The Maya, very best regarded lately for that doomsday they in no way foretold, may perhaps have accurately predicted astronomical phenomena centuries in advance, scientists have uncovered.
A brand new guide, "Astronomy inside the Maya Codices" (American Philosophical Society, 2011), which was awarded the Osterbrock Guide Prize for historical astronomy right here in the American Astronomical Society conference on Monday, facts a series of extraordinary observations produced by pre-16th century Maya astronomers.
Anthropologist husband-wife crew Harvey and Victoria Bricker have devoted their lives to knowing the pre-Columbian Maya and the way they understood the planet all around them. The Brickers performed the vast majority of their operate by translating complicated hieroglyphics to view what Maya scribes felt was most critical to record on parchment.
By decoding early Mayan hieroglyphics from 4 distinct codices housed in Madrid, Paris, Mexico and Dresden, the Brickers tracked how the evening sky would have looked to your Mayans after they have been alive.
"We're coping with true information," Harvey Bricker mentioned. "They're not only squiggles."
The Brickers translated the dates cited during the Maya calendar to correspond with our calendar and after that made use of modern day know-how of planetary orbits and cycles to line up the Maya's information with ours. It had been remarkably exact.
In actual fact, the Brickers discovered the astronomical calendar dated to your 11th or 12th century accurately predicted a solar eclipse to inside each day in 1991, centuries following the Maya civilization had ended. The 1991 eclipse occurred on July 11.The group also observed the Maya had a fair quantity of superstitions surrounding observable heavenly bodies from the evening sky. Within the friendly side, they'd the sun along with the moon ?a a god and goddess, respectively ?a whose cycles had been simple to map, predict and maintain track of. While in the not-so-friendly camp had been Venus and Mars. The motions of individuals two planets ordinarily signaled doom and destruction based on their location within the sky, the Brickers uncovered.
The manuscripts warned that if Venus shines on small children, old women and men or healthier youthful males at specific factors in its orbit, then harm would come to them.
Simply because the Maya desired for making confident these possibly risky moments did not interfere together with the lives of their people today, Harvey Bricker stated, they kept incredibly comprehensive records of wherever Venus together with other planets appeared within the evening sky on specified days.
Mars ?a an animalistic god ?a signified gloomy days to come for everyone. "There was believed to get a connection, and never a pleased a single, in between phenomena linked with Mars and agriculture," Harvey Bricker mentioned.
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