237
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Boutsikas et al. (eds.), Advancing Cultural Astronomy, Historical & Cultural
Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_12
Remarks on the Lunar Series and Eclipse
Cycles in Late Classic Maya Records
Stanislaw Iwaniszewski
1 Introduction
The Dresden Codex occupies a central position in the history of Maya astronomy.
Its sections, known as the Eclipse, Venus and Mars Tables, together with other almanacs, provide by far the most extensive available body of evidence of Maya celestial
calculation (see Bricker & Bricker, 2011 for a very comprehensive treatment). This
information agrees with other Maya Late Postclassic (1250–1521)
1
codices (long
strips of bark paper folded into pages as a screen fold) providing the most revealing
and explicit information of their astronomical methods. Some of this material was
initially composed in the Late Classic period (600–800) and eventually updated in
the Postclassic period. Together, these texts provide the largest body of evidence of
the Maya understanding of the regularities of the apparent motion of the Sun, the
Moon and planets, the Milky Way and the brightest stars.
Besides tracking time and its cycles, the Maya codices tell us about how the
entire cosmos worked. Astronomical-calendric cycles expose relationships among
different entities acting upon the world. In order to track events over time, the Maya
day-keepers used a complex structure known as the Long Count, a strict counting of
days from a mythical zero-point date, which they inherited from their epi-Olmec
neighbours. The use of the Long Count system allowed them to perform deep-time
computations, as well as to represent heavenly movements in the form of arithmetic1 All years are C.E. unless otherwise noted. Throughout this paper, the term “month” refers to the
lunar month unless qualified by another term such as “20-day month” where it refers to a calendrical unit of 20 days comparable to our modern month.
S. Iwaniszewski (*)
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia—Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia,
Ciudad de México, Mexico
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Boutsikas et al. (eds.), Advancing Cultural Astronomy, Historical & Cultural
Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_12
Remarks on the Lunar Series and Eclipse
Cycles in Late Classic Maya Records
Stanislaw Iwaniszewski
1 Introduction
The Dresden Codex occupies a central position in the history of Maya astronomy.
Its sections, known as the Eclipse, Venus and Mars Tables, together with other almanacs, provide by far the most extensive available body of evidence of Maya celestial
calculation (see Bricker & Bricker, 2011 for a very comprehensive treatment). This
information agrees with other Maya Late Postclassic (1250–1521)
1
codices (long
strips of bark paper folded into pages as a screen fold) providing the most revealing
and explicit information of their astronomical methods. Some of this material was
initially composed in the Late Classic period (600–800) and eventually updated in
the Postclassic period. Together, these texts provide the largest body of evidence of
the Maya understanding of the regularities of the apparent motion of the Sun, the
Moon and planets, the Milky Way and the brightest stars.
Besides tracking time and its cycles, the Maya codices tell us about how the
entire cosmos worked. Astronomical-calendric cycles expose relationships among
different entities acting upon the world. In order to track events over time, the Maya
day-keepers used a complex structure known as the Long Count, a strict counting of
days from a mythical zero-point date, which they inherited from their epi-Olmec
neighbours. The use of the Long Count system allowed them to perform deep-time
computations, as well as to represent heavenly movements in the form of arithmetic1 All years are C.E. unless otherwise noted. Throughout this paper, the term “month” refers to the
lunar month unless qualified by another term such as “20-day month” where it refers to a calendrical unit of 20 days comparable to our modern month.
S. Iwaniszewski (*)
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia—Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia,
Ciudad de México, Mexico