"Why did this catastrophe occur? In hindsight we recall that only a single Mayan inscription, “Tortuguero”, is directly blamed as the time-fuse for the apocalypse. Then again, a less trendy explanation of why the Mayan Calendar ends abruptly is that the Mayan Civilization wasn't around to make a new one, because we fucking slaughtered almost all of them shortly after 'discovering' them. The arrival of the Christian invaders was really the cause of December 21, 2012, because that's just as far as the Mayan calendar carver got on his calendar-carving. So curse the damn Spanish conquistadores for this screw-up!