This implies that the Mayan must have been recording the positions of the planets with great accuracy over a rather long period of time, probably spanning several generations.
The Mayan calendrical system is the most complex to have ever been used. To write a full date in a Classical Mayan site, you need to include:
* The current date in the 365-day solar calendar (18 months of 20 days + 5 extracalendrical days)
* The current date in the 260-day ritual calendar (13 "months" of 20 days, the months don't work like regular months we're used to)
* The "long count" date, i.e., the number of days elapsed from August 11, 3114 BC in proleptic Gregorian
* A 9 day cycle (roughly equivalent to our weekday)
* The date of the current lunar month
* The length of the current lunar month (29 or 30 days)
* A counter to keep track of where the lunar month is in terms of 29 or 30 day months
* The 819-day cycle, discussed in this article.
That is a sheer amount of information to be repeated (dates were the first aspect of Maya script to be deciphered, simply because a very large fraction of the text on stelae at Mayan are just these dates), and probably one of the reasons for this complexity is a way of showing off astronomical prowess (there are actually a few different correlations to lunar months in use at the same time, depending on which major polity's tables you wanted to follow).
Of particular note is that the main long-distance counting is the Long Count, which is a literal count of days elapsed since creation. There's no evidence of regnal dating system, which is very unusual compared to Eurasian calendars where maintaining dates across different kings is more of an occasional pastime rather than common dating format. This counting of days makes it extremely easy to work out long-distance periodic relationships. Given that we already have hundreds of years of date keeping being recorded before the 819-day cycle appears (IIRC, it's a late innovation in Classic Maya), it's virtually certain that reliable records spanning centuries could have been collected by the Classic Maya.
This reminds me of the story of Bartolomé Arrazola.
He was captured by the Mayans in the jungles of Guatemala:
“[...] Then an idea flourished that he considered worthy of his talent, his universal culture and his arduous knowledge of Aristotle. He recalled that that day a total eclipse of the sun was expected. And he decided, in his innermost thoughts, to use that knowledge to deceive his oppressors and save his own life.
“If you kill me,” he said, “I can make the sun darken in its height.”
The natives stared at him and Bartholomew noticed the disbelief in their
Eyes. He saw that a small council had formed, and so he waited in confidence, though not without some disdain.
Two hours later, the heart of Brother Bartolomé Arrazola dripped its vehement blood on the sacrificial stone (bright under the opaque light of the eclipsed sun), while one of the natives without any inflection of voice, without hurry, recited one by one the infinite dates of solar and lunar eclipses. All of which the astronomers of the Mayan community had foreseen and written down in their codices, without the valuable help of Aristotle.”
This is the first I've heard of this and quite fascinating, although at first I interpreted this as nonfiction, but eventually I figured out this was fictional short story!
I remember it from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Apparently it has some historical basis, which would explain the popularity of this motif:
I studied with one of the top Mayan scholars in North America, and learned that the 260-day Mayan calendar was correlated to the human gestational period. So this is interesting: "They also note that the number of days (16,380) used in the math happens to be a multiple of 260, which means that 20 rounds of 819-day periods match with the Tzolk'in—the general Maya calendar."
I really wonder what kind of organizational structure the Mayan astrologers had in order to develop and propagate this knowledge in their society over generations. Getting vibes of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.
Holy shit. Thank you for bringing this up, I'd wondered for ~15 years what my uncle was reading at his desk one time when I visited, but only ever remembered the cover.
They were. The Mayans were perhaps the most consistent and precise, of all people doing astronomy, at least before telescopes.
Unlike with almost all other ancient calendars, the alignment of the Mayan calendar to our own is known quite exactly. Scholars have compiled lists with all the eclipses, astronomical records, etc. known from the Mesoamerican writings. There's only one correlation that makes sense, and it aligns with basically everything. Lunar phase, planetary locations, recent eclipses, even the records carved in wood which can be radiocarbon dated (carved on wood that died within the years expected for what's written on it).
We can, of course, never really be certain, but it's likely correct that Pakal the Great died on 9.12.11.5.18 -- in August 683, probably on the 29th.
With Ancient Egypt, the window of uncertainty with dates in the Middle Kingdom, is about 20 years, and closer to 100 with the Old Kingdom. Nor do we know precisely when Nineveh fell, and that event is recorded in the records of multiple cultures.
