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For those of you who remember, in August of 1987 the 'world' united in the 'Harmonic Convergence', a new-age thing with the notion that since the Mayan world was about to end (25 years hence--in 2012), we needed to get into harmonic sync (or something like that) to avoid the coming catastrophe (correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe that the Mayan 5th(?) Age was to end in Fire).
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I love this topic! From what I've read, the world is speeding up at an exponential rate. We need time and space because of our inability to experience everything at once. However, the world is speeding up to the point where, in 2012, everything will happen.
Its like this. Were you ever in your car and for some reason, you slowed down. In a few seconds, the car in front of you or beside you does something stupid that would have caused an accident if you hadn't slowed down. You don't know why you did it, but something told you that you had better slow down. Its because you've already experienced this, but your timeline got eskewed and you knew enough to avert this disaster - either that or we are programmed to avoid these things.
There are certain events that will happen along the way to this big fire. In fact, this year, 2002,is the year for Lung Disease, according to the calendar. I can't remember all of them - I smoke, so I remembered that one (the frigg'n Mayans are telling me to quit smoking!).
Anyway, there are a lot of similarities to the Sumarian's. Many of the events in the calendar coincide with events that either happened with the Sumarians, or were predicted by the Sumarians. Only thing is, the Sumarians were in Asia (or near the middle east, I think), and the Mayans were in, what, Mexico?
Also, some of the architecture and artistry of the Mayans is similar to the Sumarians, not to mention that the Sumarians spoke of a thirteenth planet (not sure what happened to ten thru twelve) which is inhabited and is due to become visible again in the year 2007 (I think). They also mention the planet before Pluto. What is that, Neptune? I don't know, but they had the location perfect with respect to the other planets. The only thing is, there is no way that they could have seen this planet way back then. The Mayans made numerous references to these planets. But what this has to do with Civ 3, I don't know.