Download or read book Calculating Brilliance written by Gerardo Aldana and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contextualizes the discovery of a Venus astronomical pattern by a female Mayan astronomer at Chich'en Itza and the discovery's later adaptation and application at Mayapan. Calculating Brilliance brings different intellectual threads together across time and space, from the Classic to the Postclassic, the colonial period to the twenty-first century to offer a new vision for understanding Mayan astronomy.
Download or read book Star Gods of the Maya written by Susan Milbrath and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Download or read book Maya Political Science written by Prudence M. Rice and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the ancient Maya rule their world? Despite more than a century of archaeological investigation and glyphic decipherment, the nature of Maya political organization and political geography has remained an open question. Many debates have raged over models of centralization versus decentralization, superordinate and subordinate status—with far-flung analogies to emerging states in Europe, Asia, and Africa. But Prudence Rice asserts that neither the model of two giant "superpowers" nor that which postulates scores of small, weakly independent polities fits the accumulating body of material and cultural evidence. In this groundbreaking book, Rice builds a new model of Classic lowland Maya (AD 179-948) political organization and political geography. Using the method of direct historical analogy, she integrates ethnohistoric and ethnographic knowledge of the Colonial-period and modern Maya with archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic data from the ancient Maya. On this basis of cultural continuity, she constructs a convincing case that the fundamental ordering principles of Classic Maya geopolitical organization were the calendar (specifically a 256-year cycle of time known as the may) and the concept of quadripartition, or the division of the cosmos into four cardinal directions. Rice also examines this new model of geopolitical organization in the Preclassic and Postclassic periods and demonstrates that it offers fresh insights into the nature of rulership, ballgame ritual, and warfare among the Classic lowland Maya.
Download or read book Mayan Astronomy written by Charles River and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, and the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today, but of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In the past decade especially, there has been a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ended in 2012. The focus on the "doomsday" scenario, however, overshadowed the Mayans' true contributions to astronomy, language, sports, and art. While many incorrectly presume that the Maya were predicting the world to end on that date, it is not a coincidence that their calendar ended on the winter solstice. The Maya developed a sophisticated method of calculating and creating a calendar that is astonishing even by today's standards, and their advancements in applied mathematics not only has intrigued archaeologists but has been incorporated into the beliefs of New Agers and modern apocalyptic doomsayers. In the history of arithmetic, their use of zero stands as a milestone of great significance, which placed them ahead of contemporary Europeans. In Europe, this essential concept was not part of the canon of calculation until the Renaissance. For the Maya, astronomy was not a purely scientific pursuit but intimately linked to religious, mythological, and ideological elements that were of the highest importance. The celestial realm held a sacred nature, as did the many gods and goddesses that dwelt there, so for all Mesoamerican cultures, astronomy was a fundamental part of their everyday lives. Thus, astronomy was present in their calendars, religion, and even agriculture, and in close relation to astronomy, the concept of time was also an essential part of their worldview. The Maya recorded time on almost every surface they could, including lintels, cornices, panels, stelae, friezes, ceramics, and paper. This insistence on capturing dates has led many scholars to suggest the Maya were obsessed with time. The Maya had some of the most advanced astronomical measurements in the world, and their work built upon thousands of years, spanning from around 2500 BCE until the the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. Thanks to their hieroglyphic writing, archaeologists have been able to learn a wealth of information about the way they lived and their complex system of beliefs. Susan Milbrath, a leading expert on Mayan astronomy, noted that the "study of Pre-Columbian Maya astronomical imagery must begin with an understanding of the contemporary Maya worldview, because we cannot hope to penetrate the ancient beliefs without an understanding of what the Maya say about the heavens today." Many contemporary Mayans still use one or several of the ancient calendars, as well as Precolumbian rituals and astronomical cycles. Mayan Astronomy: The History of the Maya's Measurements of the Planets and Stars examines what is known and unknown about the Maya's astronomy, and why their astronomy was among the most accurate in the world. Along with pictures and a bibliography for further reading, you will learn about Mayan astronomy like never before.
Download or read book Maya E Groups written by David A. Freidel and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As complex societies emerged in the Maya lowlands during the first millennium BCE, so did stable communities focused around public squares and the worship of a divine ruler tied to a Maize God cult. “E Groups,” central to many of these settlements, are architectural complexes: typically, a long platform supporting three struc¬tures and facing a western pyramid across a formal plaza. Aligned with the movements of the sun, E Groups have long been interpreted as giant calendrical devices crucial to the rise of Maya civilization. This volume presents new archaeological data to reveal that E Groups were constructed earlier than previously thought. In fact, they are the earliest identifiable architectural plan at many Maya settlements. More than just astronomical observatories or calendars, E Groups were a key element of community organization, urbanism, and identity in the heart of the Maya lowlands. They served as gathering places for emerging communities and centers of ritual; they were the very first civic-religious public architecture in the Maya lowlands. Investigating a wide variety of E Group sites—including some of the most famous like the Mundo Perdido in Tikal and the hitherto little known complex at Chan, as well as others in Ceibal, El Palmar, Cival, Calakmul, Caracol, Xunantunich, Yaxnohcah, Yaxuná, and San Bartolo—this volume pieces together the development of social and political complexity in ancient Maya civilization. James Aimers | Anthony F. Aveni | Jamie J. Awe | Boris Beltran | M. Kathryn Brown | Arlen F. Chase | Diane Z. Chase | Anne S. Dowd | James Doyle | Francisco Estrada-Belli | David A. Freidel | Julie A. Hoggarth | Takeshi Inomata | Patricia A. Mcanany | Susan Milbrath | Jerry Murdock | Kathryn Reese-Taylor | Prudence M. Rice | Cynthia Robin | Franco D. Rossi | Jeremy A. Sabloff | William A. Saturno | Travis W. Stanton A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Download or read book An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs written by Sylvanus Griswold Morley and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 1975 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maya Calendar Origins written by Prudence M. Rice and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos, Prudence M. Rice proposed a new model of Maya political organization in which geopolitical seats of power rotated according to a 256-year calendar cycle known as the May. This fundamental connection between timekeeping and Maya political organization sparked Rice's interest in the origins of the two major calendars used by the ancient lowland Maya, one 260 days long, and the other having 365 days. In Maya Calendar Origins, she presents a provocative new thesis about the origins and development of the calendrical system. Integrating data from anthropology, archaeology, art history, astronomy, ethnohistory, myth, and linguistics, Rice argues that the Maya calendars developed about a millennium earlier than commonly thought, around 1200 BC, as an outgrowth of observations of the natural phenomena that scheduled the movements of late Archaic hunter-gatherer-collectors throughout what became Mesoamerica. She asserts that an understanding of the cycles of weather and celestial movements became the basis of power for early rulers, who could thereby claim "control" over supernatural cosmic forces. Rice shows how time became materialized—transformed into status objects such as monuments that encoded calendrical or temporal concerns—as well as politicized, becoming the foundation for societal order, political legitimization, and wealth. Rice's research also sheds new light on the origins of the Popol Vuh, which, Rice believes, encodes the history of the development of the Mesoamerican calendars. She also explores the connections between the Maya and early Olmec and Izapan cultures in the Isthmian region, who shared with the Maya the cosmovision and ideology incorporated into the calendrical systems.
