IANS

Mexico City, Jul 8: None of the roughly 15,000 existing ancient Mayan texts state that cataclysmic events will occur in 2012. Those predictions of impending doom are instead contained in esoteric writings from the 1970s, said a Mexican expert.

Only two Mayan glyphs contain inscriptions referring to 2012, but only as the end of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar, said Carlos Pallan, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History's Maya Hieroglyphic and Iconographic Archive.

When that cycle is completed, some modern prophets predict that an alignment between the December solstice sun with the equator of our galaxy, the Milky Way, on Dec 21, 2012 will disrupt the cosmic balance.

They say it will cause the sun to "give off a large amount of particles and the magnetic axis of the Earth will be altered and the consequences will be disastrous," Pallan said.

"But those apocalyptic predictions about the end of human civilization Dec 21, 2012 appeared in esoteric publications in the 1970s," he said in a statement Tuesday.

The Mayans "never said the world is going to end ... they never thought that time would end in our era", Pallan said, adding that they concerned themselves with performing rituals which in some way would guarantee that the cycle to come would be favourable.