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294 A cyclical revolving of historical time was found, the reader will recall, in Mesoamerica, resulting from the mesh- ing, like the gears of wheels, of two calendars (see Fig. 67), creating the “bundle” of 52 years, on the occurring of which—after an unspecified number of turns—Quetzalcoatl (alias Thoth/Ningishzidda) promised to return. And that in- troduces us to the so-called Mayan Prophecies, according to which the End of Days will come about in A.p. 2012. The prospect that the prophesied crucial date is almost at hand has naturally attracted much interest, and merits ex- plaining and analyzing. The claimed date arises from the fact that in that year (depending how one calculates) the time unit called Baktun will complete its thirteenth turn. Since a Baktun lasts 144,000 days, it is some kind of a milestone. Some errors, or fallacious assumptions, in this scenario need to be pointed out. The first is that the Baktun belongs not to the two “meshing” calendars with the 52-year promise (the Haab and the Tzolkin), but to a third and much older calendar called The Long Count. It was introduced by the Olmecs—Africans who had come to Mesoamerica when Thoth was exiled from Egypt—and the count of days actu- ally began with that event, so that Day One of the Long Count was in what we date as August 3113 B.c.E. Glyphs in that calendar represented the following sequence of units: 1 kin 1 Uinal 1 Tun 1 Ka-tun 1 Bak-tun 1 Pictun 1 day 20 days 360 days 7,200 days 144,000 days 2,880,000 days 1 kin x 20 1 kin x 360 1 tun x 20 1 Ka-tun x 20 1 Bak-tun x 20 These units, each a multiple of the previous one, thus con- tinued beyond the Baktun with ever-increasing glyphs. But since Mayan monuments never reached beyond 12 Baktuns, whose 1,728,000 days were already beyond the Mayan exis- tence, the 13th Baktun appears as a real milestone. Besides, Mayan lore purportedly held that the present “Sun” or Age THE END OF DAYS