NuclearWinter
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- Apr 13, 2006
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Most of the Native Meso-American documents were destroyed in the early years of the Spanish occupation of South America but a few priceless books and relics did survive the destruction, either having been hidden by the Indians or exported back to Europe as presents for the King. The most important of these was what is now called the Dresden Codex, named after the town in whose library it was lodged. This strange book, inscribed with unknown hieroglyphs, was written by Maya Indians who once ruled over much of Central America, the ruins of their once grand civilization littering the jungle.
In 1880 a brilliant, German scholar, who was working as a librarian in Dresden, turned his attention to this codex. By a process of extraordinary detective work he cracked the code of the Mayan calendar making it possible for other scholars and explorers to translate the many dated inscriptions to be found on buildings, stelae and other ancient Mayan artefacts.
The scholar also discovered that the Dresden Codex itself was concerned with astronomy providing detailed tables of lunar eclipses and other phenomenon. These were so accurate that they put our own calendar to shame. He also found evidence for a curious "magic number"- 1,366,560 days, which could be factorised in a number of ways and which harmonised the cycles of Venus and Mars with two "yearly" cycles also used by the Maya: the sacred tzolkin of 260 days and the Haab of 365 days. However, he also found that they had another system of counting the days relative to a starting date, called the Birth of Venus and now known to be 13 August 3114 BC.
In 1880 a brilliant, German scholar, who was working as a librarian in Dresden, turned his attention to this codex. By a process of extraordinary detective work he cracked the code of the Mayan calendar making it possible for other scholars and explorers to translate the many dated inscriptions to be found on buildings, stelae and other ancient Mayan artefacts.
The scholar also discovered that the Dresden Codex itself was concerned with astronomy providing detailed tables of lunar eclipses and other phenomenon. These were so accurate that they put our own calendar to shame. He also found evidence for a curious "magic number"- 1,366,560 days, which could be factorised in a number of ways and which harmonised the cycles of Venus and Mars with two "yearly" cycles also used by the Maya: the sacred tzolkin of 260 days and the Haab of 365 days. However, he also found that they had another system of counting the days relative to a starting date, called the Birth of Venus and now known to be 13 August 3114 BC.