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Mayan Astronomy

Note 5: Venus and the Calendar Round. 3/12/99

Picking up where I left off in Note 3, it is also true and inescapable that the Maya Calendar Round (CR for short) was developed, like the 260-day sequence of the almanac itself, in a way that allowed its structure to be used to count Venus's synodic period in a completely natural application of the fact that 8 Maya solar years of 365 days each are equal to 5 synodic periods of Venus counted as 584 days each. An important point to recognize here is the fact that Venus's sequence of variable periods, which are repeated over time in the same order at 8-year intervals, and where the least number of days in the shortest period is fixed at 580 and the longest period reaches 588 days but the average comes out very close to 584, was the primary factor involved in the development of the structure both of the CR and of the Venus table in the Dresden Codex. Now-a-days most European commentators on the subject of Maya astronomy would be inclined to tell you that this synergy between the CR and the Venus table is a coincidence. Not so. To say that, in fact, is to demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the very nature of Maya cultural imperatives. The connection between the CR and the Venus table is absolutely and profoundly deliberate, a connection, futhermore, that probably took many hundreds of years to conceive, develop, perfect, and articulate. To reduce it to coincidence is to dis(respect) its genius as profoundly as any anthro(a)pologist has ever done to any aspect of American tribal culture.

The Mayas created the Calendar Round by combining the day-name sequence of the 260-day almanac with the day-names of the 365-day Haab, or tropical/solar year. The Haab had 18 "months" with twenty days in each one. This total of 360 days was extended by the addition each year of 5 "nameless" days, designated by the term Uayeb, at the end of the sequence of "named" days. This brought the total to 365. Precisely what the distinction is between a "nameless" and a "named" day in Maya calendrical thought is impossible to say now but one has to believe that a diffentiation of the kind must have meant something to Maya astronomers. By combining the two sequences of day-names into a single list, the Mayas were able to count, and distinguish from each other, a total of 18,980 days before a combination of almanac and haab day-names were brought together again for a second time. Put another way: no day-name in the CR was repeated before the entire fixed sequence of combinations had occurred in the 52-year period required to count each one a first time (52 X 365 = 18,980 days). This same interval of time is also equal to 32.5 average synodic periods of Venus (32.5 X 584 = 18,980 days). The Venus table, which has a different first day (3 Cib 9 Zac) from the CR (1 Imix 9 Pop), is exactly twice as long as the Calendar Round and therefore covers a period of 37,960 days, or 104 Maya tropical/solar years and 65 synodic periods of Venus. The base-day of the table, 1 Ahau 18 Kayab, occurred 236 days before 3 Cib 9 Zac and is best viewed, not as the first day of the Venus sequence, but rather as the last day of the 104-year progression of Venus positions the table recorded. This is perhaps a meaningless distinction to make but the Mayas may have consistently identified the last day of an astronomical period as the base-day of a calendrical devise that recorded its duration.

In terms of any form of real astronomy, a person needs to have a correlation number for connecting Maya dates to the European calendar because all contemporary anstronomical calculating systems are based on some form or another of the European calendar. I typically use Julian day numbers in a computer software program that reproduces sky maps between 4000 B. C. and 4000 A. D. The maps are accurate representations of planetary locations, which can be counted minute by minute, relative to the stellar background. I look at the sky as it would have appeared to Mayas in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, during the Classic Period. The base-day position I have been using for the past several years, and one which took nearly 45 years to determine, if you count from the day the old man in the desert told me I was going to build a bridge between his world and mine, for the Dresden Codex Venus table (9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab) is Julian day number 1927694 or September 27, 565 A. D. On that day Venus occupied a position precisely 46.1* of elongation from the sun in the morning sky. In other words, Venus first appeared on the eastern horizon at Palenque at 2:44 AM, which was 3 hours and 14 minutes before the sun rose at 5:58 AM that same day. At this point in its synodic period, Venus had already passed its extreme western elongation (at 47*) from the sun and was "moving" back toward the sun at the horizon, as it were, by virtue of appearing to be closer and closer to it in the morning sky, day by day, when the sun first appeared. In fact, on the base-day, Venus was 235 days away from its superior conjunction with the sun, which occurred on May 20, 566 A. D., or, put another way, one day prior to the first day of the Venus table's sequence on 3 Cib 9 Zac (May 21, 566 A.D.). On 3 Cib 9 Zac, then, Venus was 0.2* of elongation from the sun in the evening sky and was one day into its 263-day (average) journey toward maximum eastern elongation.

There are several reasons why I believe this correlation is superior to the one proposed by Goodman-Martinez-Thompson. When the Maya count is extended from the base-day position established here forward in time until it reaches the base-day of the Eclipse table in the Dresden Codex (approximately 136 years later), at 9.16.4.10.8 12 Lamat 1 Muan, that day is marked by the occurrence of a lunar eclipse (June 29, 698 A.D.). 15 days earlier, on June 13, 698 A.D., there was a solar eclipse which fell on the CR day 9 Eb 5 Kankin. This day is a formal position in the Dresden Codex Venus table and was listed on page 48, line 4, column K. In the GMT correlation, under identical circumstances of extending the Maya count, there are no eclipses recorded on either of these two days and there are no eclipses on any of the days the Mayas wrote in their Eclipse table. Every position in the table, using the correlation I prefer, has its relevant eclipse and the sequence counts both solar and lunar eclipses with an off-set base-day for the solar sequence set at 4680 days which is prescribed by the text itself in the final column of signs above the base-day position in the table. 9 Eb 5 Kankin occupies the 42 eclipse position in the table's structure.

