NMSU Scholar: Maya Never Said World Would End on Friday

Anthropologist and scholar Weldon Lamb of New Mexico State University begs to differ with the popular notion that the ancient Maya in southern Mexico and Central America and their sophisticated calendar said the world would end this Friday, Dec. 21, the El Paso Times reported.

“There’s no Maya prophecy that suggests the world is going to end,” Lamb told the Times.

Lamb is so confident the world won’t come to an end on Friday that he has scheduled a lecture at 2 p.m. that day on the meaning of ancient Mayan texts at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology, 4301 Transmountain. the Times said. There is limited seating available on a first-come, first-served basis for the free lecture.

Lamb has studied Mayan astronomy, calendrics and hieroglyphic writing for years, and he teaches anthropology, religion and linguistics at NMSU, the paper reported.

“Just about any book or show that talks about 2012 talks about the Mayan calendar, and then they show the so-called Aztec calendar,” Lamb told the Times. “So basically it’s sensationalism and ignorance, an opportunity to make money. It’s just one of those amusing things that the ‘fast-to-make-a-buck people’ do,” Lamb said.