One day, a Mayan boy was walking in the deep forest when he saw something shiny hidden in the bushes. Carefully he approached it and with no little trepidation pulled aside the bushes to reveal the object: a shiny hourglass, about the size of a rolling-pin. The boy picked up the hourglass and, carefully holding it on its side, ran back without falter along the forest path to his home. Much curiosity was generated back at the village by this novel, shiny item. The Chief was called to see this discovery and to perhaps shed some light, fictional or otherwise apon the mysterious hourglass.
As the Chief was handed the hourglass, which hitherto had only been placed horizontally, he tilted it upright and its sands began to flow. A cry of bewilderment rose from the bystanders, but more astonished was the young boy who had found the hourglass. For out of the corner of the hourglass came a thin stream of light, and this stream pierced the air with a brilliant intensity until it struck the boys forehead. And there it illuminated odd shapes and symbols that seemed to come to life on the poor boys forehead. Shocked, the Chief dropped the hourglass, which shattered and hurled its grainy content at his feet. The stream of light stopped as abrubtly as it had begun, yet for a moment the symbols still danced on the boy's forehead. His mother, quick of thought, grabbed a sharp shard of glass from the broken hourglass and traced over the fading symbols beheld by her son. As the blood ran down his face the gathered crowd could clearly make out the writing: 21/12/2012.
They took a while to work it all out, but eventually made a calendar ascribing the world's last day to their corresponding symbols. What they failed to realise was that the mother, in the haste of the moment all those years ago, traced the symbols inaccurately as they faded from her son's brow. They had really appeared as 21/13/2012, and consequently the Mayans got it all wrong. Without factoring in the 13th month, we can now never know what the message from the hourglass meant.
Bummer.
