The Mayan empire, which dominated Central America for nearly 2,000 years, was one of the most advanced in history. Its mastery of astronomy, mathematics, architecture and engineering rivaled even that of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans of antiquity. The Maya developed a sophisticated calendar made up of 18 months of 20 days each, plus a five-day period called uayeb added at year's end to equal 365 days. When researchers finally cracked the Mayan language and calendar, however, they found one thing peculiar: It ends on December 21, 2012.

Did this civilization, so attuned to the cycles of the universe, know something we don’t? Is that the date the world ends? Or is it just that they saw no need to calculate dates any farther into the future at that time?

Strangely, 2012 does correspond with anticipated major solar activity that has the potential for affecting all life on the planet in profound ways. One need only look at another example of how solar storms disrupted human activity—at a time when we were much less dependent on electronic devices for banking, communications, defense and nearly everything else. Extrapolating from that event, it’s not difficult to anticipate a disaster of major proportions occurring in 2012, as the Maya may have predicted.