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Answers:

1. The most surprising information absorbed while studying the Mayan Calendar was understanding how the calendar works. It was interesting that there were actually three different calendars that this ancient civilization used and understood with very few resources and access to the information we have today.
2. A real-life example of how this topic relates to today's society is people's ongoing desire to predict the end of the world or apocalypse. There are many different predictions, similar to how the Mayans predicted that 2012 would be the end of the world, that people will continue to use to scare others.
3. The most interesting topic is difficult to narrow down. Collectively, understanding and researching the culture as a whole. As previously mentioned, with no access to the modern technology used today, their ability to construct impressive structures that still stand today is astonishing.
4. The research gathered that is most likely to be remembered is the date December 21st, 2012. This date will always have a negative connotation to it as there was a lot of panic and uncertainty for those who were heavily invested in the conspiracy mentally.
5. The most harmful pseudoscience belief in our opinion is agenticity. This is because many conspiracy theories can create panic on a large scale which could change how people react unpredictably. The least harmful is patternicity. This is because other than altering people's visual senses, it does not affect people as much mentally in our opinion.
6. Advice that we would pass on to a family member or friend would be to apply critical thinking to confusing information provided. Many people fail to use this tip which can lead to poor decision-making that can affect them negatively when a scenario involving a pseudoscience belief is presented. People should be skeptical if the information does not make sense and should be carefully analyzed.

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Picture #3: Conspiracies Surrounding The Mayan Doomsday Prediction

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Picture #3: Conspiracies Surrounding The Mayan Doomsday Prediction

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This image depicts two cartoon Mayan civilians discussing how their calendar will cause panic and confusion. The lack of relevant information surrounding the topic led to many conspiracy theories with regard to how and when the world would end.

Connection
This image connects to course material in. many ways. Conspiracy theories were discussed and connected to the psychologic belief agenticity. During times of great stress and. confusion, some groups of people will try to rationalize their perceptions of what is happening or what will happen by connecting patterns that often have no relationship. In the case of the Mayan's, many people were connecting odd weather events with the Mayan's predictions instead of listening to concrete evidence offered by scientists linking these event to global warming.

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Article #3: Mayan calendar predictions had frightening accuracy, author says

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Article #3: Mayan calendar predictions had frightening accuracy, author says

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This article describes the Mayan Calendar as one of the most accurate ever. It states it is 1/10,000 of a day more accurate than the Gregorian Calendar which the modern day calendar is based on. The article claims that after learning how the Mayan calendar worked, the Spanish priests burned all information pertaining to the supposed "end date."

Connection
The article states a lot of information, not much of that information proves the point that the article title presents. Red Herrings are shown in the article when it expresses information about "a mysterious bearded white man" and claims because of his past successes and accuracies, the Mayan Calendar will also be accurate. The author of this article uses the word "threat" when introducing the 2012 doomsday topic and says it will not only affect humanity but rather the whole planet. This is an example of Appeal to Emotion as it is an attempt to get readers worried and make them feel as though they are required to read the article and believe the accuracy of calendar. The article does not provide any quantitative evidence about the accuracy of the Calendar in the past. There is no way to verify the accuracy of the information, this relates to the Pseudoscience Watchlist.

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But few people know much more about the ancient Central American civilization, the significance of its complex calendar, and its history of accurately predicting the future.

Best-selling novelist Steve Alten immersed himself in Mayan culture as he researched his latest release, "PHOBOS: Mayan Fear" (Tor/Forge) an action-packed thriller that reveals a very real 2012 threat, not just to humanity, but our entire planet as well.

The story, third in an international best-selling Mayan Prophecy series, is rooted in a people that have fascinated scientists, historians and dreamers alike for decades.

"The Mayan culture began around 500 BC, likely an offshoot of the Olmec civilization," Alten says. "The Mayan civilization peaked around 900 AD during the time of Kukulcan, a mysterious bearded white man who arrived in Chichen Itza possessing a wealth of knowledge of astronomy, engineering and agriculture.

