Okay so this picture may look like just a bunch of doodles on a piece of clay, but it actually is hieroglyphs from four ancient Mayan codices that predict with surprising accuracy the 1991 Solar Eclipse. The Mayan astronomers were able to predict within a day, the time of the 1991 solar eclipse. Keep in mind that all of these predictions took place before the 16th century, so that is pretty impressive. The calendar was found to date the eclipse as being either on the 11th or the 12th and however many centuries later in 1991, the eclipse happened on July 12. That’s crazy. It seems like people today tend to assume that all of the stuff we have discovered about the path of the sun and stars has happened in the past couple hundred years, but the people of ancient times were killing it at the astronomy game before we even figured out what electricity was. These guys didn’t have any computers or fancy telescopes, but still managed to figure out when the moon is going to block the sun 500+ years before it actually happens. Serious props to the Mayans.
Check out the picture and article here
Alex's Blog 
Alex, thank you for posting this as it was fun to read and really interesting. I am one of those you mentioned, who believed that all of our knowledge about astronomy has been discovered over the last few centuries, especially after learning about how ridiculous it was that many believed that the universe revolved around the Earth, or that Earth was flat. For the Mayans to have correctly predicted this, they must have had a pretty great understanding of our place in the universe and advanced quantitative skills. I wonder why they were so successful on these fronts, yet they were not as developed as their counterparts in Western Europe when they arrived. I wish you explained how exactly they were able to do this, but maybe I will ask you in class!
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This blog post was definitely an interesting read. It effectively challenges the idea that modern astronomical principles were discovered only a few hundred years ago. I thought it was interesting that the Mayan’s superstitions didn’t detract from their scientific understanding of the cosmos. In the history of western religions, religious beliefs kept some people from accepting a heliocentric model of our Solar System.
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That’s something really important to point out! I have only thought about the relationship between religion and science in only a modern context. I think that it is fair to even say that religion for the Mayans had even helped substantiate their efforts to study the cosmos. Without their beliefs, observating may not have been so meticulously done.
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Hey from your grader! What a beautiful artifact–the intricacy of the Mayan calendar is fascinating.
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Hi Glenna, I think I am the grader for the post!? Either way, it was interesting to learn about old predictions in astronomy. Wonder what they would have done with stellarium?
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