THE MAYAN CALENDAR 2012

Pictured is the only known Mayan inscription eluding to what will happen in 2012. The ironic part about this inscription, further fueling the 2012 debate, is that the inscription is partially unreadable. The inscription was recently found in Chiapas, Mexico.
Here is what we can decipher from the inscription:

"The thirteenth pik will be finished (on) Four Ahaw, the third of K'ank'in. ? will occur. (It will be) the descent(?) of the Nine Foot Tree God to (?)."

2012 and the Mayan Long Count Calendar

According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The Popol Vuh describes the first three creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world where men were placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous creation ended at the start of a 13th b'ak'tun.

The previous creation ended on a long count of 12.19.19.17.19. Another 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth b'ak'tun, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21, 2012.

Significance within the New Age movement

Three figures within the New Age, the artist and theorist José Argüelles, John Major Jenkins, and the late ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna, have publicized theories concerning the significance of the end of the cycle. (They arrived at their conclusions separately from one another). They have jointly inspired a number of articles and books that this will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or, as McKenna speculated in his theories, the end of history and events as "novel" as the origin of life on Earth, which we could not possibly imagine. Jenkins has focused on the occurance of a Galactic Alignment in the "era of 2012". Other, more mundane speculations involve a worldwide catastrophe, such as a pole shift. The idea of the significance of the date has also increasingly passed into popular culture.