The Maya were great astronomers and mathematicians and used a system of counting large ages as separate and specific passages of time. All of these separate ages where part of a greater whole, a cycle of universal life and death. The end of the cycle of existence itself is due to occur in the Mayan year of 5125, or, the year 2012 AD.

Skulls of sacrifice litter the floor of crumbling Mayan ruins. Relief's from actual remaining building are shown being strangled by the jungle vine. Fruits lay fallen and discarded. — a species of jungle vine with wrap around a structure, be it tree or rock, and gradually over time will strangle it's support, eventually leaving nothing but the vine standing as a hollow exoskeleton, a fossil of what was before.