It was many years ago since the embarrassing day when a young woman with a baby in her arms, entered his butcher shop & confronted him with the news that the baby was his & asked what was he going to do about it? Finally he offered her to provide her free meat until the boy was 16. She agreed.
He'd been counting the years off on his calendar, & 1 day the teenager,who had been collecting the meat each week, come into the shop & said:"i'll be 16 tomorrow". " I know" said the butcher with a smile,"i've been counting too,tell your mother when you take this parcel of meat home that it is the last free meat she'll get & watch her expression on her face."
When the boy arrived home, he told his mother.The woman nodded & said "Son, go back to the butcher and tell him i've also had free bread, free milk, and free groceries for the last 16 years and watch the expression on his face."D

The Mayan civilization had reached a high degree of sophistication; its scholars were able to calculate the movements of the planets and predict eclipses with an accuracy which was not to be repeated until the XX.century. Their civilization was based on a religion which taught that the universe was alive, and that every part of it went trough a cycle of death and rebirth. Every day had its own individual portents - some good some bad - and each period of 20 days also had its own particular unity.
The Mayan calendar seems to have taken 13 August 3114 B.C. as its starting point with divisions into 1, 20, 360, 7.200, and 144.000 days. Each divison of time was regarded as a burden carried by a succession of divine beings, some benevolent, some malevolent, but all having significance within the cosmic cycle. The Maya also believed that the world had been created and destroyed at least 3 times; their predictions indicate that they believed that a major disaster will take place in 2012, a remarkable near-coincidence with the apocalyptic forecasts of Crhistian fundamentalists for the already gone year 2000. Fortunately, the Maya also foresaw that this ending will be less than complete. Once the collapse of our present civilization has taken place there will follow a cycle of global purification and the subsequent regeneration of the Earth, heralding a period of galactic harmony. Well, is always good to know!