The Kukulcan pyramid in Chichen Itza is a testament to his knowledge. The four-sided temple has 91 steps on each side; add the platform on top and you get 365 -- as in the days of the year. Each equinox, for over a thousand years, the shadow of a giant serpent appears on the pyramid's northern balustrade where it proceeds to slither down to its stone head.

This special effect draws tens of thousands of tourists to Chichen Itza, many of whom believe it to be an ancient warning pertaining to the calendar's prophecy."

"A calendar is an instrument that charts the Earth's revolution around the sun. Before you dismiss the Mayan calendar's prophecy, you should know that it happens to be one ten thousandth of a day more accurate than the Gregorian calendar, which is what we base our modern-day calendar on, even though it is 1,500 years older.

Like the Kukulcan pyramid, the Mayan calendar charts cyclical astronomical changes. It consists of three calendars built in one, like the working gears of a clock, plus a fourth, the Long Count. The calendar separates its prophecies into twenty-year epochs, called katums, as well as five great cycles.

Each of the last four cycles ended in cataclysm. Our present cycle, the fifth, ends on a date equating to the winter solstice of 2012 - Dec. 21. Doomsday."

In 1519, another bearded white man, Hernando Cortez, arrived in the Yucatan, along with the Spanish armada. That event was predicted by the calendar and the Mayan's most important prophet, Chilam Balam, one of the main characters in PHOBOS. "When the Spanish priests read the codices pertaining to the Mayan calendar, they burned almost everything, including vital information pertaining to the 2012 end date," Alten says.

What will happen in 2012? In "PHOBOS: Mayan Fear," the author draws a thin line between fiction and fact, but spares no detail in linking our pending disaster to the "Big Bang" experiments now being conducted by the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

"The LHC's experiments are producing miniature black holes," says Alten. "While this may be fodder for a novel, the scariest part of PHOBOS is that we're already experiencing powerful earthquakes, tsunamis and climatic changes associated with a potential cause and effect relationship."

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Mayan calendar predictions had frightening accuracy, author says

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But few people know much more about the ancient Central American civilization, the significance of its complex calendar, and its history of accurately predicting the future. Best-selling novelist Steve Alten immersed himself in Mayan culture as he researched his latest release, "PHOBOS: Mayan Fear" (Tor/Forge) an action-packed thriller that reveals a very real 2012 threat, not just to humanity, but our entire planet as well.

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Description
The video, now posted over ten years ago, explains a common misconception about the Mayan Calendar. The speaker in the video states that many people believe the calendar depicts the last day of the world as December 21, 2012 because Hollywood says it does. In reality this date marked the 13th Bʼakʼtun since the "last creation." The previous creation is said to have lasted 13 Bʼakʼtun which is where the misconception comes from.

Connection
Causation vs Correlation is relevant in this video when it is explained that the "previous creation" lasted 13 B'ak'tun. People believed because it was the 13th B'ak'tun that would cause the end of the world. However the two had no effect on each other and it was simply a correlation that was made. This video is also a great example of relating the Mayan calendar to confirmation bias because it explains how Hollywood disregarded the actual use of the calendar and only spread the information that backed the theory of it depicting the end of the world. However the Mayans never actually stated that would be the end of the world. This video relates to the Pseudoscience Watchlist by explaining Hollywood was deliberately creating mystery as "The end of the world" appeals to our need for excitement.

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This image shows that because of our misconception of what the end of the Myan calendar meant, that we were no real reasons for us to believe that the world was going to end just because the calendar of one civilization did not go passed 2012.

Connection
This image connects to both Perception and Observation, with seeing the way that the calendar was set up, we perceived it to mean the end of the world while in fact it meant something completely different, as well as Ancient Wisdom, with how ancient the Mayan records looked and how scientifically correct it seemed due to it being so old, it made people believe that it had to be true. This connects to the Pseudoscience Watchlist because we are Vulnerable People, it was easy for us to be fooled by what we were looking at when it came to the Mayan calendar because no one around truly understood the meaning. It also relates as there was a lack of Science Used.

