Apocalypse - now??

Will the world end on December 21st?  That's when the Mayan calendar runs out - and it's been going for 5,000 years, so it's got more going for it than some of the more recent "end of time" predictions.  But did the Mayans really believe that this would be the end of everything, or as others have suggested, that the calendar would simply reset to zero and start another 5,000 year cycle.  And is it worth taking any notice of these increasingly frequent doomsday prophesies?  After all, the world has been around for some four and a half billion years (sorry creationists, the facts are against you) and we humans, or our ancestors, have only appeared in the last two million years or so.  Put another way, if the age of the world is a day, then we humans first made our appearance at about ten seconds before midnight. So do you really think what we believe - or don't - has any relevance in the great scheme of things?  Oh, come on!!