Did old Maya observe Mercury?

Serbian Astronomical Journal

article

Vondrák J.¹  Böhm V.²  Böhm B. 

[1] Astronomical Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences;The University for Political and Social Sciences

关键词: Ephemerides;    Planets and satellites: individual: Mercury;    History and philosophy of astronomy;    Time;   

DOI  :  10.2298/SAJ211222002V

来源: Astronomical Observatory, Department of Astronomy, Belgrade

【 摘 要 】

It is well known that the rich culture of old Maya contained, among other, also avery complicated and complex calendar, in which they recorded not only historical events, but alsosignificant astronomical phenomena. Main source of information is the Dresden Codex, roughly coveringthe interval between 280 and 1325 AD. The problem of the so-called correlation between Mayan andour calendars (expressing the difference between Long Count of Mayan calendar and Julian date) isvery old, there exist about fifty different solutions that mutually differ by up to hundreds of years.Out of these, historians mostly accept the so-called Goodman - Mart´ınez - Thompson (GMT) value of584 283 days, which is based almost entirely on historical events. On the contrary, we stressed veryprecisely dated astronomical data, demonstrated the contradictions of GMT with them, and derivedthe so-called B¨ohm correlation (BB) of 622 261 days, which is in excellent agreement with astronomicalphenomena recorded in Dresden Codex. Maya researchers are mostly convinced that Maya did not paymuch attention to Mercury. Here we conclude that the truth is opposite; we analyze the data in DresdenCodex and find many records corresponding to visibility of Mercury near its maximum elongations fromthe Sun, and also to their conjunctions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC-ND