Originally posted by Don Wahn
I agree with Marduk.

Please provide more credible links. If it is correct, you shouldnt have any trouble finding the Pope who said it.

Originally posted by Marduk
I'm hoping at this point you realise that the mayans knew very little about the Universe
they didn't know anything about the Galaxy
and they only knew the existence of five planets

Mayan Astronomy
The Maya were quite accomplished astronomers. Their primary interest, in contrast to "western" astronomers, were Zenial Passages when the Sun crossed over the Maya latitudes. On an annual basis the sun travels to its summer solstice point, or the latitude of 23-1/3 degrees north.

Maya civilization
Astronomy
Uniquely, there is some evidence to suggest the Maya appear to be the only pre-telescopic civilization to evidence knowledge of the Orion Nebula as being fuzzy, i.e. not a stellar pin-point. The information which supports this theory comes from a folk tale that deals with the Orion constellation's part of the sky. Their traditional hearths include in their middle a smudge of glowing fire that corresponds with the Orion Nebula. This is a significant clue to support the idea that the Maya detected a diffuse area of the sky contrary to the pin points of stars before the telescope was invented.[10] Many preclassic sites are oriented with rhe Pleiades and Eta draconnis, as seen in La Blanca, Ujuxte, Monte Alto, and Takalik Abaj.
The Maya were very interested in Zenial passages, the time when the sun passes directly overhead. The latitude of most of their cities being below the Tropic of Cancer, these zenial passages would occur twice a year equidistant from the solstice. To represent this position of the sun overhead, the Maya had a god named Diving God.[citation needed]
The Dresden Codex contains the highest concentration of astronomical phenomena observations and calculations of any of the surviving texts (it appears that the data in this codex is primarily or exclusively of an astronomical nature). Examination and analysis of this codex reveals that Venus was the most important astronomical object to the Maya, even more important to them than the sun.
Religion
Much of the Maya religious tradition is still not understood by scholars, but it is known that the Maya, like most pre-modern societies, believed that the cosmos has three major planes, the underworld, the sky, and the earth. The Maya Underworld is reached through caves and ball courts. It was thought to be dominated by the aged Maya gods of death and putrefaction. The Sun and Itzamna, both aged gods, dominated the Maya idea of the sky. The night sky was considered a window showing all supernatural doings. The Maya configured constellations of gods and places, saw the unfolding of narratives in their seasonal movements, and believed that the intersection of all possible worlds was in the night sky.

Maya mythology
In common with other Mesoamerican civilizations, each of the cardinal (or world-) directions were ascribed certain properties and associations. These attributes held a particular significance, and they provided one of the major frameworks which interlinked much of Maya religion and cosmology. The Maya world-view recognized the four primary compass directions, and each of these was consistently associated with a particular color— east with red, north with white, west with black and south with yellow. These associations and their respective glyphs are attested from at least the Early Classic period, and also figure markedly in the Postclassic Maya codices.[1]
A fifth 'direction', the "center", also formed a part of this scheme. Associated with a blue-green color, this was most frequently represented by a great ceiba tree, conceptualized as the "world tree" or "tree of life". In Maya cosmology this formed a kind of axis mundi which connected the Earth's center with the layers of both the underworld and the heavens. It is believed that living ceiba trees were maintained at the center of many pre-Columbian Maya settlements in symbolic representation of this connection, and possibly one was placed at each of the four cardinal directions as well.[2]

Mesoamerican world tree
"World trees" are a prevalent motif occurring in the mythical cosmologies, creation accounts and iconographies of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. World trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which also serve to represent the four-fold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi which connects the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial realm.[1]

The central world tree has also been interpreted as a representation of the band of the Milky Way.[5]

Milky Way
Mayans seem to have thought of the Milky Way as the mystic road along which souls walk into the Underworld. Crossing the Milky Way at the constellation Scorpio is the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun, moon, and planets as they move against the background of stars.
Mayans tracked their creation stories in relation to the movement of the stars across the heavens. They believed that the point at which the Milky way appeared as a vertical band in the night sky represented the moment of creation.

