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- Hacker News
- Whenever I see these backwards-applied math models I think of the “wet streets cause rain” expression.by uvaursi
- The original RDB!by pavinjoseph
- They used past historical data to make predictions without having the need for a helio-centric model?by da02
- Is this the answer?by cwmoore
- How does one even come up with 260 day year?
Is the weather in the tropics so similar that year-on-year mismatch stops mattering?
by NooneAtAll3 - The origins of the 260 day ritual year are not known for certain, but there are a couple of hypotheses:
1. Pregnancy. 260 days is roughly the gestation period of a baby, so this may have been the inspiration for tracking this duration. (For what it is worth, modern Maya timekeepers cite this as being the reason for the length of the 260 day ritual calendar.)
2. In the tropics there are two days of the year when the Sun passes through the zenith and objects cast no shadows. In the latitude where the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations emerged, the length of time between these two days of the year is about 260 days.
3. Numerology. 260 is the product of 20 and 13. 20 was significant in Mesoamerican culture because it was the base of their numbering system and was associated with the human body (given that we have 20 fingers and toes). And the number 13 was associated with the cosmos. So the number 260 represented a kind of interlocking between the human and the cosmic.
It's also worth noting that the Maya also tracked a 365 solar cycle, so they did have a concept of a more standard kind of "year." The 365 cycle was used for civil purposes. The 260 day ritual cycle was used more for divination.
(Shameless plug, but if you want to learn more about Mesoamerican astronomy I have a podcast about the history of astronomy and I talked about it on the last episode: https://songofurania.com/episode/047)
by antognini - The sad thing is that for all their advanced ways of the time, they succumbed to the same thing we are experiencing now... being too comfortable to fix what's broken.
The Mayans did not want to give up their lifestyles even in the face of crippling population growth and surrounding natural resource depletion... which led to their downfall.
- Sounds like the opposite no? Since we are going through population collapse in a time of abundance. Does make me wonder what the political dynamics were at the time, whether some could see problems but weren't in power to change things. Or maybe they couldn't understand or figure out solutions to the problems. What I'd give to be a multilingual fly on the wall throughout history.by t1E9mE7JTRjf
- This should be upvoted. A lot. The downvotes are ill-informed.
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/77060/mayan-def...
From newish imaging. We can see the impressions of vast jungle swaths cut down and way made for planting food and houses. This looks to have disrupted the water cycle enough to cause cinotes (underground water systems and only source of drinking water) to deplete. We see sacrificial remnants below the modern water line. Their water disappeared and so did their civilization. By the time the Spanish arrived, the local people had no knowledge of how to build nor maintain their now ancient cities, the jungles regrew, water came back, and sacrificial artifacts were covered by replenished water levels.
They are an example of man made effects on local weather leading to the downfall of an advanced civilization.
by sethammons - > The Maya Civilization, from Central America, was one of the most advanced ancient civilizations
The Maya are still around! I spent a few months in the Guatemalan highlands last year and all the kids in the village spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home.
(Young people speaking the language is key to language health.)
- That is not that simple. They never invented the wheel, the Maya calendar cycled over 5128, which is not really convenient, numeric system was also rather uncomfortable, strange numerals working in 19-base system (but they have invented zero). In addition to that they've invented sadistic religion with human sacrifices and their culture was very aggressive, what finally put Maya civilization to an end, as everyone around happily joined European conquerors to get rid of Mayans ASAP.by piokoch
- I was just in Silver Spring MD, just outside of Washington, DC, and I noticed that all those kids moved from Guatamala to DC! The American dream! All the kids in Silver Spring spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home. We need more Kaqchikel-speaking children in the Silver Spring area to add to diversity, so that it's not just a primarily Spanish-speaking-only area, but a Spanish-and-Kaqchikel speaking area.by amypetrik8
- I've been in towns in Mexico where the kids ONLY speak a Mayan language. No Spanish or English.
I asked for directions and just got blank stares until someone who spoke Spanish in the village explained, lol.
by bboygravity - I was surprised to find out that there are still many indigenous groups with populations in the millions. My California public education made it seem like they were all pretty much wiped out save for those who survived to the various reservation systems.
My favorite group is the Mapuche who managed to hold out against the Spaniards until they were conquered by Chile and Argentina in the late 19th century. They managed to thwart the conquistadors for centuries! It wasn’t until the modern era where military logistics got good enough to unseat them and overcome the advantages they had.
by throwup238 - The Maya are still around, but the Maya civilization's institutions were all destroyed. And the Spanish made a point of seeking out all the Maya books [1] they could find and burning them. So a lot of knowledge was lost.by tdeck