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Article #2: How the Mayan Calendar Works

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Article #2: How the Mayan Calendar Works

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Description
Within this article, it talks about how the Mayan's actually used 3 different calendars: 1. Sacred Calendar, 2. Secular Calendar and 3. Long Count Calendar. The last calendar listed there is the one that actually convinced people that the world was going to end in 2012. With people confusing the end of the world with the Mayan's predicting the long-lasting legacies of contemporary kings.
Connection
A lot of what this article touches on, is the fact that there was a huge misconception with what the Mayan's were predicting and what we were thinking, and believing that when the long count calendar ended, that was when the world was ending. But the article states that the Mayans were not predicting the end of the world at all, this connects to Perception and Observation, with people in society perceiving it as something it was not. This connects to the Pseudoscience Watchlis t as the evidence is wrong that the Mayan's were predicting the end of the world.

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With chatter about the Mayan apocalypse intensifying as Dec. 21 approaches, you may have seen that while the ancient Mayan calendar "ends" on that day, the Maya themselves would not have seen that as the end of the world. But how does the Mayan calendar work, anyway?

It's not as confusing as it might seem. The ancient Maya kept time in a very different way than we do today, and their hieroglyph-heavy calendar can seem daunting at first glance. But the basic principle is simply that the Maya were counting the days.

"That's somewhat different from our own calendar, which is really tied to the length of the solar year," said Walter Witschey, an archaeologist and Maya expert at Longwood University in Virginia.
Three calendars
The first thing to understand is that the Maya used three different calendars. The first was the sacred calendar, or Tzolk'in, which lasted 260 days and then started over again, just as our 365-day calendar refreshes once it hits Dec. 31. This calendar was important for scheduling religious ceremonies.

The second calendar was the Haab', or secular calendar, which lasted 365 days but did not account for the extra quarter-day it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun. (The modern calendar accounts for this fraction by adding a day to February every four years, the reason we have leap years.) That means the calendar wandered a bit in relation to the seasons.

The final calendar was the Long Count Calendar - the recording method that has caused all of the doomsday brouhaha of 2012. On Dec. 21 (approximately), the calendar completes a major cycle, which has triggered doomsday fears and mystical rumors about the end of an age. [ Full Coverage: The Mayan Apocalypse (Not)]

The Maya shared our culture's fascination with calendar mile-markers and would have likely considered the date important, Witschey told LiveScience. But they did not make any doomsday predictions about the date. The only two carvings ever found referring to the date depict contemporary kings and their predicted long-lasting legacies, Witschey said.

"Suppose I said to you that George Washington is so important that we will still consider him a revered national leader in the year 3000," Witschey said. "So now you've got the rollover of the zeros, you've got an important contemporaneous figure, and you're looking forward to the future." That's what the Mayan carvings are trying to accomplish, he said.
How the Long Count Calendar works
The Long Count Calendar may not predict doomsday, but it is good at covering long periods of time. Here's how it works: Dates are written out as five numbers separated by four periods, such as 13.0.0.0.0. (The ancient Maya represented these not with numerals, of course, but with their own hieroglyphs.)

(Image credit: Andrea Dailey at Longwood University)

The right-most position is called the k'in, which counts single days: 13.0.0.0.1, for example. The k'in counts up to 19 and then flips back to zero, with counting picked back up by the next position, the uinal. So 13.0.0.0.19 would become 13.0.0.1.0, much like a car odometer. [ Images: Mayan Calendar Carvings]

Each uinal is thus a block of 20 days. The k'in position then picks back up, counting up to that 20, which then gets added to the uinal. So the day after 13.0.0.1.0 would be 13.0.0.1.1 and then 13.0.0.1.2, all the way up to 13.0.0.1.19 and finally 13.0.0.2.0.

