Your No Worries Number
Thousands of years ago, the leaders of the Mayan culture created a deep-time calendar. We can only guess why they thought it so important. Perhaps our distant ancestors believed they could somehow control the future by mapping it. Many speculated whether or not this Mayan calendar pointed to the end of the world, since it appeared to conclude with the date 12/21/12. Why did it end there? The world did not end that day. Is it possible that this symmetric number, once so far into the distant future, represented instead a time after which the calendar's creators saw no need to…