[HN Gopher] Scientists Reveal How the Maya Predicted Eclipses fo...
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Scientists Reveal How the Maya Predicted Eclipses for Centuries
Author : rguiscard
Score : 73 points
Date : 2025-11-14 00:51 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| yubblegum wrote:
| Complete clickbait. There is not even a transitory appearance of
| a "how". tldr; table is rebuilt at some point prior to the great
| cycle's end. How the table is built and just how did the Maya
| make the calculations? Crickets.
| bradrn wrote:
| The actual paper seems to have more information:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt9039
| temperceve wrote:
| 1491 ... if you have never read it was very eye opening as to how
| badass all these civilizations were. Their loss today would be
| similar to as if we suddenly lost 99% of all China.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| This book was real eye-opening for me. I heard about it when it
| was first released, but sort of dismissed it since on its face
| it seemed like just another pop alt-history, "you won't learn
| this in school" book. But it is well researched, and well
| regarded by historians[0].
|
| [0] One example:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1
| 931-0846.2006...
| tokai wrote:
| 1491 is pretty late. Both Babylonians and the Chinese predicted
| solar eclipses several thousand years before this.
| NoNotTheDuo wrote:
| OP was referring to the book titled 1491: https://www.penguin
| randomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-...
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| isnt it more embarrasing that they believed the sun needed help
| to reappear? that they mistook the feelings in their head to be
| real, kind of how people think they can feel or talk to a god? we
| love to pat ourselves on the back but never take a look at how
| stupid we actually are, most people most of the time. i feel
| regularly embarrassed at the mistakes we make
| ainiriand wrote:
| That attitude towards this issue, while natural, brings nothing
| positive to you. You should try to embrace our limitations, use
| them to play in your favor if needed, and be amazed at the
| diversity and curiosity of human thought. We will conquer the
| darkness, bit by bit.
| llamasushi wrote:
| That's an optimistic take, but equally valid is the take
| where delusions provide impetus for some pretty nasty
| behaviour - eg see the crusades
| barbazoo wrote:
| I had to broaden my view here recently a little bit myself.
| Worshipping deities has been around for a long time (8000
| years?) and mostly involved no crusades, they certainly
| aren't universal.
| iterance wrote:
| We have horoscopes and quantum computing. The existence of one
| is no shame on the other.
| culi wrote:
| Many of these indigenous knowledge systems are essentially
| memory palaces. It's a way to memorize large amounts of
| information and map that information on some sort of tangible
| metaphor. Modern western astrology is pretty divorced from the
| original practice(s), but the original practice actually used a
| sidereal clock and actually corresponded to the positions of
| stars. The stars being an important component for navigation,
| agricultural calendars, etc. Astrology served as a memory
| palace to store this sort of information.
|
| These metaphors are quite common across the world and over time
| gain many layers of knowledge. Go a little more east and you'll
| commonly see the 4 winds, the 4 cardinal directions, the 4
| tastes, 4 [insert characteristics of medicinal properties] etc
| all mapped onto each other.
|
| The most embarrassing part of humanity imo is the arrogance and
| disregard with which people sometimes approach other cultures
| roughly wrote:
| Additionally, ritual serves a purpose both for individuals
| and within a broader society - for instance, a bloodletting
| during a solar eclipse emphasizes both the vulnerability of
| society to outside affairs (a solar eclipse is a hauntingly
| humbling experience even to the modern viewer) and the
| noble's obligation to society (literally shedding blood to
| help protect their society). Similar can be seen with some
| rituals around hunting and gathering - "never kill the first
| deer/take the first herb you see" serves as a conservation
| act.
|
| There's an old line - "religion is the finger that points to
| the moon" - to your point about religion as a memory palace,
| most of these practices survived not because the sun god
| blessed them, but because they had tangible and durable
| benefits to the societies that practiced them.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I value objectivity and truth as much as the next nerd, but
| would never set not-being-wrong as my highest value. Such a
| path can only lead to misery and alienation.
| aj_hackman wrote:
| God is all-powerful, eternal, exists outside of space and time,
| and created us for a purpose - but he's too busy to be bothered
| by our prayers?
| palmotea wrote:
| > Scientists Reveal How The Maya Predicted Eclipses For Centuries
|
| It sounds like scientists _actually_ revealed how to read a table
| of predictions in a document:
|
| > Juteson and Lowry reject the long-standing assumption that the
| table was reset at its final position (that is, that it was
| intended to be used on a continuous loop, returning to month 1
| after reaching month 405).
|
| > The trouble is, using the table in this way doesn't actually
| work.
|
| > ...Instead, they propose that a new table is begun in the 358th
| month of the current table. With this approach, the table's
| predictions are only about 2 hours and 20 minutes early for both
| Sun and Moon alignment.
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| This reminds me of something. In Indian society, households have
| this calender called panchang. It is released annually by a group
| of priests who read and decipher ancient scriptures known as
| Vedas. Surprisingly panchang is quite accurate and informative
| about duration of solar and lunar eclipses.
| srean wrote:
| Nope they are not accurate anymore, have not been for a while.
| They used to be though. The model is similar to the Ptolemaic
| model but independently derived. If anyone cases the model is
| described in _suryasiddhnta_ , English translations freely
| available.
|
| The lack of accuracy of panchang is the result of accumulating
| calendric errors over centuries. Traditionally these used to
| get corrected by astronomical observations. However after the
| fall of Ujjain observatory the traditional / religious calendar
| has not been updated/corrected for centuries.
|
| In fact right after independence India's first prime minister
| set up a calendar reform committee to update and modernise the
| traditional calendar. Top Indian scientists as well as scholars
| of Vedic scriptures were part of the committee.
|
| To this day India government publishes these and updated
| positional astronomy records.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_national_calendar
| hdevarajan wrote:
| "Unfortunately, much of this knowledge - and the texts that
| contained it - was destroyed during the Spanish Inquisition,
| leaving only a few bits and pieces from which to reconstruct
| these advanced methods for celestial prediction." Not the
| Inquisition, which happened on a different continent!
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's the shorter name of the agency, which indeed also operated
| in America
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
|
| > The inquisition expanded to other domains under the Spanish
| Crown, including Southern Italy and the Americas, while also
| targeting those accused of alumbradismo, Protestantism,
| witchcraft, blasphemy, bigamy, sodomy, Freemasonry, etc.
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