1) Thousands of years ago, the Mayans were able to calculate that the Earth's axis tilts at 23.5 degrees
2) The reason December 25 became the birthday of most Christ-like figures ("crucified godmen")
3) The Mayans' lack of arrogance when predicting the end of the world being Dec 21 2012, ie not insisting "well, of COURSE the world will end while I'm alive, cause I'm awesome!" like idiots do today.
People smarter than me: at one time, many civilizations ago, they existed. This is a comfort to me.
I don't believe in these "end of the world!" scenarios, but I do think it's pretty cool that this Christmas we'll get to witness galactic alignment, whcih NASA eschews:
In fact, astronomy cannot pinpoint such a "galactic alignment" to within a year, much less a day. The alignment depends on the rather arbitrary modern definition of the galactic equator, and/or the visual appearance of the Milky Way. There is no precise definition of the Milky Way's edges -- they are very vague and depend on the clarity of your view. (Jenkins says that he personally established the Milky Way’s edges by viewing it from 11,000 feet, far above anywhere the Maya lived.) So to give a precise visual position for its centerline is not meaningful.
Jenkins did acknowledge that the winter-solstice Sun actually crosses the center of the Milky Way anytime between 1980 and 2016. Elsewhere he expands this approach zone to a 900-year period, and settles for an imprecise alignment to which Dec. 21, 2012, is arbitrarily and circularly assigned. Real astronomy does not support any match between the Baktun-13 end date and a galactic alignment. The advocates both admit and ignore this discrepancy.
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