That distinction must go to Tycho Brahe, who made all his astronomical observations without any telescope (Galileo started using a telescope in 1609, while Brahe died in 1601).
It seems incredibly clever - and I realise that I assumed they weren't aware of most planets since they're hard to see today, but I'm sure they were very noteworthy event in the pristine sky they were looking at.
I wish you luck seeing Uranus with the naked eye. It might have appeared on some ancient charts misclassified as a star, perhaps. But we credit Herschel with the identifcation as a planet in 1781, over 150 years after the invention of the telescope.
Source: Years of observations from bortle 1 skies when I knew exactly where to look.
Not in today's skies, not with my eyes. But in the time before cell phones, internet, tv, radio, electric lights, or bound books, with nothing better to do at night but look at the sky and listen to your neighbor pleasuring their spouse ... I think the odds improve greatly.
You remind me that I wanted to book an airBnB in one of the parks near me, they have an observatory and as such the sky is legally required to be untainted - I haven't seen the milky way in almost 10 years, I can't imagine seeing the stars every night.
Before the light pollution got really bad where I live due to development, provided it wasn’t cloudy, I could see the Milky Way every night for about 15 years. Now, it’s gone due to lax rules and regulations due to commercial security light fixtures which throw light in all direction at night to deter thieves. It’s pretty upsetting, but even worse, most people I talk to don’t even notice it’s gone. That’s almost more disturbing that the light pollution. We’ve lost something that most people aren’t aware they lost in the first place.
I highly recommend looking for a protected night sky zone near you and going to see it at least once - it really is nothing that pictures can translate!
I'm in Singapore. We boast an impressive 100% urbanisation rate. Combine that with commonly overcast skies, and you hardly see any stars at all here. (I'm here by choice, I grew up in small town Germany.)
There's probably a space somewhere in Malaysia that's dark, or I could take a cruise ship out to the ocean, if you go by absolute distance.
By convenience, it's probably easiest to take a plane somewhere.
Not sure what their criteria is, they don't have any marked in my state (Queensland, Australia) even though there would probably (seriously) be an area bigger than the whole of France here out west where you can see the milky way with your bare eyes.
You can look around or call local park services, I'm seeing that Mont-Megantic, an observatory with federally peotected sky, isn't on their map. I'll look for a canadian ressource (for myself too!)
Edit: I'm wrong, Mont-Megantic is the first International Dark Sky Reserve - they worked to get it protected federally because they research telescope design. Dang - I think they are quite rare.
Maybe you can send an email to your local university's Astronomy department? I'm sure they'll be able to direct you to a good spot!
Yes. It's supposed to be burning up methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas, but the efficacy is in question. It's called "gas flaring" if you want to know more.
It's one of the highlights of my life, and it's been about fifteen years since.
If you stare up long enough, you notice the rotation of the Earth with the cosmos seemingly revolving around you. And fuck me, you'll stare up long enough.
Unfortunately, you are among many. I read a statistic that 90+% of people have never seen the Milky Way.
I grew up out in the country, and the night sky instilled a love of astronomy from an early age. If all you can see is a handful of stars, it's easy to forget what's above your head.
Absolutely. Years ago I made what is essentially a Unix time / Maya Long Count converter and I was very pleased with how similar they were in concept (i.e. counting seconds or days from a particular epoch) with the only major difference being the base 10 vs base 20.
> I was very pleased with how similar they were in concept (i.e. counting seconds or days from a particular epoch)
I don’t think there are many alternatives. Counting backwards would either mean diving into negative numbers or postponing that by starting at an arbitrary high number.
“In the x-th year of ruler Y” plus a knowledge of the succession of rulers is awkward for recording over centuries. I expect that has been used almost everywhere before history (in the meaning of ‘after prehistory’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory) began, but as far as I know, where written records exist, countries that used it such as Japan also had another system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar)
The reason the Julian day number is important is because Joseph Justus Scaliger went to enormous effort to create a consistent chronology of ancient and mediaeval history from records that mostly used regnal years. Sometimes they might use other calendars, or refer to the 19 year metonic cycle (determining the date of easter) or the day of the week (a 28 year cycle) or the year in the indiction cycle (a 15 year tax period in the eastern roman / byzantine empire). His chronology covered several non-european cultures as well as graeco-roman history. It is neat that astronomers are using a modernized version of his dating system, so ancient records can be more easily matched to modern observations.
