A CONSPIRACY theorist claims that the ancient Mayan civilization has predicted that the world will end this week.
The bizarre claim is a follow on from the theory that the world was supposed to end in 2012 when the Mayan calendar finished.
The unfolding of events in 2020, from climate change to a viral pandemic to race protests, has led many to think that the end is nigh.
What year is it according to the Mayan calendar?
Before the Gregorian calendar that we used today was introduced in 1582, people used different kinds of calendars to keep track of the date, including the Mayan and Julian calendar.
The Gregorian calendar was created to reflect the time that it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun.
However, 11 days of time were said to be lost in civilization's shift from using the Gregorian calendar to the Julian calendar. Over time, the lost days have accumulated, and conspiracists claimed that we should actually be in the year 2012, not 2020.
What did the Mayans predict?
The Mayans prophecized that the world would come to an end on December 21, 2012.
Scientist and Fullbright Scholar Paolo Tagaloguin fed into the conspiracy theory on Twitter, posting "following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012."
"The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days.
"For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years."
By Tagaloguin's calculations, Earth will be destroyed on June 21, 2020.
Where did the Mayans come from?
The Mayans were an indigenous people of Mexico and Central America.
They were believed to have settled in the Yucatan area (now known as Mexico) between 2600BC and 1800BC.
The Mayan civilization was based around city-states. As they settled, their culture and religion flourished.
They developed long-distance trade and were famed for their developments in art, math, and science. The ancient civilization used a complicated writing system involving more than 800 hieroglyphs to write books.
Their pyramids and cities are still being found thousands of years later.
When did the Mayan calendar end?
Back in 2012, December 21 was heralded as the date that the world would end by conspiracy theorists who were using the Mayan calendar to try and make sense of an ancient prediction.
NASA said: “The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth.
"This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 - hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.”
The space agency previously explained: "For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence?
“There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact.
“There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.”
What happened to the Mayans?
There is a historical debate over why the Mayan empire declined in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Theories range between environmental disasters, drought and climate change to disease, and overpopulation.
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Descendants of the ancient Maya people are still around today and many of them live in their ancestral homelands where they make up the majority of the population.
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