Fear. I have no doubt as to the motivational effect the emotion has on me now, yet it was not fear that started me on my journey on that fateful day in May of 1969, but the desire to seek fame and fortune. I was young and immortal back then, still full of piss and vinegar, having just received my doctorate degree with honors from Cambridge University. While the rest of my peers were busy protesting the war in Vietnam, making love, and fighting for equality, I set out with my father’s inheritance, accompanied by two fellow archaeologists and companions, my (former) best friend, Pierre Borgia, and the ravishing Maria Rosen. Our goal—to unravel the great mystery surrounding the Mayan calendar and its 2,500-year-old prophecy of doom.

Never heard of the Mayan calendar’s prophecy? I’m not surprised. These days, who has time to concern themselves with an oracle of death originating from some ancient Central American civilization?

Eleven years from now, when you and your loved ones are writhing on the ground, gasping for your last breath, your lives flashing before your eyes—you may well wish you had made the time.

I’ll even give you the date of your death: December 21, of the year 2012.

There—you’ve been officially warned. Now you can act, or shove your heads in the sands of ignorance like the rest of my learned colleagues.

Of course, it’s easy for rational human beings to dismiss the Mayan calendar’s doomsday prophecy as mere superstitious nonsense. I can still recall my own professor’s reaction when he learned of my intended area of focus: You’re wasting your time, Julius. The Maya were heathens, a bunch of jungle-dwelling savages who believed in human sacrifice. For God’s sake, they hadn’t even mastered the wheel …

My professor was both right and wrong, and this is the paradox, for while it is true the ancient Maya could barely grasp the significance of the wheel, they had, in fact, managed to acquire an advanced knowledge of astronomy, architecture, and mathematics that, in many ways, rivals and even exceeds our own. In laymen’s terms, the Maya were the equivalent of a four-year-old child mastering Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano while remaining unable to pound out “Chopsticks.”

I’m sure you find it hard to believe, most self-proclaimed “educated” individuals do. But the evidence is overwhelming. And this is what compelled me to embark on my journey, for simply to ignore the calendar’s wealth of knowledge because of its unimaginable doomsday prophecy would have been as much a crime as to dismiss summarily the theory of relativity because Einstein was once employed as a junior clerk.

So what is the Mayan calendar?

A brief explanation: