Thankfully, convincing evidence has been produced that the Mayan “Long Count” calendar does not actually end on December 21, 2012, meaning that the world will most likely not end at that time, either. In fact, some prophecy believers may be disappointed to learn that it has not been determined exactly when – or even if – the Mayan calendar ends at all.

In a new piece that was recently published in “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World,” it states that the currently accepted interpretations of how dates from the Mayan calendar correspond to our modern system of marking the passage of time could be off by as much as 100 years or more. If true, this would mean that the much-hyped 2012 apocalypse is actually off by many years and could affect the currently accepted dates of other historical events that are marked by the Mayan calendar.

To come up with the current interpretation, a calculation known as the GMT constant was used to convert the ancient Mayan system of marking the passage of time to fit with the current Gregorian calendar. The GMT constant is named for three early researchers who used many debatable dates that were originally listed in colonial documents. This information was written in Mayan language using the Latin alphabet, but according to Gerardo Aldana, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the evidence is ambiguous at best.

“If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the GMT, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data,” said Aldana, who went on to explain that the historical data used is far from reliable, causing the argument for the GMT constant to fall like a stack of cards.

There are no definite answers at this time regarding what the actual Mayan calendar conversion might be, since researchers are still focused on disproving the current interpretation, leaving doomsday sayers to search for another ancient apocalyptic theory upon which to aim their focus.