The Complete idiot’s Guide to 2012 by Synthia Andrews and Colin Andrews
A Diagnosis2012 review
When I first started reading the book, I thought it was actually going to be quite good – the contents are listed thoroughly, and it seems to be quite comprehensive in scope. However, I soon found that there are many, many errors in the book. One of the most glaring and ridiculous errors is the naming of the Maya numerical system. The Maya used a 20-base system, as opposed to our own decimal system, and the 20-base system is known as a vigesimal system, (which comes from the Latin for twenty, just as decimal comes from the Latin for ten). The Andrews couple refer to the system as the “vestigial system”. Vestigial means an organ that has become redundant, or lost their original function through evolution. This is as wrong as if they had called the decimal system “the decimated system”. This is not a mere typo, but was used throughout the book, including headings. The authors have also invented their own terminology, calling archaeoastronomers (“archaeoastronomists”), on p.75, and again, this is repeated elsewhere in the book. Strangely, they don’t refer to astronomers as as “astronomists”.
The book starts by announcing that “the Mayan pyramids are older than the Egyptian pyramids”. They qualify this outrageous statement by saying that the pyramid at Cuicuilco was “built in 2750 BCE” and “the great Pyramid in Egypt was built in 2650 BCE”. What has obviously happened here is that a quick Google search must have thrown up the date of 2750 BP for the Cuicuilco pyramid, and BP has been mistaken for BC, (just put Cuicuilco 2750 into Google and you will find the sites) throwing out the calculation by around 2000 years, since BP means “before present”, which by protocol, means before 1950 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present . This gives us a preview of the kind of errors that will crop up in the book.
On p.158, the “Andrewses” state that Dannion Brinkley was a “CIA operative”. This demonstrates that their rushed research just is not good enough. Brinkley was in the Marines, and since his near-death-experience, has set up an organisation called “Compassion In Action”, so he is in fact the chairman of the CIA, but not the one they mean! The authors also confuse Linda Schele’s husband David Schele with her co-author, David Freidel (p.167). They have also invented their own Nostradamus quote: “[people] should be prepared intellectually and spiritually and be more aware of survival abilities”. Of course, they don’t give the reference for this or anything else in the book, apart from J.J. Hurtak’s book (even though they also imply it is an ancient book (p.144) (it was written by JJ Hurtak in the 1970s). This makes it easy to invent “facts” that can’t be checked. However, their calendar knowledge (or lack of it), gives them away.
On p. 72, Haabs (365-days cycle) are confused with Tuns (360-day cycle), where it says that the Long Count is the same as the 13-baktun cycle (not true, as there were longer cycles sometimes used), and that the 13-baktun cycle consists of 5,200 Haabs of 360 days each. This will lead to more confusion in what is already quite a complex subject.
It is wrongly stated that the end-date of the 13-baktun cycle “is written the same as the beginning date: 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku”. (p.74 and 114) This reveals that the authors actually know very little about the Maya calendars, and have hurriedly cobbled this book together to meet the deadline of the publisher. In fact, The 2012 end –date is written as 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 Kankin – the Haab part of the date is different, allowing one to tell the difference between the various “Creation dates”. More calendar confusion is shown in the statement that “the first katun of the fifth age starts in 2013 and ends in 2033”. It actually starts on December 22, 2012 and ends on September 7, 2032 (a 2 Ahau day, since this is katun 2 Ahau, and the katuns are named after their last day).
On p.73, they confuse the start date further, by writing 3 Cumhu instead of 8 Cumhu. They say (p.114) that “the katun 8 Ahau is the katun of the end date”, but in fact, the current katun that ends in 2012 is katun 4 Ahau, and will be followed by katun 2 Ahau. The misunderstanding is multiplied on the next page, where they say that that “katun 11 is the first katun and therefore always opens new cycles…”. They go on to presume that predictions about katun 11 Ahau therefore apply to the 20-year period following 2012. However, they fail to realize that katun 11 Ahau as the start of a cycle refers to the Short count, or 13-katun cycle that was used instead of the 13-baktun cycle, after the Classic era ended. The katun starting in December 2012 is katun 2 Ahau, so the prophecy they quoted is irrelevant.
