. It's like saying we stop our calendar on December 31st.

It's "simply" that the long count calendar of 5123 years length ends and another cycle starts. That's a pretty rare event - and of importance for Maya astrology and mythology, and only naturally leading to all kinds of interpretations by modern Mayan "priests", charlatans or whatever - but Mayans didn't predict "armageddon" for this date. Last cycle began in 3114BC. OK, that must have been the great flood then...

[Space05us]

I predict the end of the world in fifty years, give or take a decade.

[duke o' york]

Cool. A new OT game. Better than the death quiz, or at least more complete.

I'll go for 150,000,000 years. Not that anyone here will be around to prove this, or any humans for that matter.

[Space05us]

Cool. A new OT game. Better than the death quiz, or at least more complete.

I'll go for 150,000,000 years. Not that anyone here will be around to prove this, or any humans for that matter.

No, not really. I am in my twenties, I live in AMERICA, which means my life expectancy is roughly 70 years. I figure once I have died it's all pretty much done and over. At least as far as I care.

[Combat Ingrid]

Not for more than another ten thousand years:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1211673/British-archaeologists-solve-mystery-Easter-Island-red-hats.html

A team of British archaeologists has solved the mystery of how the famous statues dotting the landscape of Easter Island acquired their distinctive red hats.

Dr Sue Hamilton from University College London and Dr Colin Richards from the University of Manchester believe the hats were constructed in a hidden quarry and then rolled down from the slopes of an ancient volcano.

They are the first archaeologists ever to have excavated the Puna Pau quarry on the tiny Pacific island.

They also discovered a ceremonial axe in the volcano’s crater, which is believed to have been an ancient offering.

At around 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, Easter Island is the world’s most remote place inhabited by people.

‘We now know that the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust with a raised pavement along one side,’ said Dr Richards.

‘It is likely that they were moved by hand but tree logs could also have been used,’ he added.

Dr Hamilton said: ‘The hat quarry is inside the crater of an ancient volcano and on its outer lip. A third of the crater has been quarried away by hat production.

‘So far we have located more than 70 hats at the ceremonial platforms and in transit. Many more may have been broken up and incorporated into the platforms.

‘The mint condition of the obsidian adze - a seven inch long axe like tool used for squaring up logs or hollowing out timber, perhaps in canoe construction - suggests that it was not a quarry tool but an offering left by a worker.’

The team examined the way the hats, each weighing several tons and made of red scoria, a volcanic rock like pumice, were moved by Polynesians between 500 and 750 years ago.

They were placed on the heads of carved stone human figures known as moai which stand on ceremonial platforms which encircle the island's coastline. The way the hats were raised and attached is unknown.

The adze and the way the road is lined with hats along one side suggests, say the team, that the road was a ceremonial avenue leading to the quarry itself.

Dr Richards said: ‘It is clear that the quarry had a sacred context as well as an industrial one.

‘The Polynesians saw the landscape as a living thing and after they carved the rock the spirits entered the statues.

Initially, the Polynesians built the moai out of various types of local stone, including the Puna Pau scoria, but between 12000 to 13000 AD Puna Pau switched from producing statues to hats.

‘The change correlated with an increase in the overall size of the statues across the island.’

Because of this long period of use, the team's investigations at Puna Pau provide evidence for the earliest monumentality in the Eastern Pacific.

[Wernazuma III]

AFAIK, those hats are actually supposed to be knotted hair.

[SlowwHand]

Jamaican?

[Wernazuma III]

Jamaican?

We should send Thor Heyedahl on a hemp boat travelling from Jamaica to Easter Island in order to find out.

[Dis]

AFAIK after 2012 we've got a ways to go before the next Armageddon date, which would be sometime in 2036 the 2nd time Apophis rolls around and is supposed to have a 1 in 42,000 chance of hitting the earth. Or something. Unless someone digs up some obscure Lichtensteinian pagan cult of bog- worshipers, I think we're clear after that. But by then I'll be too old to care.

woohoo, can't wait till 2013 and we're past the 2012 date. Then I can relax. The only thing I have to worry about then, is the supercollider. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_...adron_Collider

[Dis]

The day people stop believing in ghosts.
The day people stop believing in crop circles.
The day people stop believing in aliens/UFOs.
The day people stop believing in fairies.
The day people stop believing in witchcraft.
The day people stop believing in magic.
The day people stop believing in god(s).
The day people stop believing in conspiracy theories.
The day people stop believing in bull****.

The day people stop believing socialism will work

sorry, couldn't resist.