admin Astronomy and timekeeping were two of the Ancient Maya’s biggest loves, and new research may have finally revealed the intricate system that once connected these two pillars of Mesoamerican life. According to the study authors, the enigmatic Maya calendar can be used to track the movement of the planets across the night sky over a 45-year period, thus solving a long-standing riddle regarding the structure and function of the iconic pre-Hispanic almanac.
Unlike our relatively simple system of days, months, and years, the Mayan calendar used a complex series of interlocking cycles, such as the sacred 260-day calendar known as the Tzolk’in and the secular 365-day calendar, or Haab. ‘. These two cycles are synchronized every 52 years, creating a global calendar period known as the Circular Calendar.
However, inscriptions found at various Maya sites describe an additional count of 819 days. Analysis of these glyphic texts revealed that each day of this cycle is associated with one of four keypoints, meaning that it takes four rounds in 819 days – or about nine years – to complete the entire sequence.
When it came to the Mayans, researchers had long suspected that this cycle might be related to the homozygous cycles of the planets, alluding to the time it took for each planet to return to its position. old in the sky as seen from Earth.
For example, Mercury has a synchronous period of 117 days, which is exactly 819 when multiplied by 7. about how this strange calendar system works. In their new study, however, the researchers show that 20 cycles of 819 days for a total of 16,380 days (about 45 years), can be carefully subdivided to accommodate each synchronous cycle. planet.
For example, Saturn takes 378 days to return to its former position in the sky. Thus, 13 of these cycles give 4,914 days, or exactly 6 times 819.
On the other hand, Venus’ seven retrogrades coincide perfectly with five counts of 819 days, while Jupiter’s 39 synodal cycle repetitions correspond to 19 cycles of 819. On the other hand, Stars. Fire has a council period of 780 days. Multiplying by 21, this number is exactly 20,819 days.
Therefore, the study’s authors say that “expanding the standard 4 × 819-day cycle to 20 819-day cycles provides a broader calendar system with commensurate calculations at its stations for synchronous cycles of all visible planets”.
Perhaps most importantly, 16,380 is also a multiple of 260, which means that 20 rounds in 819 days fit perfectly into Tzolk’in. “Instead of limiting their attention to a single planet, the Maya astronomers, who created the 819-day counter, envisioned it as a broader calendar system that could be used to predict all the synchronous periods of the visible planet, as well as the points corresponding to their periods in the Tzolk’in and the Calendar Ring,” the researchers concluded.
