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The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

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Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#31

Post by mustacheemperor »

egypturnash wrote: post #28
dzdt wrote: post #5

Sounds like a "guess" rather than a "solution". They have noticed a numerical coincidence and formed a hypothesis. Without additional evidence tying the 819-day count to astronomical observations its not particularly convincing.

There's basically no surviving Mayan literature, thanks to the hard work of the Catholic church. So good luck finding more evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization#Writing_and_...

Led by Bishop Diego De Landa, specifically.

>We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.

The same individual of whom it's been said

>ninety-nine percent of what we today know of the Mayas, we know as the result either of what Landa has told us in the pages that follow, or have learned in the use and study of what he told.

So yeah, scholarship of the Maya civilization is extraordinarily challenging.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#32

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

irrational wrote: post #23
hvs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm all for investigating this line of thinking further, but all sorts of weird coincidences come up in numerology that no serious person would consider "science".

Is this science? This is a human made up calendar, not how many protons are in a gold atom.

Science doesn't have some super clear, strict, reductive definition like the "scientific method" you may have been taught in school. The idea that all science must make or test predictions is just based on an old misinterpretation of the philosophy of Karl Popper, mainly by physicists. The only real general requirement I think you can make is that all science involves some level of interrogation and study of the physical world. Anthropology qualifies in abudance.

Whether it's good science is beside the point.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#33

Post by sidlls »

avodonosov wrote: post #30
dmbche wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they had found a prior mention of a 819 day period in relation to calendars, but didn't make the link at the time (from my understanding of the paper)

The researchers saw prior mention of 819. But Mayans, why did they choose 819?

Most cultures choose values like this based on their aggregate interactions with observable natural phenomena over a period of some generations. It’s too bad Spanish invaders wiped out much of anything that might help discern what that might have been for this culture

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#34

Post by dmbche »

avodonosov wrote: post #30
dmbche wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they had found a prior mention of a 819 day period in relation to calendars, but didn't make the link at the time (from my understanding of the paper)

The researchers saw prior mention of 819. But Mayans, why did they choose 819?

Looking at it quickly it seems that 819 might be the number that lets the multiplier be as small as possible, since they are saying that all planets fit in a 45 year timeline I assume all mutipliers are smaller than 45..maybe that's the most handy form of optimization for their uses? Both number remain quite small, compared to 18*273.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#35

Post by thaumasiotes »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #10
dmbche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems incredibly clever - and I realise that I assumed they weren't aware of most planets since they're hard to see today, but I'm sure they were very noteworthy event in the pristine sky they were looking at.

Those planets are much easier to see without light pollution. All but Neptune* can be seen by the naked eye. (Shamelessly abusing the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet here to exclude it from the conversation). Uranus: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/07/starwatch-op...

Uranus is not visible to the eye in any meaningful sense.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#36

Post by tonymillion »

avodonosov wrote: post #30
dmbche wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they had found a prior mention of a 819 day period in relation to calendars, but didn't make the link at the time (from my understanding of the paper)

The researchers saw prior mention of 819. But Mayans, why did they choose 819?

Because they didn’t choose 42.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#37

Post by api »

irrational wrote: post #24
culi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know it wasn't 2012?

Seriously. Looking around, I would not be surprised to learn we have already passed the end of the world and have moved into hell.

Instead of doing the whole hell thing, which God decided was kind of harsh, they just moved us into a shitty timeline run by hack writers. It's kind of like what's done with a show that somehow hasn't been cancelled yet but where all the good writers and a few of the lead actors have moved on.

Their ideas are shit like:

"I've got it! Let's make Donald Trump President! Then we'll have Donald Trump and the MyPillow guy try to overthrow the US government!"

"Not until we launch a red sports car into space! Then there's a pandemic that causes a toilet paper shortage."

"Let's turn Elon Musk into a thirteen year old edgelord 4chan troll and have him buy Twitter!"

"Enough cheap jokes. We need some serious drama. Let's have Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and then lose really bad to an army run by a former comedian that uses Discord for battlefield comms."

"After that we'll have a superintelligence descended from something called 'llama' take over the world after it leaks out of Facebook with a torrent file."

"Facebook? No way let's have Zuckerberg bet the entire company on the metaverse idea from Neil Stephenson except it doesn't really exist. He'll rename the company Meta."

"Yeah that's awesome! Now when does Dogecoin become the global reserve currency?"

"After the llama makes everyone wear hats or be murdered by drone swarms."

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#38

Post by throwaway290 »

fatneckbeard wrote: post #27
dmbche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems incredibly clever - and I realise that I assumed they weren't aware of most planets since they're hard to see today, but I'm sure they were very noteworthy event in the pristine sky they were looking at.

it's like if we had the same TV show every night for our whole life, i think we would start to notice some patterns

TV show that rained fireballs at your ancestors at random intervals...

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#39

Post by pgreenwood »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #10
dmbche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems incredibly clever - and I realise that I assumed they weren't aware of most planets since they're hard to see today, but I'm sure they were very noteworthy event in the pristine sky they were looking at.

Those planets are much easier to see without light pollution. All but Neptune* can be seen by the naked eye. (Shamelessly abusing the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet here to exclude it from the conversation). Uranus: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/07/starwatch-op...

I wish you luck seeing Uranus with the naked eye. It might have appeared on some ancient charts misclassified as a star, perhaps. But we credit Herschel with the identifcation as a planet in 1781, over 150 years after the invention of the telescope.

Source: Years of observations from bortle 1 skies when I knew exactly where to look.

Re: The Mayan calendar might represent a longer timescale than previously considered

#40

Post by avodonosov »

dmbche wrote: post #34
avodonosov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researchers saw prior mention of 819. But Mayans, why did they choose 819?

Looking at it quickly it seems that 819 might be the number that lets the multiplier be as small as possible, since they are saying that all planets fit in a 45 year timeline I assume all mutipliers are smaller than 45..maybe that's the most handy form of optimization for their uses? Both number remain quite small, compared to 18*273.

> They noted that for Mercury, the synod period is 117 days, which, when multiplied by seven, equals 819

So for Mercury the multiplier is 1/7. Doesn't look very convenient.

It would be more natural to use 117 as the magic number.

Of course, convinience depends on their arithmetics. Looking from our decimal system perspective could be misleading.

I was thinking maybe smaller divider can produce meaningless results with some multipliers (e.g. 117 *5 predicts nothing, no planet has this period). While every multiple of 819 predicts something. But I doubt that's the case.

The authors of the hypothesis shоuld address these questions.

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