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Mexico's 800,000 Mayas are not the sinister, secretive, apocalypse-obsessed race they've been made out to be. In their heartland on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, Mayas continue their daily lives, industriously pedaling three-wheeled bikes laden with family members and animal fodder down table-flat roads. They tell rhyming off-color jokes at dances, and pull chairs out onto the sidewalk in the evening to chat and enjoy the relative cool after a hot day. Many still live simply in thatched, oval, mud-and-stick houses designed mostly for natural air conditioning against the oppressive heat of the Yucatan, where they plant corn, harvest oranges and raise pigs.
When asked about the end next week of a major cycle in the 5,125-year Mayan Long Count calendar, a period known as the 13th Baktun, many respond with a healthy dose of homespun Maya philosophy. "We don't know if the world is going to end," said Liborio Yeh Kinil, a 62-year-old who can usually be found sitting on a chair outside his small grocery store at the corner of the grassy central square of the town of Uh-May in Quintana Roo state. "Remember 2006, and the `6-6-6' (June 6, 2006): A lot of people thought something was going to happen, and nothing happened after all."
Reflecting a world view with roots as old as the nearby Ceiba tree, or Yax-che, the tree of life for the ancient Maya, Yeh Kinil added: "Why get panicky? If something is going to happen, it's going to happen." A chorus of books and movies has sought to link the Mayan calendar to rumors of impending disasters ranging from rogue black holes and solar storms to the idea that the Earth's magnetic field could `flip' on that date.
Archaeologists say there is no evidence the Maya ever made any such prophesy. Indeed, average Mayas probably never used the Long Count calendar, neither today nor at the culture's peak between A.D. 300 and 600. The long count was reserved for priests and astronomers, while average Mayas measure time as farmers tend to do - by planting seasons and monthly lunar cycles.
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According to reports quoting the police, Min Yongjun (previously reported as Min Yingjun) is thought to have burst into an elderly womans house near the elementary school of Chenpeng village in Guangshan county in central China, around 7am on Friday, hitting her and stabbing her with a kitchen knife he picked up in the house. Min then rushed to the school, and allegedly knifed 23 students, before being subdued by teachers and police.
Initial police investigation found Min, a long-term epilepsy sufferer, had been strongly psychologically affected by rumours of the upcoming end of the world predicted by ancient prophecy, state media reported.
Rao Mingsheng, health director for Guangshan, said on Monday that none of the people injured in the attack was currently in a critical condition. Some remained locally hospitalised, while others have been transferred to bigger hospitals.
State-run Global Times newspaper made comparisons with the shootout in the US. The two school tragedies have exposed the powerlessness of both the US and China in certain aspects of society.
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The underground group Almighty God which unofficial sources claim may have several hundred thousand members held unsanctioned meetings for its followers, distributed warning leaflets and spread doomsday predictions through social media and text messages. "Dec. 21 is approaching, and on that day half of the world's good people will die, and all evil people will die out only if you join the Almighty God movement can you avoid death and be saved," reads a handout found in Shaoxing, in eastern China.
Violent clashes between police and dozens of Almighty God members in several provinces has been reported. A man who stabbed 23 children in Henan province last Friday claimed he was motivated by rumors that the end of the world was coming, though it is not clear if he was exposed to the teachings of Almighty God, authorities said. The sect, sometimes known as Eastern Lightning, claims to be an offshoot of Christianity, but would be barely recognizable to Western Christians. Founded in the late 1980s, it states that Jesus has been resurrected as a Chinese woman.
It has appropriated the December 21, 2012, date from the Mayan lunar calendar, which has been interpreted to predict the end of the world or a great upheaval. Official media reports that Almighty God only latched on to the date recently, as it has caught the public's attention. Eastern Lightnings pamphlets predict that the date will herald three days of complete darkness, without sunshine or electricity.
Mainstream religions and critics alike have criticized Almighty God for their recruitment tactics which frequently involve seeking out poor or ill members in existing Christian groups and for brainwashing followers, who are kept under tight supervision. There have also been official accusations of even more sinister behaviour, such as kidnapping, embezzlement, and torture. The group also advocates the destruction of the Great Red Dragon, which is a euphemism for Chinas ruling Communist regime a radical position in a one-party state.
More China arrests over 500 members of pseudo-Christian Mayan Apocalypse sect — RT
At least 400 followers of the Almighty God Christian group were detained in western Qinghai province in recent days. Dozens more were held elsewhere.
In Henan province, six officials have been sacked after a knife attack by a suspected doomsday cult disciple wounded more than 20 children. The attack sparked widespread anger.
The officials sacked had handled the incident improperly, state media said. A number of people around the world believe that an apocalypse will take place on Friday 21 December, as the Mayan "Long Count" Calendar ends a 5,200-year cycle.
China's state news agency Xinhua describes the Almighty God Christian group as a cult, saying it was established in 1990 in Henan.
BBC News - China makes 500 doomsday cult arrests
That the world will end in 2012 is the most widely-disseminated doomsday tale in human history, thanks to the internet, Hollywood and an ever-eager press corps. Recent hurricanes, unrest in the Middle East, solar flares, mystery planets about to collide with us - all "proof" of what the ancient Mayans knew would come to pass on 21 December 2012. According to a Reuters global poll, one in 10 of us is feeling some anxiety about this date.
Russians have been so worried that the Minister of Emergency Situations issued a denial that the world would end. Authorities in the village of Bugarach in the South of France have barred access to a mountain where some believe a UFO will rescue them. And survivalists in America - many of whom use the term "prepper" - have been busy preparing for all manner of cataclysm. So I set out to find people who believe 21/12/12 is D-Day.
It was harder than I imagined, despite seeking out preppers, bunker builders, and even a Mayan shaman. Eventually I turned to Morandir Armson, a scholar of the New Age and Esoterica at the University of Sydney, Australia. "If you told me there were more than 5,000 people who genuinely believed the end of the world was coming rather than just having vague fears about it, I'd be surprised," he says. Armson adds that those people are probably "in the wilds of Idaho, heavily armed, and won't talk to journalists anyway". The heightened fear around this date is, in his view and that of other experts, almost entirely due to the internet. More specifically they blame the blogosphere.
It is not how the whole 2012 phenomenon started. In 1987, Jose Arguelles, a man who devoted much of his life to studying the Mayan Calendar, organised what was called the Harmonic Convergence, a sort of post-hippy Woodstock. It attracted tens of thousands around the globe. The event was an attempt to "create a moment of meditation and connection to the sacred sites around the earth," says Daniel Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Year of the Mayan Prophecy. It was also the beginning of what many in the loosely-defined New Age movement regard as a process in the transformation of our consciousness - a transformation that goes into full effect at the end of this year.
More BBC News - Mayan apocalypse: End of the world, or a new beginning?
