Expert says no apocalypse in 2012

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- An expert says the belief that ancient Mayans predicted the world will end Dec. 21, 2012, has one problem: The Mayans said no such thing.

The prospect of apocalypse now or at least in three years and a bit has spawned enough books to stock a small library, television documentaries and now a movie. The belief in the Mayan prediction is based on the long-count calendar, which covers 5,000 years and ends on that date as near as anyone can tell.

But an anthropologist says the calendar was not intended as a predictor of doomsday or of giant tsunamis and earthquakes more destructive than anything in the historical or geological record.

"It's just like a car odometer. The calendar clicks over to a new set of numbers," Geoff Braswell, an anthropologist at the University of California at San Diego, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. "The Maya certainly didn't expect the world to end. They wrote about stuff happening 400 million years from now."

William Gladstone of Cardiff, Calif., has written a novel, "The Twelve," about the Mayan calendar. He told the newspaper he decided on a novel "because the story doesn't work as non-fiction."

For those who want to experience the apocalypse, the movie "2012" starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet, opens Friday.