Scientists Reveal How the Maya Predicted Eclipses for Centuries

Summary

A medieval Maya text for predicting solar eclipses has confused Western readers for centuries, but a pair of researchers may have finally cracked how it's really meant to work.Indigenous civilizations in Mexico and Guatemala kept calendars for more than two millennia before Europeans invaded the Americas, helping them to predict the timing of important events in the heavens and on Earth with extraordinary accuracy.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.Related: Scientists Think They've Finally Figured Out How a Maya Calendar WorksDating to the 11th or 12th century, the Dresden Codex is one of only four hieroglyphic Maya codices to survive European colonization.The bark paper codex is a 78-page accordion-style tome, with each page hand-written and illustrated in brilliant color, detailing astronomy, astrology, seasons, and medical knowledge.Predicting solar eclipses – which occur when the light of the Sun is obscured by the Moon, casting a shadow upon Earth's surface – was serious business in Maya society, which was built and operated around celestial events."If you kept accounts of what happened at the time of certain celestial events, you could be forewarned and take proper precautions when cycles repeated themselves," explained University of Texas historian Kimberley Breuer in an article for The Conversation.For instance, when the Sun was hidden behind the Moon, turning the day skies dark, members of Maya nobility would undertake bloodletting ceremonies to offer strength to the Sun god."Priests and rulers would know how to act, which rituals to perform and which sacrifices to make to the gods to guarantee that the cycles of destruction, rebirth and renewal continued," Breuer explained.An excerpt of the Dresden Codex relating to eclipse prediction. (Wikimedia Commons, public dom...