At the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza,
thousands chanted, danced and otherwise frolicked around ceremonial
fires and pyramids to mark the conclusion of a vast, 5,125-year cycle in
the Mayan calendar.
The doomsayers who had predicted
apocalypse were nowhere to be seen. Instead, people showed up in
T-shirts reading "The End of the World: I Was There."
Vendors eager to sell their
ceramic handicrafts and wooden masks called out to passing visitors,
"Buy something before the world ends."
And on Twitter, (hash)EndoftheWorld had become one of the day's most popular hash tags.
For the masses in the ruins, Dec.
21 sparked celebration of what they saw as the birth of a new and
better age. It was also inspiration for massive clouds of patchouli and
marijuana smoke and a chorus of conch calls at the break of dawn.
The official crowd count stood at
20,000 as of mid-afternoon, with people continuing to arrive. That
surpassed the count on an average day but not as many as have gathered
at the ruins during equinoxes.
The boisterous gathering Friday included Buddhists, pagan nature worshippers, druids and followers of Aztec and Maya religious traditions. Some kneeled in attitudes of prayer, some seated with arms outstretched in positions of meditation, all facing El Castillo, the massive main pyramid.
The boisterous gathering Friday included Buddhists, pagan nature worshippers, druids and followers of Aztec and Maya religious traditions. Some kneeled in attitudes of prayer, some seated with arms outstretched in positions of meditation, all facing El Castillo, the massive main pyramid.
Ceremonies were being held at
different sides of the pyramid, including one led by a music group that
belted out American blues and reggae-inspired chants. Others involved
yelping and shouting, and drumming and dance, such as one ceremony led
by spiritual master Ollin Yolotzin.
"The world was never going to end, this was an invention of the mass
media," said Yolotzin, who leads the Aztec ritual dance group
Cuautli-balam. "It is going to be a good era. ... We are going to be
better."
Ivan Gutierrez, a 37-year-old artist who lives in the nearby village,
stood before the pyramid and blew a low, sonorous blast on a conch
horn. "It has already arrived, we are already in it," he said of the new
era. "We are in a frequency of love, we are in a new vibration."
But it was unclear how long the love would last: A security guard
quickly came over and asked him to stop blowing his conch shell,
enforcing the ruin site's ban on holding ceremonies without previous
permits.
Similar rites greeted the new era
in neighboring Guatemala, where Mayan spiritual leaders burned
offerings and families danced in celebration. Guatemalan President Otto
Perez Molina and Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla attended an official ceremony in the department of Peten, along with thousands of revelers and artists.
At an indigenous South American summer solstice festival in Bolivia, President Evo Morales
arrived on a wooden raft to lead a festival that made offerings to
Pachamama, Mother Earth, on a small island in the middle of Lake
Titicaca.
The leftist leader and 3,000
others, including politicians, indigenous shamans and activists of all
stripes, didn't ponder the end of the world, just the death of the
capitalist system, which Morales told the crowd had already happened
amid "a global financial, political and moral crisis."
"The human community is in danger
because of climatic reasons, which are related to the accumulation of
wealth by some countries and social groups," he told the crowd. "We need
to change the belief that having more is living better."
Despite all the pomp, no one is
certain the period known as the Mayas' 13th Baktun officially ended
Friday. Some think it may have happened at midnight. Others looked to
Friday's dawn here in the Maya heartland. Mexico's National Institute of
Anthropology and History even suggested historical calculations to
synchronize the Mayan and Western calendars might be off a few days. It
said the Mayan Long Count calendar cycle might not really end until Sunday.
One thing, however, became clear to many by Friday afternoon: The world had not ended.
John Hoopes, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University
of Kansas, was at the ruins, using the opportunity to talk about how
myths are created.
"You don't have to go to the far corners of the earth to look for exotic things, you've got them right here," he noted.
End-of-the-world paranoia,
however, has spread globally despite the insistence of archeologists and
the Maya themselves that the date meant no such thing.
Dozens of schools in Michigan
canceled classes this week amid rumors of violence tied to the date. In
France, people expecting doomsday were looking expectantly to a mountain
in the Pyrenees where they believe a hidden spaceship was waiting to
spirit them away. And in China, government authorities were cracking
down on a fringe Christian group spreading rumors about the world's end,
while preaching that Jesus had reappeared as a woman in central China.
Gabriel Romero, a Los
Angeles-based spiritualist who uses crystal skulls in his ceremonies,
had no such illusions as he greeted the dawn at Chichen Itza.
"We'll still have to pay taxes next year," he said.
As if to put the final nail in
the coffin of such rumors, Bob McMillan of the University of Arizona's
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory confirmed Friday that no large asteroids
are predicted to hit anytime soon.
And Bill Leith, a senior science adviser at the U.S. Geological
Survey, noted that as far as quakes, tsunamis and solar storms for the
rest of the day, "we don't have any evidence that anything is imminent."
Still, there were some who wouldn't truly feel safe until the sun
sets Friday over the pyramids in the Yucatan peninsula, the heartland of
the Maya.
Mexico's best-known seer, Antonio Vazquez Alba, known as "El Brujo
Mayor," said he had received emails with rumors that a mass suicide
might be planned in Argentina. He said he was sure that human nature
represented the only threat Friday.
"Nature isn't going to do us any harm, but we can do damage to ourselves," he said.
Authorities worried about overcrowding and possible stampedes during celebrations Friday at Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza
and Uxmal, both about 1 1/2 hours from Merida, the Yucatan state
capital. Special police and guard details were assigned to the pyramids.
Yucatan Gov. Rolando Zapata said
he for one felt the growing good vibes, and not just because his state
was raking in loads of revenue from the thousands of celebrants flooding
in.
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