Really, the fact that the Mayas could calculate the exact date of the Awakening in advance should lay all theories about the influence of human population to rest, because they could impossibly have predicted demographics 5200 years into the future.
That's assuming the Maya did predict it.
Ryumyo was the first dragon to awaken and Howling Coyote use magic to escape from the Abilene detention camp on December 24th, 2011. Then some people pointed out this was the exact day the Mayan calendar predicted to be the end of the World ("Some mystics point to the Mayan calendar as an authority", as Shadowrun 1st edition stated).
In real life, 24th December, 2011 was the day the thirteenth
b'ak'tun of the Mesoamerican Long Count (aka "the Mayan Calendar") was to end according to a correlation with the Gregorian calendar mentioned by Michael D. Coe in his book
The Maya in 1966. Coe changed that date to January 11th, 2013 in the 1980 edition, and December 21st, 2012 in the 1984 and subsequent editions.
As far as we know, the December 24th, 2011 date was calculated by Coe using the original "Thomson 1" correlation
and making a mistake between astronomical year and BCE/CE date (the former having a year zero nut not the latter). If you account for the Goodman correlation, the Martinez-Hernandez correlation, the Thompson 1 correlation, the Modified Thompson 1 correlation and the Modified Thompson 2 correlation (aka "Goodman-Martinez-Thompson" correlation), and the possibility of an error with/without year zero, there are 10 different dates in 2011 and 2012 that you could claim the Maya predicted as the end of the world, plus that January 11th, 2013 date that I have no idea how Coe calculated it. You can even make that number double again by arguing over the use of a Proleptic Gregorian calendar rather than a Proleptic Julian calendar.
Ehran does endorse a Mayan prediction of December 24th, 2011, in his famous
Human and the Cycle of Magic speech. He does so while also asserting the previous age of magic ended on August 12th, 3113 BC and the current one will end on April 4th, 7137 AD.
As I pointed out in my lost message, the length of thirteen
b'ak'tun is 1,872,000 days, while there are 1,871,270 days between August 12th, 3113 BCE and December 24th, 2011 CE and 1,871,969 days between December 24th CE and April 4th, 7137 CE.
The Modified Thompson 2 correlation gives August 12th, 311
4 BCE as the Long Count starting date and December 21st, 2012 CE as the end of the thirteen
b'ak'tun. A Long Count starting on August 12th, 3113 BCE as Ehran puts it would actually predict the end on December 21st, 201
3. For the December 24th, 2011 to have been predicted by the Long Count, the starting point would have to be August 1
5th, 311
5 BCE.
In his speech, Ehran says he was "as precise as possible" when advising an Egyptian Pharaoh in establishing a calendar that missed the date "by over two years" all the while giving dates that are off by nearly two years as well. If that guy is half as smart as he supposed to be, he ought to be 1) fully aware of that, and 2) deliberately misleading his audience.
The Awakening could have occurred at a more or less random date, that happened by random chance to be one date previously considered for the Mesoamerican Long Count to reach its thirteen
b'ak'tun, and various people retroactively turned that into an accurate prediction. It would be actually just as credible to attribute such prediction to a 20th century archaeologist working for the CIA (the only person we can say for sure really did write down the December 24th, 2011 date) rather than to the Mayan people.