When does our Calendar end ?

I was thinking about the Mayans the other day.

2012 is supposed to be a big year for them, depending I imagine on how you elect to interpret their calendar.  It either signifies the end of the world, or the calendar simply stops.  A fairly important distinction one might imagine.

One the basis that I don't know if any Mayans are around any longer - I have certainly not met any, though have been to the land presently identified as Mayan a few times. Their recorded history seemed to hit a wall with the arrival and subsequent colonization by the Spanish a few hundred years ago, though like any ancient civilizations some small remnants remain, celebrating the dress, dance, culture and trying to keep their language alive.   I think it's probably fair to conclude that their civilization as such is but a memory - not unlike Rome, Egypt or Mesopotamia.  In all these ancient locations people still thrive and may identify their roots with the once-great powers that lived there - but these communities are not what they once were in any case.

Which brings me back to the Mayans and their calendar.  If I take a view that the calendar simply runs out in (our) 2012, did they know they wouldn't be around, and hence not need it any longer..?  Were they prescient after a 3000 year run, or did it hit a logical "revisit-it" time that they'd deal with when it arose.  If I look at our own culture, we've just changed from 2011 to 2012. It's not impossible to imagine a date 100, or even 1000 years in the future for us thanks to futurists and science fiction, but can we really consider the year 9912 - a time 7900 years ahead.  The corollary is 5888 BC, a time before we had records at all.  Then, the wheel had just been invented and animal husbandry was just beginning.  The current state of our species would not seem remotely familiar, and hence they couldn't and wouldn't have planned for us.

To assume that our straightforward calendar addition will cater for our own far future seems a little simplistic now doesn't it, and so I'd like to suggest we also make a review date in the future.  Let's call it 3012 and start to celebrate a count-down.  Not to the end of the world, but to a time when we will formally re-evaluate how we view time, and take into consideration another thousand years of humanity's inventiveness.

Happy -1000 everyone.