The Mayan people, who flourished between 200 AD and 900 AD, had an advanced calendrical system that calculated time in Short Counts and Long Counts. They looked at time as a series of cycles, and, according to their Long Count, our current age will end on the Winter Solstice in 2012. A lot has been made in recent years of the Mayan Calendar and this ominous date. There is a strong New Age current that looks upon this quickly advancing time as a promise of change. In their view of things, 2012 will be a great time of spiritual evolution when the collective vibration of humanity will ascend to something better, brighter, and more advanced. Some believers in this point of view go so far as to assert that our very DNA will undergo an evolutionary change as part of this planetary ascension.

According to another school of thought, however, 2012 is a dark date that could bring about world-wide upheaval and destruction. Much of this is based upon the belief in a mysterious Planet X, sometimes called planet Nibiru, that is supposedly orbiting our solar system on an oblique angle in a cycle that brings it catastrophically near to earth every 3600 years. The name for planet Nibiru, and the belief that is has ties with extra-terrestrial beings once worshipped as ancient gods owes much to the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, a proponent of the Ancient Astronaut theory, who further asserts that the gods and goddesses of ancient Sumer were extraterrestrials.