The uinals count upward as well. While the Maya generally use a base-20 counting system, Witschey said, they modify this slightly for the uinal, which only counts up to 17 before rolling over to the third position, the tun. Each tun is thus 18 blocks of 20 days, or 360 days - approximately a year by the solar calendar.

Tuns, in turn, count up to 20 before rolling over into k'atuns. As 20 blocks of 360 days, each k'atun translates into 7,200 days, or just less than 20 years. The k'atun place then counts up before rolling over into the final digit, the b'ak'tun.

If that word sounds familiar, it's because Dec. 21, 2012, on our calendar marks the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. In other words, it's the day the count will read 13.0.0.0.0. On Dec. 22, it will read 13.0.0.0.1.

Each b'ak'tun is 144,000 days long, or a little less than 400 years. To the ancient Maya, 13 b'ak'tuns represented a full cycle of creation; one carving refers to a god associated with calendar changes returning that day. There are no apocalyptic prophecies, however. In fact, the Maya had several rarely used units that were even larger than b'ak'tuns, giving them the capacity to count millions of years into the future, Witschey said.

"That, actually, is one of the lines of evidence that they didn't think their world was ending at 13.0.0.0.0," Witschey said.

Another hiccup for Mayan doomsday believers: Although many scholars agree that Dec. 21 is the proper date on our calendar matching the end of the 13th b'ak'tun, there is some uncertainty over this, because some Mayan calendar units may have clicked over at sunset and others at sunrise. Some researchers have suggested that Dec. 23 or 24 may be a more accurate fit, Witschey said. Either way, however, the Maya would not have been running for their doomsday bunkers.

"You'll get up in the morning and go forward, and the Maya cycles will have clicked over another day," Witschey said.

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The Real Deal: How the Mayan Calendar Works

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With chatter about the Mayan apocalypse intensifying as Dec. 21 approaches, you may have seen that while the ancient Mayan calendar "ends" on that day, the Maya themselves would not have seen that as the end of the world. But how does the Mayan calendar work, anyway?

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Video #2: The Truth About The Myan Calander

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Video #2: The Truth About The Myan Calander

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Description
This video explains why the Mayan calendar does not really make sense and assures people that the Mayan calendar's end will not be the end of the world. This video was posted before December 21st, 2012, which is the day that the calendar was ending. Through this video he explains that the math they use is not reliable, with all of their calendars being built around the Tolken which is built around 260 day cycles and does not work for a solar year, whereas we have 365 days in a solar year. He also states that because of the way they kept their records by carving them into stone, it looks very serious and convincing.

Connection
This video connects to pseudoscience, because it is basically debunked by using false math and science. This video has connection with Ancient Wisdom, as well, with the way that the Mayans kept their records made it look so true because of the way it was kept in stone.  There is also a sense of Ideology present. The reason being is that the ideas that created the Mayan calendar began to make people believe and live like the world was going to end on December 21st, 2012. This connects to the Pseudoscience watchlist as it appeals to our love of mystery, while there was no scientific evidence available that the world was going to end, people connected through the love for mystery and truly believed it was the end

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This image shows how unrealistic it was to believe in the Mayan Calendar. The image jokes about how the Mayans came up with their reason to the world ending in 2012. The image does mock and maybe overexaggerated the intelligence of people during these times.

Connection
This image shows how Ancient Wisdom can have a great impact without researching or understanding the "big picture." Many people believed that because the Mayans were ancient people they had to be correct with their prediction. However this image shows what is more likely to have happened with how they predicted the world to end. This image relates to the Pseudoscience Watchlist as their is No Scientific Method and that there was No Advancements In Learning Methods. This information about the Mayan Calendar was just told to the world without any Progress or explanation other than their faith and reasoning which should raise questions to how they actually developed their prediction.

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This article explains how the Mayan Calendar was extremally accurate with real time calendars and time. The article states specific days that perfectly inline with dates that we know from the regular calendar. The article also consists of an explanation about the calendar similar to the What is the Mayan Calendar video.

