Did Mayans feel 13th pair of Venus Transits would be catastrophic?
The next Transit of Venus will occur on June 5–June 6 in 2012, succeeding the previous transit on June 8, 2004. After 2012, the next transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena and currently occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years.
As there have been 13 pairs of the Transit of Venus since the last major climactic calamity on Earth, that's a cycle of 3,159 years (13 times 243), which takes us back to around 1150BCE.
Wikipedia pins Bronze Age collapse to 1150-1200BCE
The Bronze Age collapse is a transition in southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age that some historians believe was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive. The palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia which characterised the Late Bronze Age were replaced, after a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Ancient Dark Age.
Between 1206 and 1150 BCE, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria,[1] and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Canaan interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, Ugarit.
The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the rise of settled Neo-Hittite Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BCE and the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Wikipedia info on 2012 Transit of Venus
Above Top Secret 2012 Transit of Venus webpage