On p.81 and p.101, the authors state that the Aztec Sunstone is Olmec or Izapan in origin. This is not true. They get the galactic axis confused with the galactic plane, and wrongly call the dust clouds dark matter (p.82), and say that “according to some astronomers we are passing into the outer edge of the galactic equator now”. This is totally wrong! It is disinformation put around by the Horizon Project DVD series. Those people are not proper scientists http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8727417217248419088
they are disinformation agents. Astronomers disagree as to exactly how far we are from the galactic plane, but they all agree we passed through it millions of years ago, and are now above it, see end of review for links to nine different estimates.
On page 67, it says, “We will probably never know the true reason why the Maya didn’t adjust the Haab to the seasons…”. The reason, as would have been found if the authors had studied the calendar in more depth, is that the Haab was used as a Venus calibrator, since five retrograde loops of Venus equal exactly eight Haabs (8 x 365 = 5 x 584). The authors did mention this, but failed to make the connection.
The authors have invented their own version of Jenkins’s galactic alignment zone, which John Major Jenkins says is from 1980 to 2016. They have placed 2012 at the centre of a 36-year period from 1994 to 2030, (p.168), whereas it is not at the centre of the zone. The actual centre-point of the alignment has already happened in 1998. This shows that they have misunderstood the whole process of galactic alignment. They have also misunderstood Carl Calleman’s theories, when they say that, along with Arguelles and Jenkins, his theory “has been inspired by the mathematics and astronomy of the Mayans” (p.170). In reality, Calleman has declared that he thinks the Maya calendar cycles had nothing to do with astronomy.
Other faults include:
Saying DMT was “recently discovered”, probably presuming that Strassman discovered it just prior to his book about DMT being released in 2000. However, DMT was first synthesized in 1936 and isolated in 1946.
Saying that Aztec and Maya calendars “developed from each other” (p.184). This is literal nonsense. The Aztec calendars may have been influenced by the earlier Maya calendars, but they can’t have both developed from each other.
There ia also a missing precession illustration on p.80, and a series of typos.
It seems that the book was not proof-read, but the proof-reader is listed as John Etchison, and the Copy editor: Michael Dietsch. Be warned. Never use these people.
The book attempts to be a guide for the man in the street, to the intricacies of 2012, but has been written by people who obviously knew nothing about the subject before being asked to write the book. There are one or two interesting bits, but it has been ruined by sloppy research, useless proof-reading, invented information and quotations, and general confusion – this is illustrated above, but there were many more errors.
9 estimates of our distance above galactic plane (thanks to Zyzygyz):
1. We are 20.5 +/- 3.5 parsecs north of the galactic plane - 1 parsec = 3.26 light years so this gives us 66.83 +/- 11.41 ly ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995AJ....110.2183H ).
2. We are 33 parsecs north of the galactic plane = 107.6 ly ( http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/13/6/387.pdf ).
3. We are 34.56 +/- 0.56 pc north of the galactic plane = 112.67 +/- 1.83 ly ( http://www.springerlink.com/content/rg545302618n0673/ ).
4. We are 19.5 +/- 2.2 pc north of the galactic plane = 63.57 ly +/- 7.17 ly ( http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0507/0507655.pdf ).
5. We are about 20 light-years "above" the equatorial symmetry plane ( http://seds.org/messier/more/mw.html ).
6. We are about 14 light years above the equatorial symmetry plane ( http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/solarsystemgalaxy.html ).
7. We are about 20 light years north of the galactic plane ( http://calgary.rasc.ca/howfast.htm ).
8. We are 68 light-years north of the galactic plane ( http://www.mndaily.com/daily/1995/11/16/news/space/ ).
9. We are 50 light-years above the mid-plane of the galaxy ( http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsolsysspeed.html ).
The range is 14 - 112.67 ly, with a median value of about 64 light-years. The maximum amplitude has been estimated at 26 pc or 85 light-years (http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0507/0507655.pdf ), so it would appear that we are at or near the 'top' of the wave.