Connection
This article contains a large piece of information about how the Mayan Calendar is accurate. Without further research it would be difficult to know if the article is reliable or not. This relates to Proof by Verbosity in how it uses a large content of words with little evidence. This article also shows signs of Confirmation Bias in how it only discusses information about that shows the calendar to be true. This article could have a negative impact on readers to believe that it is real, thus believing the world was supposed to end in 2012. This article relates to the Pseudoscience Watchlist as there is No Way To Verify Accuracy of Information and it Origins Back Years Ago.

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The Maya calendar in its final form probably dates from about the 1st century B.C., and may originate with the Olmec civilization. It is extremely accurate, and the calculations of Maya priests were so precise that their calendar correction is 10,000th of a day more exact than the standard calendar the world uses today.

Of all the ancient calendar systems, the Maya and other Mesoamerican systems are the most complex and intricate. They used 20-day months, and had two calendar years: the 260-day Sacred Round, or tzolkin, and the 365-day Vague Year, or haab. These two calendars coincided every 52 years. The 52-year period of time was called a "bundle" and meant the same to the Maya as our century does to us.

The Sacred Round of 260 days is composed of two smaller cycles: the numbers 1 through 13, coupled with 20 different day names. Each of the day names is represented by a god who carries time across the sky, thus marking the passage of night and day. The day names are Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik, Lamat, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Eiznab, Cauac, and Ahau. Some of these are animal gods, such as Chuen (the dog), and Ahau (the eagle), and archaeologists have pointed out that the Maya sequence of animals can be matched in similar sequence to the lunar zodiacs of many East and Southeast Asian civilizations.

Glyphs for two of the eighteen months of the Vague Year: Pop (left) and Zotz.

In the 260-day tzolkin, time does not run along a line, but moves in a repeating circle similar to a spiral. The two cycles of 13 and 20 intermesh and are repeated without interruption. Thus, the calendar would begin with 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal, and so on to 13 Ben, after which the cycle continues with 1 Ix, 2 Men, etc. This time the day Imix would be numbered 8 Imix, and the last day in this 260-day cycle would be 13 Ahau.

No one is certain how such an unusual calendar came into being. The 260-day cycle may tie several celestial events together, including the configuration of Mars, appearances of Venus, or eclipse seasons. It may even represent the interval between conception and birth of a human baby.

The 260-day calendar was used to determine important activities related to the gods and humans. It was used to name individuals, predict the future, decide on auspicious dates for battles, marriages, and so on. Each single day had its omens and associations, and the inexorable march of the 20 days was like a perpetual fortune-telling machine, guiding the destinies of the Maya.

The Vague Year or haab of 365 days is similar to our modern calendar, consisting of 18 months of 20 days each, with an unlucky five-day period at the end. The secular calendar of 365 days had to do primarily with the seasons and agriculture, and was based on the solar cycle. The 18 Maya months are known, in order, as: Pop, Uo, Zip, Zotz, Tzec, Xuc, Yaxkin, Mol, Chen, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Maun, Pax, Kayab and Cumku. The unlucky five-day period was known as uayeb, and was considered an ominous time which could precipitate danger, death and bad luck.

The Maya solar new year is thought to have begun sometime in our present-day month of July, with the Maya month of Pop. The Maya 20-day month always begins with the seating of the month, followed by days numbered 1 to 19, then the seating of the following month, and so on. This ties in with the Maya notion that each month influences the next. Thus, the Maya new year would start with 1 Pop, followed by 2 Pop, all the way through to 19 Pop, followed by the seating of the month of Uo, written as 0 Uo, then 1 Uo, 2 Uo, etc.

The linking of the tzolkin and the haab resulted in a longer cycle of 18,980 days, or approximately 52 solar years. The end of this 52-year cycle was particularly feared, because it was believed to be a time when the world might come to an end and the sky might fall, if the gods were not satisfied with the way humanity had carried out its obligations.

