Researchers reveal how the Mayan calendar works after decades of study

The Mayan people are one of the most curious in existence. This is because the history behind each of them is discovered little by little, raising many enigmas and bringing even more importance to studies related to this population.

Additionally, there is a calendar known as Mayan calendarwhich is how they could measure the days at the time they lived. However, the item caused confusion, especially for scholars who embark on the history of these people.

Now a pair of anthropologists from Tulane University in New Orleans have managed to discover how the Mayan calendar, which has 819 days, works. In other words, it was really a great mystery for scholars to understand how the Mayans measured days and time.

How does the Mayan calendar work?

According to Victoria Bricker and John Linden, the discovery suggests that this ancient system used by the Mayans was used to track the movement of the planets in the night sky. And all of this over a period of 45 years. In other words, the Mayan calendar may represent a much longer time than expected.

The news was published in the magazine Ancient Mesoamerica on April 18. To further support the work, other research has already indicated that each of the Mayan seasons operated in four cycles of 819 days. However, with the studies of anthropologists, this cycle was expanded by 20 times more.

And the reason may be the fact that it links the calendar to the synodic periods of all the planets visible in the sky. This period is how the interval between the appearance of a star visible on Earth is known. For example, Mercury has a synodic period of 117 days, which ends up being included in the 819 days of the Mayan calendar if multiplied by 7.

However, other planets do not fit into the period within the Mayan calendar, even multiplied. So, scholars note that 20 rounds of 819 days give, in total, 16,380 days. This is equivalent to approximately 45 years.

Therefore, this value can be divided perfectly to fit the planets into the synodic period. Saturn, for example, takes about 378 days to reappear at the same point in the sky. So, 13 of these cycles are equivalent to 4,914 days, which is exactly six times 819.

Another important point is that seven returns to the same point of Venus end up coinciding with five counts of 819 days. Meanwhile, 39 repetitions of the appearance of Jupiter correspond to 19 cycles of 819 days. So, it seems that the anthropologists discovered the real functioning of the Mayan calendar.

This information changes calendar studies and makes it possible to understand even more about these mystical and incredible people.