December 21 2012 End of the World Mayan Countdown Begins Today (VIDEO)

Doom on!

We’re now just one year away from December 21, 2012, the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar allegedly marked as the end of the world, or more accurately, the end of an era that would reset the date to zero.

Will the world end?  Will the Earth transform into something greater, perhaps a 5D existence?

There have been numerous “end of days” predictions over the years. Most recently, Family Radio founder Harold Camping was pretty much laughed into retirement when his predictions that the world would end on May 21, 2011, and again on October 21, 2011, blew up in his face.

There are still others who predict that the Mayan calendar will actually end on December 24 of this year.

Amid all the various predictions of Armageddon, the Mayan prophecy of December 21, 2012 seems to carry the most weight with the general population.

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy, and their advanced civilization created what most consider to be the most accurate calendar in the world.

The Mayans predicted a final apocalyptic cataclysm that featured a solar shift, a Venus transit, and even violent earthquakes.

The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns.

Thirteen was a sacred number for the Mayas.  They wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on December 21, 2012.

The doomsday theories got their origin from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco.  That tablet predicts the return of a Mayan god at the conclusion of the 13th period.

“The Maya are viewed by many westerners as exotic folks that were supposed to have had some special, secret knowledge,” said Mayan scholar Sven Gronemeyer. “What happens is that our expectations and fears get projected on the Maya calendar.”

Gronemeyer, of La Trobe University in Australia, says the Mayan prophecies are similar to the “Y2K” hype. For some reason, Gronemeyer says, most people have ignored evidence indicating that dates beyond 2012 were recorded.

Of course, the blogosphere erupted with excitement when Mexico’s archaeology institute acknowledged on November 24 that a second reference to December 21, 2012 had been found on a brick discovered at other ruins.

“Human beings seem to be attracted by apocalyptic ideas and always assume the worst,” Gronemeyer said.

“The world will not end. It is an era,” said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. “For us, it is a message of hope.”

So what do YOU think?  Will the world end on December 21, 2012?