Beliefs in the "end of the world" (loosely speaking, eschatology), generally from a massive cataclysm, appear in many cultures, especially those with creation myths. Those who believe this "end of the world" is imminent, that is, apocalyptic believers, have produced a vast literature focused on the destructive nature of the "end" of the physical creation. By creating this "sense of an ending" these catastrophic scenarios knit up a culture's cosmogony in a great cycle of time during which creation "lives out" its allotted span. Because the physical world of time and space (Latin saeculum, which in French, siècle, means both "century" and "secular") are so concrete, the temptation to measure the length of the world's existence and hence to "date" its end has existed in all cultures. Nowhere, however, did this concern become more intense than in Western European culture, birthplace of modern notions of time and...