LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The recent discovery is of the oldest known Mayan calendar in existence and was discovered by Boston University archeologist William Saturno.

This new Mayan calendar was found buried at a well known Mayan archeology site in Guatemala, and was first glimpsed by an undergraduate student of Saturno's in 2010. Quick to discount the find, Saturno later went back to record the discovery, regardless of whether it had value.

Saturno discovered it to be a well-preserved mural that included the oldest known Mayan calendar to date. Just like the Maya Long Count calendar, which serves as the basis for the apocalypse myth, this calendar extends indefinitely into the future.

"The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," University of Texas archeologist, author, and Maya expert David Stuart says. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around."

The current Mayan doomsday nonsense is predicated on the Mayan calendar is broken down into "baktuns" (or "b'ak'tun"), each of which equals 400 years, or about 146,000 days. According to Mayan legend, the current world was created over 12 baktuns ago. At the end of the 13th baktun, the world as we know it will cease to exist on December 21, 2012, the day of the winter solstice.

Of course, many scientists with real understanding of ancient Mayan culture and language have for decades tried to explain that, no, the end of the 13th baktun does not literally mean the end of the world. The Mayans themselves discounted that hokum. The end-of-world myth was actually concocted by Christian missionaries. Some experts say that the end of the 13th baktun is actually December 23, not December 21.

The newly discovered Mayan calendar has cycles of time recording 17 baktuns, rather than the standard 13. This and other details, which Saturno describes, should be all anyone needs to stop their urge to stock up on canned food and ammo.

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