The 52-year cycle was inadequate, however, to measure the continual passage of time through the ages. Another calendar was thus devised, called the Long Count. The Long Count was based on the following units of time: a kin (one day); a uinal (a month of 20 kins); a tun (a year of 360 kins or 18 uinals); a katun (20 tuns); a baktun (20 katuns, or 400 years). Larger units included the pictun, the calabtun, the kinchiltun and the analtun. Each analtun was equivalent to 64 million years.

The Long Count starts from the beginning of the current creation cycle, and corresponds to the present age. The date of this creation is set at either 3114 B.C. or 3113 B.C. of our modern calendar. This is the starting date for all subsequent counting - similar to our use of the birth of Christ as a starting point for modern historical dates.

To indicate a date, the Maya calendar used five figures in this order: baktun, katun, tun, uin, kin. This would be written as, for example: 9.10.19.5.11 10 Chuen 4 Kumku, which translates as 9 baktuns (1,296,000 days), 10 katuns (72,000 days), 19 tuns (6,840 days), 5 uinals (100 days), 11 kins (11 days). This gives us a total of 1,374,951 days (approximately 3,764 solar years) since the beginning of the last Creation, at the Maya calendar round position of 10 Chuen, 4 Kumku. This would be equivalent to a date sometime in our year A.D. 651 or 652.

One of the most important roles of the calendar was not to fix dates accurately in time, however, but to correlate the actions of Maya rulers to historic and mythological events. The acts of gods performed in the days of myth were reenacted by Maya rulers, often on the anniversary of the original event - a date which was carefully calculated by Maya priests. The calendar was also used to mark the time of past and future happenings. Some Maya monuments, for example, record the dates of events 90 million years ago, while others predict events that will take place 3,000 years into the future.

The calendar also predicted the future, as our astrological zodiac does. For example, the Maya believed that a person's birthday or day-sign determined their fate through life. The newborn child was thus connected with a particular god, and remained under that god's influence. Some gods were more auspicious than others, and a child born under a well-wishing god was considered lucky. A child born under a less kind deity had to ensure throughout his or her life that the god was propitiated - especially during vulnerable periods like the unlucky uayeb of the solar year.

Many scholars have wondered why the Maya calendar was so complex. In part, it was because Maya priests made all decisions about dates for sacred events and the agricultural cycle. There was thus no need for the average person to understand the calendar, and it could be as elaborate as the priests wanted.

The ancient Maya cycle still survives in southern Mexico and the Maya highlands, under the care of calendar priests who still keep the 260-day count for divination and other shamanistic activities. These priests juggled cycles of time and calculated when several of these cycles would coincide.

For further information, see:
Mayan Calendar
The Maya Calendar

For interpretations of the Maya calendar, see:
Maya Calendars and Cosmology by Aluna Joy Yaxk'in
Maya Calendar and Cosmology by John Jenkins
The Mayan Calendar - Why 260 Days? by Robert D. Peden

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Civilization.ca - Mystery of the Maya - Maya calendar

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The Maya calendar in its final form probably dates from about the 1st century B.C., and may originate with the Olmec civilization. It is extremely accurate, and the calculations of Maya priests were so precise that their calendar correction is 10,000th of a day more exact than the standard calendar the world uses today.

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This video explains what the Mayan Calendar is. The main components it discusses is how Mayan people measured time according to natures frequencies. From their methods of measuring time, they created a calendar that predicted the life span of humanity. The Mayans used symbols to represent each day and used masculinity and femineity within their symbols. Their symbols also related to nature such as animals, weather, and space.

Connection
This video relates towards Pseudoscience because it was proved to be myth. Their calendar stated that in 2012 the world would end. However, that obviously never happened. This is a pseudoscience because it is a form of Ancient Wisdom and All Natural. Many people believed in the Mayan Calendar because it brought many nature concepts and since these people where "ancient," many people fell to believe in their calendar. This calendar relates to the P seudoscience W atchlist as there are No Way To Measure life on humanity through their methods and that their is no Scientific Method.

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Elijah Bowman ~ Brandon Braithwaite ~ Noah Macdonald ~ Billy O'Neil