The Mayas

1. The Mayas

2. The International Astronomical Union
has honored the Mayas: Crater on Mercury
Hun Kal Crater
Hun Kal is a small
crater on Mercury
that serves as the
reference point for
the planet's system
of longitude. The
longitude of Hun
Kal's center is
defined as being 20°
W, thus establishing
the planet's prime
meridian. ...

3. Maya land, meso America

4. Slave society, so a calendar was
required to organize activities during
the rainy and dry seasons.

5. Sites served ritual, commerce and time
keeping purposes, a well know example is
Chichen-Itza

6. Descent of Kukulkán

7. Models
 Predict star alignments, shadows, eclipses.

9. No animal transportation nor metal tools
Edzná, Campeche
Ekbalam, Yucatàn

10. No animal transportation nor metal tools
Mayapan, Yucatán
Tulum, Quintana Roo

11. Great craftsmen – Active Merchants
A trade system existed through which salt, obsidian, jade, cacao, animal
pelts, tropical bird feathers, luxury ceramics and other goods flowed.

12. One of the five written languages of
antiquity: Dresden Codex
The Dresden Codex contains astronomical
tables of great accuracy. It is most famous for its
Lunar Series and Venus table. The lunar series
has intervals correlating with eclipses. The
Venus Table correlates with the apparent
movements of the planet. The codex also
contains almanacs, astronomical and
astrological tables, and ritual schedules.
The specific numen references have to do with a
260-day ritual cycle divided up in several ways.
The Dresden Codex also includes instructions
concerning new-year ceremonies as well as
descriptions of the Rain God's (Chac) locations.

13. Sculpture has been preserved

14. Calendar
The Haab cycle is 365 days, and approximates
the solar year. The Haab is a nineteen month
calendar. The Haab is composed of 18 months
made of 20 days, and one month, made of 5
days. This 5-day month is called "Wayeb." Thus,
18 x 20 + 5 = 365 days. This image shows the
hieroglyphs corresponding to the nineteen
months of the Haab calendar. The Maya
represented some of these months using more
than one glyph. These glyphs are referred to as
"variants." Variants of the same glyph are
framed in a turquoise background.

15. Calendar
The Maya sacred calendar is called Tzolk’in in
Yucatec Mayan and Chol Q’ij in K’iche’ Mayan.
This calendar is not divided into months.
Instead, it is made from a succession of 20 day
glyphs in combination with the numbers 1 to 13,
and produces 260 unique days. Multiplying 20 x
13 equals 260 days. This image illustrates how
the numbers 1 to 13, cycle through the 20 glyphs
to form dates in the Tzolk’in calendar. Any such
combination, such as 1 Imix’, repeats only after
260 days have passed. The length of the
Tzolk’in matches nine cycles of the Moon and
the gestational period of humans. The Tzolk’in is
also related to the movements of the zenith Sun
and the growing cycle of corn.

16. Same calendar across
Meso -America

17. Alignments with
constructions, flat land
Sky/Káana’
Venus/Chak Ek’

18. Spring solstice

19. Zenith pass
Once or twice each year, people who live at
lower latitudes (within 23.5 degrees of the
equator) can see the sun reach the zenith, an
imaginary point directly overhead. (If you poked
a pencil straight into the ground when the sun
was at its zenith, it would make no shadow at
all.) The path the sun takes on these days—from
sunrise through zenith, to sunset—is called the
zenith passage. Right at the equator, the zenith
passage coincides with the equinoxes.
At Chichén Itzá, the zenith passage is
experienced on May 26 and July 20, give or take
a day. These zenith events apparently played a
key role in the development of the Mayan
calendar.

20. Ball game: social, religious, political,
mythological and time keeping
purposes

21. Ball game: social, religious, political,
mythological and time keeping
purposes

22. Ball game: social, religious, political,
mythological and time keeping
purposes

23. Built
observatories
Snail: curving
corridor with
observation windows

25. Bonampak

26. Murals at Bonampak
Pacal…King or Ancient Astronaut?

27. Milky Way
as much venerated by the Maya. They called it
the World Tree, which was represented by a tall
and majestic flowering tree, the Ceiba. The Milky
Way was called the Wakah Chan (Left Glyph).
Wak means "Six" or "Erect". Chan or K'an
means "Four", "Serpent" or "Sky". The World
Tree was erect when Sagittarius was well over
the horizon. At this time the Milky Way rose up
from the horizon and climbed overhead into the
North. The star clouds that form the Milky Way
were seen as the tree of life where all life came
from.

28. Venus observations
 Venus’ platform at Chichen-Itza

29. Venus transit was registered at
Mayapan
Seen from the earth, Venus moves in a tricky
fashion,
appearing,
disappearing,
then
reappearing, first as a morning “star,” then as an
evening "star." (Venus is a planet, of course, but
observers in the past—persisting in some cases to
the present—mistook it for an unusually bright
star.) So complicated is Venus’s disappearing act
that the ancient Greeks misconstrued it as two
different stars. The Mayans knew better, and they
recognized Venus in both the morning and
evening skies as one and the same.

30. Next Venus transit at the
rising sun
This rise and fall of Venus as a morning star takes
263 days. For the next 50 days, Venus disappears
and cannot be seen in the sky at all.
Then, Venus reappears in the evening sky, where
it remains for another 263-day phase before
disappearing below the horizon for 8 days. At the
end of these 8 days, Venus reappears as a
morning star, and the cycle begins again.

31. MAYA TECHNOLOGY/INNOVATION
 Math based on
multiples of 20
The Mayans had a number
system consisting of shells, dots,
and lines. You could write up to
nineteen with just these symbols.
The Maya were one of the only
ancient
civilizations
that
understood the concept of zero.
This allowed them to write very
large numbers