World will live on

The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it does not vindicate doomsday mongers who cite Mayan prophesies.

The hieroglyphs date to the 19th century, making them hundreds of years older than the calendars in the Maya Codices. Some appear to be the 365-day solar calendar and others of the 780-day cycle of Mars, says archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, who led the exploration.

“We keep looking for doomsday in Mayan relics. But the Mayans had an entirely different mindset,” he adds. There is no sign that the myth that the Mayan calendar would end in 2012 has any bearing on reality, Saturno adds.

All that ended in 2012 was one of its calendar cycles, says co-author Anthony Aveni from Colgate University in New York.