1491 ... if you have never read it was very eye opening as to how badass all these civilizations were. Their loss today would be similar to as if we suddenly lost 99% of all China.
This book was real eye-opening for me. I heard about it when it was first released, but sort of dismissed it since on its face it seemed like just another pop alt-history, "you won't learn this in school" book. But it is well researched, and well regarded by historians[0].
> Scientists Reveal How The Maya Predicted Eclipses For Centuries
It sounds like scientists actually revealed how to read a table of predictions in a document:
> Juteson and Lowry reject the long-standing assumption that the table was reset at its final position (that is, that it was intended to be used on a continuous loop, returning to month 1 after reaching month 405).
> The trouble is, using the table in this way doesn't actually work.
> ...Instead, they propose that a new table is begun in the 358th month of the current table. With this approach, the table's predictions are only about 2 hours and 20 minutes early for both Sun and Moon alignment.
This reminds me of something.
In Indian society, households have this calender called panchang. It is released annually by a group of priests who read and decipher ancient scriptures known as Vedas.
Surprisingly panchang is quite accurate and informative about duration of solar and lunar eclipses.
Nope they are not accurate anymore, have not been for a while. They used to be though. The model is similar to the Ptolemaic model but independently derived. If anyone cases the model is described in suryasiddhnta, English translations freely available.
The lack of accuracy of panchang is the result of accumulating calendric errors over centuries. Traditionally these used to get corrected by astronomical observations. However after the fall of Ujjain observatory the traditional / religious calendar has not been updated/corrected for centuries.
In fact right after independence India's first prime minister set up a calendar reform committee to update and modernise the traditional calendar. Top Indian scientists as well as scholars of Vedic scriptures were part of the committee.
To this day India government publishes these and updated positional astronomy records.
Complete clickbait. There is not even a transitory appearance of a "how". tldr; table is rebuilt at some point prior to the great cycle's end. How the table is built and just how did the Maya make the calculations? Crickets.
isnt it more embarrasing that they believed the sun needed help to reappear? that they mistook the feelings in their head to be real, kind of how people think they can feel or talk to a god? we love to pat ourselves on the back but never take a look at how stupid we actually are, most people most of the time. i feel regularly embarrassed at the mistakes we make
Many of these indigenous knowledge systems are essentially memory palaces. It's a way to memorize large amounts of information and map that information on some sort of tangible metaphor. Modern western astrology is pretty divorced from the original practice(s), but the original practice actually used a sidereal clock and actually corresponded to the positions of stars. The stars being an important component for navigation, agricultural calendars, etc. Astrology served as a memory palace to store this sort of information.
These metaphors are quite common across the world and over time gain many layers of knowledge. Go a little more east and you'll commonly see the 4 winds, the 4 cardinal directions, the 4 tastes, 4 [insert characteristics of medicinal properties] etc all mapped onto each other.
The most embarrassing part of humanity imo is the arrogance and disregard with which people sometimes approach other cultures
Additionally, ritual serves a purpose both for individuals and within a broader society - for instance, a bloodletting during a solar eclipse emphasizes both the vulnerability of society to outside affairs (a solar eclipse is a hauntingly humbling experience even to the modern viewer) and the noble’s obligation to society (literally shedding blood to help protect their society). Similar can be seen with some rituals around hunting and gathering - “never kill the first deer/take the first herb you see” serves as a conservation act.
There’s an old line - “religion is the finger that points to the moon” - to your point about religion as a memory palace, most of these practices survived not because the sun god blessed them, but because they had tangible and durable benefits to the societies that practiced them.
That attitude towards this issue, while natural, brings nothing positive to you. You should try to embrace our limitations, use them to play in your favor if needed, and be amazed at the diversity and curiosity of human thought. We will conquer the darkness, bit by bit.
That's an optimistic take, but equally valid is the take where delusions provide impetus for some pretty nasty behaviour - eg see the crusades
I had to broaden my view here recently a little bit myself. Worshipping deities has been around for a long time (8000 years?) and mostly involved no crusades, they certainly aren’t universal.
I value objectivity and truth as much as the next nerd, but would never set not-being-wrong as my highest value. Such a path can only lead to misery and alienation.
We have horoscopes and quantum computing. The existence of one is no shame on the other.
God is all-powerful, eternal, exists outside of space and time, and created us for a purpose - but he's too busy to be bothered by our prayers?
1491 ... if you have never read it was very eye opening as to how badass all these civilizations were. Their loss today would be similar to as if we suddenly lost 99% of all China.
