| Show NUMBER EMERGING FULL ULL FLEDGED ROM THE GAPING JAWS of MW the human face motif Finer emerging ging from I 1 serpents jans 1 7 so often seen in xai MB a temple decorations 4 Z and an eclipse recorded in the 4 4 Z N inscriptions so perfect alas as their science of numbers that it can be I 1 edified aeri fied toda ile fit someone with a gifted tion once wrote that the maya held sacred a venerable tradition th that at in the dim and hoary long long ago the gods gave them numbers somewhat in this wise number sprang form the gaping jaws of our great god Kukul kan full fledged and perfectly funt function tion ing his first act was to walk for ward twenty steps then he retraced it in thirteen from 20 and 13 and tatar combinations he gave us the full science of numbers which conati tute our count of days and all the times of coming and going of sun moon and planets in which the great ones live as recorded in our inscriptions and so greatly did they venerate that god given gift that they con scantly searched for the exact num her ber of days of the revolution of the moon expressed in an even integral number as they had no fractions to arrive at a formula which might be used over long stretches of time and still be accurate this is not as easy as it reads for the moon does not go around the earth in an even number of days but in that jittery lengthy decimal of 29 days it if any reader thinks it simple to con vert that odd decimal into even in cegers with so little carry over that the factor can be repeated a and times let him try it he will be surprised how difficult it is yet the maya did it and did it before we were using the figures 1 2 3 etc about years or so before we adopted the arabic num aeration A moon and tnie true length of the year for instance following the god given gift they sorted and picked and chose such a factor one of sev eral as days equal moons giving tor for one moon 29 from ours only or within NINETY SEVEN MILL of a day da put that into seconds and see how remarkable it was and they said 6 days equal moons and the sun Is then ex acely on the same spot on the horl hori zon that it was NINETEEN TRUE YEARS ago in other words they at about or so A D discovered the famous cycle which we today use in church of rome easter computations so with the length of the true so lar year known and the length of time of one lunar revolution i the moun ments are tilled filled with as 4 trono mical computations moon tor for tulas of each town town vying with 1 town to perfect a better and better and constantly searching to express the true length of the year which we know to be days over a period ot of years they got an eclipse on a period ending very important to the maa one day an eclipse occurred ibie ible in yucatan now there Is noth ing peculiar about that eclipses oc cur at intervals and many had al ready been seen but this one oc r cured poured on what was to them an im day the day ending a regular katun namely 9 17 0 0 0 ii this wap wa fortuitous maybe they predicted it in advance that would add the crowning to skill anyway so great an event was it that in honor of the priests a very fine well cut monument was erected to commemorate the event called by us stela E Qui quirigua Quirl gua the difficulty arises even though such an eclipse eclips el did occur their rec ree ord Is in maya notation and ours in julian day how to bring the two together or what it is called tech determine the correlation con elation of the thel MB a count vi with ith the julian da AX e use about a generation ago goodman proposed the correlation that is to any maya date add that factor and it will give the equlla lent julian day which is what our astronomers use in all their calculi eions let us try it 9 17 0 0 0 in the maya count is 1 add gives julian day 2 and on that day there should be an eclipse NAVY department V U a S NAVAL observatory washington D C 15 august 1933 refer to EN 12 dear sir in delpy to your letter of 17 july there was an annular eclipse of 0 the sun on 20 january julian day 2 very truly yours james robertson director nautical almanac mr frank beckwith sr delta utah another eclipse recorded on a stela by the maa a they also recorded an another otherl eclipse on a stela at chiapas chiapas quoted by dr john E which corresponds to the eclipse of july 16 also verified by astronomers as having been visible in the correlation will verity verify many of the computations as to the moon age which was very frequently recorded by the maya so with in many instances on the age of the moon and these two ec eclipses with possibly more to be added as time is devoted to the search it would imply that there Is nothing lacking as to the accuracy of the correlation Is there any wonder that the maya venerated numbers Is there any thing but admiration wonder and praise to them that they were such skillful astronomers 9 to compute the moon age the true year period record eclipses that can now be verified Is there any wonder that the subject of the maya Is so fascinating frank beckwith sr 1933 |