The Milky Way as the Path to the Otherworld
Dr. Ed Barnhart
MAYA
The Maya have occupied Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador for almost 3000 years. For the Maya, both ancient and modern, the Milky Way plays a central role in a re-enactment of creation that is cyclically displayed in the night sky. Primarily, it is associated with the World Tree that reaches from Earth into the heavens. The great false Sun, Seven-Macaw, sat in this tree in the third creation. On the dates August 13 and February 5, dates especially associated with creation, the night sky goes through a cycle from dusk to dawn that recounts the story of the transition from the third creation into the present one. During those evenings, when the Milky Way runs along a North-South Axis it is the World Tree. A constellation identified as the great bird, Seven-Macaw, is positioned falling out of the top of the Tree in north. As it tilts towards the horizon, the Milky Way becomes the Crocodile Tree. When it reaches the east-west axis it switches into the canoe carrying the Maize God to the Place of creation (Freidel et al. 1993:93-99).
While oriented on the north-south direction, the Milky Way also forms a cross with the elliptical path of the Sun. It is called the K'an Cross and correlates to a well-known symbol in Classic Maya iconography and writing (Freidel et al. 1993:94). Crosses are especially visible at the ruins of Palenque. Palenque's Cross Group was named for its abundance of the symbols. The cross is also displayed on Palenque's most recognizable scene, the sarcophagus lid on the tomb of Pakal. Brundage (1981) published a drawing of the lid omitting Pakal and leaving only the cross (Figure 5). The book Maya Cosmos suggests that this image shows Pakal falling down the Milky Way to the same path once taken by the Maize God and his brother towards Xibalba. One enters the road in the south, at the base of the tree when it is helping to form the cross in the sky (Freidel et al. 1993:351). The Maya Milky Way is the path to the Otherworld. The cross in the sky formed by the Milky Way and the ecliptic stretches out in all four directions. The place where they meet is the center of the universe. From the creation myth, the Popol Vuh, we know that the three hearthstones were set at this center. The first act was the setting of the stones, followed by the raising of the sky and the establishment of the four corners and sides. The Milky Way and the ecliptic form the four partitions and a triangular constellation identified by Dennis Tedlock forms the three hearthstones (1985:261). The responsible deities left the story of creation in the sky for all Maya to see and remember.

This is one of my particular areas of interest. ATS has a few good threads on the subject, and I suggest you go hunt them down. There is also a plethora of info out on the net that you can go Google for.

Here's the skinny:

December 21st, 2012 - Modern astronomy can tell us a lot about the black and white facts of where we will be in space at that time, where our planets will be, etc. The fun thing is that the ancient Mayans and Sumerians (and some speculate thed Egyptians) knew about this long ago, and depicted the events in their carvings.

So what do we know? Well, we know that on that date, our the bodies in our solar system will all be in alignment. The Transit of Venus will occur once again due to this (Venus passing in front of the Sun). Our Sun will also be in the peak of its solar tantrum cycle, causing some groups to speculate that the magnetic poles of our Earth and possibly other planets could be shifted or reversed altogether.

Besides all this fun stuff occuring in our Solar System, the whole of the solar system itself will be in perfect alignment with the eliptical plane of our Milky Way galaxy. It will be the first time this has occured in umpteen-xillion years.

Also, the area of space that our solar system will occupy at that time will be smack in the middle of a strange nebulous cloud that scientists have been studying and tracking for a few years now. To my knowledge, we do not have a clear understanding of what the cloud's effects could be on our Solar System and the Earth itself.

So to summarize:

1) Our sun will be at the peak of a Solar Hissy Fit.
2) Our planets will be in alignment.
3) Our entier Solar System will be aligned with the eliptical plane of the galaxy.
4) We will be in the middle of a strange nebula.

There is not a single text in any extant Sumero-Mesopotamian text that says the Sumerians or Mesopotamians knew of more than five planets.

the Sumerians didn't have telescopes