Download or read book The Popol Vuh written by Lewis Spence and published by New York : AMS Press. This book was released on 1908 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tikal written by Elizabeth Mann and published by Mikaya Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Maya Indians in the city of Tikal, founded in 800 B.C.
Download or read book Middleworld written by Jon Voelkel and published by Darby Creek. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When his archaeologist parents go missing in Central America, fourteen-year-old Max embarks on a wild adventure through the Mayan underworld in search of the legendary Jaguar Stones, which enabled ancient Mayan kings to wield the powers of living gods. Includes cast of characters, glossary, facts about the Maya cosmos and calendar, and a recipe for chicken tamales.
Download or read book The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars written by Geoff Stray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-06 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only small, popular book on the important subject of ancient calendars. The study of heavenly cycles is common to most ancient cultures. The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Babylonians all tried to make sense of the year. But it fell to the later Mesoamerican Maya to create a series of calendars that could be cross referenced. In doing so, the Maya discovered many strange numerical harmonics. Their lunar calendar was extremely accurate-far more so than the Greek Metonic cycle; they tracked Venus to an accuracy of less than a day in five hundred years and their tables could have been used to predict eclipses seven hundred years in the future. This book will provide a much needed compact guide to the Mayan calendar systems as well as covering the essentials of calendar development throughout the world.
Download or read book The Numeration Calendar Systems and Astronomical Knowledge of the Mayas written by Charles P 1842-1921 Bowditch and published by Franklin Classics. This book was released on 2018-10-12 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book 2012 written by Mark Van Stone and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Responding to the upsurge in interest in the Maya prophecies, Van Stone has spent the last several years researching what the ancient Maya actually said about 2012. The result is based entirely on science, archaeology, decipherment, and Precolumbian art.
Download or read book The Maya Calendar written by Weldon Lamb and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1,800 years ago, speakers of proto-Ch’olan, the ancestor of three present-day Maya languages, had developed a calendar of eighteen twenty-day months plus a set of five days for a total of 365 days. This original Maya calendar, used extensively during the Classic period (200–900 CE), recorded in hieroglyphic inscriptions the dates of dynastic and cosmological importance. Over time, and especially after the Mayas’ contact with Europeans, the month names that had originated with these inscriptions developed into fourteen distinct traditions, each connected to a different ethnic group. Today, the glyphs encompass 250 standard forms, variants, and alternates, with about 570 meanings among all the cognates, synonyms, and homonyms. In The Maya Calendar, Weldon Lamb collects, defines, and correlates the month names in every recorded Maya calendrical tradition from the first hieroglyphic inscriptions to the present—an undertaking critical to unlocking and understanding the iconography and cosmology of the ancient Maya world. Mining data from astronomy, ethnography, linguistics, and epigraphy, and working from early and modern dictionaries of the Maya languages, Lamb pieces together accurate definitions of the month names in order to compare them across time and tradition. His exhaustive process reveals unsuspected parallels. Three-fourths of the month names, he shows, still derive from those of the original hieroglyphic inscriptions. Lamb also traces the relationship between month names as cognates, synonyms, or homonyms, and then reconstructs each name’s history of development, connecting the Maya month names in several calendars to ancient texts and archaeological finds. In this landmark study, Lamb’s investigations afford new insight into the agricultural, astronomical, ritual, and even political motivations behind names and dates in the Maya calendar. A history of descent and diffusion, of unexpected connectedness and longevity, The Maya Calendar offers readers a deep understanding of a foundational aspect of Maya culture.
Download or read book Maya Script written by María Longhena and published by Abbeville Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some give us portraits of the great leaders who played important roles in the rise of this extraordinary culture. The complexity of their incredible calendar and astronomical calculations reveals a highly developed civilization."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Maya Astronomy written by John Edgar Teeple and published by . This book was released on 1930 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maya Cosmos written by David Freidel and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 1995-02-27 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Masterful blend of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and lively personal reportage, Maya Comos tells a constellation of stories, from the historical to the mythological, and envokes the awesome power of one of the richest civilizations ever to grace the earth.
