I personally solved this 2012 mystery.

Fikret, an engineer, was too busy with the problem and couldn’t come to a solution. Nur is totally confused. But since I have solved it, I am anxious to tell about it. It is possible that I will make some people angry, again. But you cannot fight your destiny, so why bother?

You know, the information is that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st. And the hearsay is that some disastrous events will occur related with this issue and approximately “around” December 21st, or on that exact day, diverse incidents will happen. Engin Ardıç says so. It’s not clear what sort of disastrous events will happen. If they mean earthquakes, we already had one, in the most tragical way, in Haiti. If they mean war, tens of people already keep dying in our neighbour Iraq everyday. We are fresh out of a tsunami. This world has seen Bush, Julio Iglesias, even Kayahan… What disasters are they talking about?

They say these don’t count.

This time, they say, things will be bizarre. Maybe, you will not be able to get green when you mix blue and yellow, who knows? Maybe a little yeast can ferment a whole lake like in the Nasreddin Hodja story. A bunch of stupid riddles can be answered. Ajda Pekkan and Erol Büyükburç finally get old. Maybe we are really talking about atypical disasters here.

The most common scenario is that houses will be built on higher grounds. Those who do that will evade disasters, they say. Nur told me that a many of her friends bought such high places in Ecuador, in the “protected areas”, by paying times of their worth. Like in Turkey, the hearsay is that Burak Eldem, the writer of the book related with this phenomenon, and his friends and a bunch people bought houses in higher altitudes.

This is what I get from this in brief. But there are hundreds of volumes written on this issue. I still like to look at it from a seven-year-old’s point of view.

1. These furious Westerns with their Facebook accounts shouldn’t buy houses on the higher places if they believe those are the only places to remain after disasters. They should rent them. And they should buy whatever arms they can find. Because since the disasters will occur gradually, it’s not hard to see everyone will be running for the hills. There will be a major instability. There will be no land registries, no cadastres. It is very likely that their registry papers will be nothing more than draft papers. Arms will be handier in most cases. I hope they will remember who is giving this advice and do me a favour when the time comes and I start running for their places.

2. This prophecy is based on the Mayan calendar. We’ve been to a lot of Mayan villages. They couldn’t be less doubtful. In fact, to say it more clearly, they didn’t give a shit. Those Australians, Turkish can get stressed as much as they want from thousands of miles away. It’s their calendar and they don’t care.

3. Then there is the spiritual side to it. Here the people are om-mina-shiva-oy-shanti-shanti as ever. Like in many issues, I have never gotten used to the discourse of those bored Western middle classes who talk for hours and say nothing anyway. I’ve heard a series of elastic poetic stuff of course. But I didn’t get them, so I can’t make any comments.

4. In short: The only thing I get is that they have connected plenty of unrelated events thinking they look alike and came up with this one story. These kinds of things happened many times. Earthquakes, floods, drought, hunger, etc… Easy, brothers! We are all going to die. Isn’t a bit rude to think only of your own asses and start buying places just for your own? If it doesn’t happen, well, you will be the laughing stock. And if it happens, well done! We are all dead and you are alive. You will go around with your smiling faces, saying “I told you.” But I suggest you read article no.1 above and memorize it. And still I’ll take my chance and make a top proposal: drink your rakı. What did our ancestors say after all? “Let it be, let it beee…”

Fikret: I completely agree with Metin’s “since I have rakı in one hand and water in the other, there’s no way Nibiru can make me bother” approach. Yet there are many people who read and wrote and spent a lifetime believing that “Nibiru will come in 2012.” I, personally, cannot turn a deaf ear to what they say. Maybe Metin has a point when he stresses my engineer side. For a bon vivant, all these calendar calculations, cultural investigations, etc. are unpleasant things that make you say “where did all this come from?” But there is a bon vivant side to trying to understand everything as well.

Some people who examine the Mayan calendar and Mayan cultures say: Nibiru is the tenth planet of the solar system which completes its one cycle in three thousand years. And once in three thousand years it comes very close to Earth, and triggers some disasters. And people on that planet visit our world, and contribute to some changes. It sounds like a very eccentric conspiracy theory, but it has some grounds like every conspiracy theory does. It’s technical and complicated, yet we can summarize some topics:

1. Mayan were so in command of the situation that they calculated one cycle of Earth took 365 days and 6 hours, and they did this 2-3 thousand years ago. So they can be seen as the discoverers the correction which led to February 29th many years later.

2. There are at least 150 common words – in terms of vocal and meaning – in Mayan and Egyptian languages, the two civilizations which should have nothing to do with each other.

3. The statues which were supposed to be made before America was discovered have faces of Africans and Asians.

4. This will be very technical, but, the world’s axial tilt makes a precessional movement, like a spin top rolled on the ground. Each precession is completed in approximately 26.000 years. And this amounts to the total period of Mayan’s calendar which encompasses five cycles.

5. Maybe they didn’t invent the wheel, did mining, or even used plows like Egyptians did, but Mayan had as much profound knowledge of mathematics and astronomy as Egyptians.

Enough of this boring technical stuff for now… We are going on with wandering around, investigating, drinking rakı and making others drink, and sharing new information with you.

P.S.: The photos in this entry were taken in Palenque.