Expect to hear a lot about the Mayans until December 22, 2012. End of the world conspiracies happen pretty much five times a year but it's still going to get its attention because a lot of older people now read books in the 1970s, when they were young, about aliens populating Earth. "Chariots of the Gods" and all that.
But Americans hate to be left out. Want people to watch The Olympics? Americans had better be winning gold medals.
So if the Mayans want to get real attention north of the border, they had better show up; luckily, we have popular blogging site The Examiner to help. In a blog post there, an architect claims he has found Mayans - in Georgia, which is "possibly the site of the fabled city of Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto failed to find in 1540, and certainly one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent times."
What? It gets better.
The name of Brasstown Bald Mountain is itself, strong evidence of a Maya presence. A Cherokee village near the mountain was named Itsa-ye, when Protestant missionaries arrived in the 1820s. The missionaries mistranslated “Itsaye” to mean “brass.” They added “town” and soon the village was known as Brasstown. Itsa-ye, when translated into English, means “Place of the Itza (Maya).”
It's such complete bunk that the actual archaeologist mentioned in the piece, Mark Williams of FSU, is the first commenter on it, saying "This is total and complete bunk. There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia. Move along now."
It's all clever enough; that's easy when you make stuff up, the same way amateur physicists do some math sleight of hand to create wormholes and go back in time. But don't go cashing in your 401K and buying that really big trampoline for the house based on any of this.