To summarize this first point, then: if you relie on the GMT correlation, you cannot predict any eclipses using the table Maya astronomers developed for that purpose. Using the other correlation, you can predict every solar and lunar eclipse the table was designed to predict by each appropriate CR day-name precisely as they occur in sequence. This should not suprise anyone, since I established the eclipse sequence first and then counted back the appropriate number of days to reach the exact location of the Venus table base-day. The GMT was done the other way around.

My second reason for preferring this correlation to the GMT can be seen in the following table of Venus positions as they were counted through the first verticle column of the Dresden's structure. The table itself, if the Classic Period Mayas read their own texts the way we read ours, is arranged in horizontal rows moving from left to right which record the four synodic positions of the planet's individual revolutions in increments of 236 + 90 +250 + 8 = 584 days. Positions in the verticle columns are separated by 8 X 365 or 5 X 584 = 2920-day intervals. I have given here the precise sequence over the 104-year duration of the table's use from the first 3 Cib 9 Zac to the second 3 Cib 9 Zac two Calendar Rounds later:

First Synodic Period: First Day (+236 after base-day)

Page 46, Column A (of the Dresden Codex):

[To view entire table click here]

The first point one can make here is that the relative position of Venus in the evening sky, as it approaches a first day of visibility after superior conjunction with the sun, does not move enough in real space over a period of 104 years for that motion to be detectable through naked-eye obsevation. A change in position of 1.2* of circular arc over 104 years cannot be seen by an observer on the earth. This point is moot in one sense, because Venus is too close to the sun to be seen at all, but its slow rate of separation over time from the sun means that the planet will not become visible in the evening sky until a minimum of four complete Venus tables have been counted from the original base-day in 565 A. D. In other words, at this position of the planet in the Venus table, Maya astronomers would not be able to see Venus in the evening sky until 416 years had passed, putting that future base-day position in place at approximately 981 A. D. This happens because the base-day position tags Venus in one of several stationary positions in its synodic motion. In that verticle column, Venus's relative position to the sun remains fixed at 46.1* exactly for the entire duration of the table and never varies from it by even as much as 0.1* of circular arc.

This is the second reason I prefer the other correlation. Simply put: it gives one a reasonable ground for understanding why the Mayas spent so many years developing a table of Venus positions like the one they recorded in the Dresden Codex. How long did it take to develop the table? A minimum of 208 years. The first time through the sequence someone wrote the day-names down. The second time through someone else checked to see if they had been consistently and correctly recorded. A third time was probably employed as well to make any necessary corrections in the list.

The issue of why the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation has become so widely accepted by scholars when it fails in so many essential ways to make astronomical sense, especially with respect to the Dresden Codex, does not have a single simple answer. In the 1930's several Mayanists used (and abused) astronomical data to support different kinds of correlation efforts. In some cases the data was bent to fit the argument being pursued and many less astronomically minded scholars decided that astronomy itself was as much to blame for the discredit brought to the field as were the individuals responsible for misusing the data. When efforts to read the Mayan script finally began to bear some edible fruit, pressure grew outside of strictly astronomical areas of study to come up with a solution to the problem of correlation so that histories could be written that used a standardized method of converting Maya dates to European notation. Finally, since anthro(a)pology is never about the people it claims to be studying, but is always already directed at the culture of the people doing the research (in effect answering the question: how do we compare to them?), the correlation number chosen did not matter much to historians because being wrong by twenty-five or fifty years here or there doesn't make that much difference to historical ideology.

For astronomers, of course, being wrong by a single day renders the results of any argument meaningless. At the same time, however, even the astronomers were essentially content to have a Maya calendrical system in place which generally speaking returned nonsensical results because that circumstance always already proves that Maya astronomers were basically inept, unlike their European counterparts who could always already find fault with the Maya systems. The Eclipse table does not predict eclipes. Nice try, but no cigar. The Venus table tells us nothing useful or meaningful about that planet's motion. Nice try, but no cigar. Using the wrong correlation number proves what European astronomers have always known about themselves; that is, that Europeans have the most sophisticated and advanced astronomical tools that human beings have ever created, invented, or discovered. The Mayas do not even come close to matching Eurocentric technology. The Dresden Codex proves that fact inescapably simply because nothing recorded in it, using the G-M-T correlation, produces any meaningful data.

To reach [Note 1]; [Note 2]; [Note 3]; [Note 4]; [Note 6]; [Note 7]; [Note 8]; [Note 9]; [Note 9a]; [Note 10]; [Note 11]; [Note 12]; [Note 13]; [Note 14]; [Note 15]; [Note 16]; [Note 17]; [Note 18] in this series of thoughts.

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