[Intro & Geography]
[History]
[Daily Life]
[Religion]
[Science 1]
[Science 2]
[Science 3][Project 1] [Project 3] [Project 4] [Project 5] [Project 6] [Main Menu]
Science and Technology 1
Maya Astronomy
The greatest accomplishments in science that the Maya made were their astronomy and mathematics. The Maya weren't interested in astronomy and mathematics just for science, it was mainly for their religious ceremonies.
The Maya studied the sun and moon, planets such as Venus and Mars and the stars. The priest astronomers made a calendar that was one of the most accurate in the world.. The knowledge of the Mayan astronomers was so great that the priests could predict eclipses of the moon accurately and figured that the planet Venus had a 584 day year. They knew how long it took for Earth to go around the Sun and the Moon to go around the Earth. They knew exactly how long a year was and their calculations were almost as accurate as the scientists and computers can do today.
They built observatories and sun dials for studying astronomy. They built groups of buildings that showed the longest and the shortest day of the year.
The Mayan Calendar
The Maya had two different calendars. One was for the civil year and another was for the sacred year.
The civil year had eighteen months, a month was twenty days and all adds up to 360 days a year. The Maya actually have five more days in their year but those are unlucky days and are called Uayeb. So in fact the Maya had a total of 365 days in a year. This 365 day year was called a haab.
The sacred calendar was called a tzolkin and contained 260 days. This calendar was to mark the ceremonies of the Maya.
These two calendars looked like wheels with cogs around them. By joining them together they made the Maya Calendar Round. If you imagine both wheels turning around together then the same two days would join together only once in fifly two years. This is how the Mayan's knew which day in the sacred year would fall on which day in the civil year.
Pages Created: Tuesday, 12-May-98 11:50:14 EST
URL: http://www.best.com/~swanson/maya/eg_maya_project3.html
This page has been visited . times since August 15, 1997
Web pages developed by L.C. Swanson.