This book was real eye-opening for me. I heard about it when it was first released, but sort of dismissed it since on its face it seemed like just another pop alt-history, "you won't learn this in school" book. But it is well researched, and well regarded by historians[0].
[0] One example:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2006...
1491 is pretty late. Both Babylonians and the Chinese predicted solar eclipses several thousand years before this.
OP was referring to the book titled 1491: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-...
> Scientists Reveal How The Maya Predicted Eclipses For Centuries
It sounds like scientists actually revealed how to read a table of predictions in a document:
> Juteson and Lowry reject the long-standing assumption that the table was reset at its final position (that is, that it was intended to be used on a continuous loop, returning to month 1 after reaching month 405).
> The trouble is, using the table in this way doesn't actually work.
> ...Instead, they propose that a new table is begun in the 358th month of the current table. With this approach, the table's predictions are only about 2 hours and 20 minutes early for both Sun and Moon alignment.
This reminds me of something. In Indian society, households have this calender called panchang. It is released annually by a group of priests who read and decipher ancient scriptures known as Vedas. Surprisingly panchang is quite accurate and informative about duration of solar and lunar eclipses.
Nope they are not accurate anymore, have not been for a while. They used to be though. The model is similar to the Ptolemaic model but independently derived. If anyone cases the model is described in suryasiddhnta, English translations freely available.
The lack of accuracy of panchang is the result of accumulating calendric errors over centuries. Traditionally these used to get corrected by astronomical observations. However after the fall of Ujjain observatory the traditional / religious calendar has not been updated/corrected for centuries.
In fact right after independence India's first prime minister set up a calendar reform committee to update and modernise the traditional calendar. Top Indian scientists as well as scholars of Vedic scriptures were part of the committee.
To this day India government publishes these and updated positional astronomy records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_national_calendar
Complete clickbait. There is not even a transitory appearance of a "how". tldr; table is rebuilt at some point prior to the great cycle's end. How the table is built and just how did the Maya make the calculations? Crickets.
The actual paper seems to have more information: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt9039
[dead]
isnt it more embarrasing that they believed the sun needed help to reappear? that they mistook the feelings in their head to be real, kind of how people think they can feel or talk to a god? we love to pat ourselves on the back but never take a look at how stupid we actually are, most people most of the time. i feel regularly embarrassed at the mistakes we make
Many of these indigenous knowledge systems are essentially memory palaces. It's a way to memorize large amounts of information and map that information on some sort of tangible metaphor. Modern western astrology is pretty divorced from the original practice(s), but the original practice actually used a sidereal clock and actually corresponded to the positions of stars. The stars being an important component for navigation, agricultural calendars, etc. Astrology served as a memory palace to store this sort of information.
These metaphors are quite common across the world and over time gain many layers of knowledge. Go a little more east and you'll commonly see the 4 winds, the 4 cardinal directions, the 4 tastes, 4 [insert characteristics of medicinal properties] etc all mapped onto each other.
The most embarrassing part of humanity imo is the arrogance and disregard with which people sometimes approach other cultures
Additionally, ritual serves a purpose both for individuals and within a broader society - for instance, a bloodletting during a solar eclipse emphasizes both the vulnerability of society to outside affairs (a solar eclipse is a hauntingly humbling experience even to the modern viewer) and the noble’s obligation to society (literally shedding blood to help protect their society). Similar can be seen with some rituals around hunting and gathering - “never kill the first deer/take the first herb you see” serves as a conservation act.
There’s an old line - “religion is the finger that points to the moon” - to your point about religion as a memory palace, most of these practices survived not because the sun god blessed them, but because they had tangible and durable benefits to the societies that practiced them.
That attitude towards this issue, while natural, brings nothing positive to you. You should try to embrace our limitations, use them to play in your favor if needed, and be amazed at the diversity and curiosity of human thought. We will conquer the darkness, bit by bit.
That's an optimistic take, but equally valid is the take where delusions provide impetus for some pretty nasty behaviour - eg see the crusades
I had to broaden my view here recently a little bit myself. Worshipping deities has been around for a long time (8000 years?) and mostly involved no crusades, they certainly aren’t universal.
I value objectivity and truth as much as the next nerd, but would never set not-being-wrong as my highest value. Such a path can only lead to misery and alienation.
We have horoscopes and quantum computing. The existence of one is no shame on the other.
God is all-powerful, eternal, exists outside of space and time, and created us for a purpose - but he's too busy to be bothered by our prayers?