ABC News

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History now says Mayan ruins show a second reference to the apocalypse occurring in 2012 but said that rumors of the world ending late next year were a Western misinterpretation.

On Thursday, the institute released a statement saying that the date of the apocalypse had been found on the carved or molded face of a brick at the Comalcalco ruin in the southern part of the country.

Most experts had previously said there was only one reference in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

Arturo Mendez, an institute spokesman, said the fragment known as the Comalcalco Brick had been found years ago and studied thoroughly. It is not on display and is kept in storage.

The Tortuguero and Comalcalco inscriptions were probably carved about 1,300 years ago.

The Mexican institute cautioned Thursday that "Western messianic thought has twisted the cosmovision of ancient civilizations like the Maya." Its experts said that the Mayas believed that time started and ended with regularity, with nothing apocalyptic occurring at the end.

The institute plans to hold a meeting of Mayan experts next week to "dispel some of the doubts about the end of one era and the beginning of another, in the Mayan Long Count calendar."

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