I feel compelled to tell you a little bit about the Mayan people that inspired the main character in my book Kuxan Suum, especially about the Maya scientific legacy. Please read on...
Mayan Astronomers
by Dora Musielak
The Maya were extraordinarily good astronomers, making observations and recording the motion of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. That is why it was easy for me to conceive the idea of a young Mayan woman who was drawn to the stars.
Prior to 36 B.C., this civilization in southern Mexico and northern Central America had begun to use multiples of a 360-day year to produce a very accurate calendar and measuring long intervals of time. The ancient Maya are also known for having had the only known fully developed written language of pre-Columbian America, and the most advanced mathematics and astronomy. About 10,000 written Mayan texts have been found, mostly inscribed on stone monuments, lintels, stelae and ceramic pottery.
Without telescopes, it was difficult for anyone to learn about distant planets, the nature of stars, and the dynamics of the universe. Yet, using observations made with the naked eye, and measurements with cast shadowing and other rudimentary devices, Mayan astronomers watched the heavens as patterns in the sky that allowed them to know when the seasons changed. Their measurements were often of impressive precision in their description of planetary motions, and their scientific heritage is awe-inspiring.
The ancient Maya built observatories and aligned their most important buildings with the movements of celestial bodies such as the Sun and the Pleiades. Chichén Itzá, in the Peninsula of Yucatan in México, is considered one of the most magnificent archeological sites in the world, giving us a glimpse of the splendor and sophistication of an ancient Mayan metropolis ruled by the heavens.
One of the most stunning buildings in Chichén Itzá is El Caracol (Spanish for “the spiral”), a circular astronomical observatory built on a large square platform. There is a spiral stone staircase inside the building, which leads to the top observatory chamber designed with windows for astronomical observations. From those windows, Mayan astronomers noted the positions of the Sun, the Moon’s greatest northern and southern declinations, and the passages of Venus. They used the shadows inside the room cast from the angle of the Sun hitting the doorway, for example, to tell when the solstices would occur.
El Caracol at Chichén Itzá, Maya Observatory (Mexico).
Photo Credit: Scott McIntyre, http://www.smackfu.com/
At the spring and fall equinoxes the Sun is observed to cast its rays through small openings in the Mayan observatory, lighting up the inside walls. Placed around the edge of El Caracol are large rock cups that would fill with water, and astronomers would watch the reflection of the stars in the water. The hieroglyphic texts on the structure of El Caracol date back to the second half of the ninth century.
Dominating the Chichén Itzá complex is the Pyramid of Kukulcan, also known as El Castillo. It is an impressive square-based, stepped pyramid approximately 30 meters tall (with the temple on top), constructed by the Mayans around 1000-1200 AD, directly upon the foundations of previous temples.
The pyramid has special astronomical significance and layout. Each face of El Castillo has a stairway with ninety-one steps, which together with the shared step of the platform at the top add up to 365, the number of days in a year. The stairways divide the nine terraces of each side of the pyramid into eighteen segments, representing the eighteen months of the Mayan calendar. The design of this magnificent pyramid reflects the equinoxes and solstices of our solar year in a spectacular combination of light and shadow. During the equinoxes, the setting Sun casts a shadow viewed as a serpent climbing the northern steps of the pyramid.
El Castillo at Chichén Itzá (Mexico).
Photo Credit: Scott McIntyre, http://www.smackfu.com/
How plausible would it be for a Mayan princess to read books? It is quite possible. The Maya produced many books using a paper called amatl (from the Nahuatl “paper”) manufactured from the processed bark of fig trees in a folded book-format, called a codex. Shortly after the Spanish conquest, many of the books were burnt and destroyed by the Spanish priests. Only three of those Mayan texts are known to have survived to the present day and are known as the Madrid, Dresden, and Paris codices.
The Dresden Codex is considered the most beautiful and complete of the Mayan books. Made of the amatl paper, the 74-page richly illustrated book is folded accordion-style and written and painted on both sides. Its basic colors are red, black and the so-called Mayan blue, a turquoise color that resembles the bright hue of the Caribbean sea. The Dresden Codex supports the reputation of the Maya as having been accomplished astronomers. This gorgeous Maya document contains astronomical calculations, tables, and data that are remarkably accurate. It also depicts a number of gods and documents aspects of their daily life, agriculture, and sacred rituals.
Page from Dresden Codex
For the Maya, the planet Venus was very important. Mayan astronomers watched Venus and recorded its transit across the sky. The Dresden Codex contains tables and astronomical data of the full cycle of Venus. The Maya counted five sets of 584 days or 5 repetitions of the Venus cycle. This corresponds to 2,920 days or approximately 8 years. The tabulation of the appearances of Venus was used to predict the future.
The Maya regarded everything as closely related to their notion of time. For them, the need to record and to determine certain events in time, as well as the need to foresee the regular occurrence of astronomical, religious and social events, resulted in the invention of one of the most accurate calendars in history. The Maya calendar is considered the most complex, intricate and accurate among ancient calendars. Some claim that the calculations of the congruence of the 260-day and the 365-day Maya cycles are almost exactly equal to the actual measured solar year in the tropics, with only a 19-minute margin of error.
The Maya calendar also includes lunar reckoning. The lunar cycle was counted as 29 or 30 days, alternating. The lunar synodic period is close to 29.5 days, so by alternating their count between these two numbers the Moon was carefully meshed into the time sequence of the calendar. The Dresden Codex also includes predictions of lunar eclipses.
For the Maya, the sky, their calendars, and mythology were integrated into a single system of belief. The patterns of the stars in the Milky Way or constellations, were directly related to their vision of Creation. The Maya called the Milky Way galaxy World Tree, which was represented by a tall tree, the Ceiba, reaching up to where all life came from.
The Maya also referred to the Milky Way as the Wakah Chan, which means “White Boned Serpent.” They believed to be connected to the cosmos. In fact, Kuxan Suum is a Mayan concept that means literally the “path in the sky to the center of the universe.”
There is also evidence to suggest the Maya were the only pre-telescopic civilization to demonstrate knowledge of the Orion Nebula. What supports this theory is a Mayan leyend related to the Orion constellation they called Xibalba. They referred to the nebula as smoke from burning copal incense. Scholars believe this is significant, and it gives credence to the idea that the Maya detected a diffuse area of the sky before the telescope was invented.
There is no astronomy without mathematics. And the Maya astronomy was no exception. Mayan mathematics is the most sophisticated mathematical system ever developed in the Pre-Columbian Americas. The ancient Mayas discovered two fundamental ideas in mathematics: place notation and zero. That the Mayas understood the concept and value of zero is extraordinary and astonishing, for at that time most of the world’s civilizations had no concept of zero.
And for someone like me, who loves mathematics, this is one of the most endearing traits of the ancient Mayan people, one that gives credence to the tale in this book. I hope you agree.
Copyright © 2008 by Dora Musielak
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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