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The missing digit of Stela C

104 points by chmaynard

by RupertSalt

3 subcomments

Okay, my fault for skipping a lot of stuff in the middle, but a question began to burn in my mind. They have determined the full inscription, calculated the Olmec date, and correlated it to our Gregorian reckoning. The end of the article says:
```
  So, while 32 BC seemed awfully early for the Olmecs to carve this stone, there’s no way they could have done it later. (Or earlier, for that matter.)
```
But I am not sure if this resolves the burning question: what makes everyone believe that the inscription corresponded to the current date? Certainly, that is a common custom when erecting a monument, but what if Olmec logic said "let us commemorate this auspicious event that occurred 300 years ago!" or "Let us anticipate the far future in 5,000 years from now!" for example.

by MarkusQ

2 subcomments

This seems weirdly...off. Take the reference to Julius Scalier. What in the heck is he doing here? Did somebody do a quick and sloppy search for Julius Caesar? Or mangle Joseph Justus Scaliger and Julius Caesar together and try to take the average? This seems like a very strange thing to do.

by Luc

0 subcomment

For those confused like me: the line drawing shows both halves of the stela, including the ‘7’ (-..) just above the break. The bottom half was found 30 years before the top.

by cornholio

3 subcomments

Im still unclear how they determined the constant to convert from long mesoamerican to GMT. What common reference event could allow syncing these calendars to a +/- 3 day precision? I would guess some solar eclipse pattern visible from both sides of the Atlantic?

by jovial_cavalier

0 subcomment

The entire quoted section in the middle adds nothing. It just keeps repeating the same things over and over, and it doesn't answer the question of how we know the offset at all. Makes me think his "friend" is an LLM.