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Scientists Reveal How the Maya Predicted Eclipses for Centuries

85 points by rguiscard

by temperceve

5 subcomments

1491 ... if you have never read it was very eye opening as to how badass all these civilizations were. Their loss today would be similar to as if we suddenly lost 99% of all China.

by palmotea

0 subcomment

> Scientists Reveal How The Maya Predicted Eclipses For Centuries
It sounds like scientists actually revealed how to read a table of predictions in a document:
> Juteson and Lowry reject the long-standing assumption that the table was reset at its final position (that is, that it was intended to be used on a continuous loop, returning to month 1 after reaching month 405).
> The trouble is, using the table in this way doesn't actually work.
> ...Instead, they propose that a new table is begun in the 358th month of the current table. With this approach, the table's predictions are only about 2 hours and 20 minutes early for both Sun and Moon alignment.

by utkarsh858

1 subcomments

This reminds me of something. In Indian society, households have this calender called panchang. It is released annually by a group of priests who read and decipher ancient scriptures known as Vedas. Surprisingly panchang is quite accurate and informative about duration of solar and lunar eclipses.

by yubblegum

1 subcomments

Complete clickbait. There is not even a transitory appearance of a "how". tldr; table is rebuilt at some point prior to the great cycle's end. How the table is built and just how did the Maya make the calculations? Crickets.

by a_state_full

0 subcomment

by hdevarajan

1 subcomments

“Unfortunately, much of this knowledge – and the texts that contained it – was destroyed during the Spanish Inquisition, leaving only a few bits and pieces from which to reconstruct these advanced methods for celestial prediction.“ Not the Inquisition, which happened on a different continent!

by skeezyjefferson

5 subcomments

isnt it more embarrasing that they believed the sun needed help to reappear? that they mistook the feelings in their head to be real, kind of how people think they can feel or talk to a god? we love to pat ourselves on the back but never take a look at how stupid we actually are, most people most of the time. i feel regularly embarrassed at the mistakes we make