Archaeoastronomy and the Maya

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya PDF Author: Gerardo Aldana y V.
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782976434
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya PDF Author: Gerardo Aldana y V.
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782976434
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.

Star Gods of the Maya

Star Gods of the Maya PDF Author: Susan Milbrath
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292778511
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
“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

Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art

Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art PDF Author: Joanne Pillsbury
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588397319
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
An introduction to the complex stories of Mesoamerican divinity through the carvings, ceramics, and metalwork of the Maya Classic period Lives of the Gods reveals how ancient Maya artists evoked a pantheon as rich and complex as the more familiar Greco-Roman, Hindu-Buddhist, and Egyptian deities. Focusing on the period between A.D. 250 and 900, the authors show how this powerful cosmology informed some of the greatest creative achievements of Maya civilization.

The Role of archaeoastronomy in the Maya World

The Role of archaeoastronomy in the Maya World PDF Author: UNESCO Office Mexico
Publisher: UNESCO Publishing
ISBN: 9235000114
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description


Skywatchers

Skywatchers PDF Author: Anthony F. Aveni
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292705029
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico helped establish the field of archaeoastronomy, and it remains the standard introduction to this subject. Combining basic astronomy with archaeological and ethnological data, it presented a readable and entertaining synthesis of all that was known of ancient astronomy in the western hemisphere as of 1980. In this revised edition, Anthony Aveni draws on his own and others' discoveries of the past twenty years to bring the Skywatchers story up to the present. He offers new data and interpretations in many areas, including: The study of Mesoamerican time and calendrical systems and their unprecedented continuity in contemporary Mesoamerican culture The connections between Precolumbian religion, astrology, and scientific, quantitative astronomy The relationship between Highland Mexico and the world of the Maya and the state of Pan-American scientific practices The use of personal computer software for computing astronomical data With this updated information, Skywatchers will serve a new generation of general and scholarly readers and will be useful in courses on archaeoastronomy, astronomy, history of astronomy, history of science, anthropology, archaeology, and world religions.

Calendars in Mesoamerica and Peru

Calendars in Mesoamerica and Peru PDF Author: Anthony F. Aveni
Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description


Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica

Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica PDF Author: John E. Staller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199967768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Lightning has evoked a numinous response as well as powerful timeless references and symbols among ancient religions throughout the world. Thunder and lightning have also taken on various symbolic manifestations, some representing primary deities, as in the case of Zeus and Jupiter in the Greco/Roman tradition, and Thor in Norse myth. Similarly, lightning veneration played an important role to the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and Andean South America. Lightning veneration and the religious cults and their associated rituals represent to varying degrees a worship of nature and the forces that shape the natural world. The inter-relatedness of the cultural and natural environment is related to what may be called a widespread cultural perception of the natural world as sacred, a kind of mythic landscape. Comparative analysis of the Andes and Mesoamerica has been a recurring theme recently in part because two of the areas of "high civilization" in the Americas have much in common despite substantial ecological differences, and in part because there is some evidence, of varying quality, that some people had migrated from one area to the other. Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica is the first ever study to explore the symbolic elements surrounding lightning in their associated Pre-Columbian religious ideologies. Moreover, it extends its examination to contemporary culture to reveal how cultural perceptions of the sacred, their symbolic representations and ritual practices, and architectural representations in the landscape were conjoined in the ancient past. Ethnographic accounts and ethnohistoric documents provide insights through first-hand accounts that broaden our understanding of levels of syncretism since the European contact. The interdisciplinary research presented herein also provides a basis for tracing back Pre-Columbian manifestations of lightning its associated religious beliefs and ritual practices, as well as its mythological, symbolic, iconographic, and architectural representations to earlier civilizations. This unique study will be of great interest to scholars of Pre-Columbian South and Mesoamerica, and will stimulate future comparative studies by archaeologists and anthropologists.

Journal of Mesoamerican Studies

Journal of Mesoamerican Studies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Central America
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage

Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage PDF Author: David Carrasco
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
For more than a millennium the great Mesoamerican city of Teotihucan (c150BCE--750CE) has been imagined and reimagined by a host of subsequent cultures including our own. This book engages the subject of the unity and diversity of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica by focusing on the classic heritage of this ancient city. Includes the history of religions, anthropology, archaeology, and art history -- and a wealth of new data, this book examines Teotihuacan's rippling influence across Mesoamerican time and space, including important patterns of continuity and change, and its relationships, both historical and symbolic, with Tenochtitlan, Cholula, and various Maya communities.

Bolon Tiku

Bolon Tiku PDF Author: Jorge Chapa Carreon
Publisher: Palibrio
ISBN: 1463331851
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
La historia la escriben los vencedores y lo hacen según su conveniencia para sus fines colonizadores. Por eso, por ejemplo, gran parte de la cultura azteca permaneció oculta, hasta que M. León Portilla, en su libro Visión de los Vencidos, nos muestra una relación del testimonio histórico de los conquistados. Por lo mismo, en ningún tratado de la historia de las matemáticas y astronomía actual se mencionan los adelantos que respecto de los conocimientos astronómicos y matemáticos, se alcanzaron por las culturas antiguas que florecieron en el continente Americano, a pesar de que en algunos casos se adelantaran casi mil años a los del viejo continente, como se demuestra en la ecuación: 8x365=5x584=13x224.61538 Ecuación a la que llegaron Mayas y Teotihuacanos por el 378 d.C. y que relaciona el movimiento de los planetas Venus y la tierra en su transito alrededor del Sol y que en Europa no se conoció sino hasta el siglo XVI con la ecuación de los planetas atribuida a Kepler: 1/T = 1/ Sin+1/S ... es decir: 1/365=1/584+1/224.61538 Donde se muestra que la revolución sideral de Venus de 224.61538, es decir el número de días terrestres que tarda en darle la vuelta al Sol es exactamente la misma. Amen de desarrollar, los Mayas, un modelo matemático del tipo fractal, como se muestra en esta investigación del movimiento de los planetas de nuestro sistema solar, visibles a simple vista, que seguramente es el primero de este tipo en la historia de la humanidad. Y este modelo matemático fractal del tiempo precolombino cuya quinta Era Solar terminará este 21 de Diciembre del 2012, en un solsticio de invierno y que con las 4 eras anteriores, completaran un ciclo de precesión del eje terrestre y así mismo habrán un eclipse de Sol y otro de Luna, un tránsito de Venus por el disco Solar, una alineación del Sol y la tierra con el centro de la Vía Láctea y además serán visibles al atardecer los planetas Mercurio, Venus, Marte, Júpiter y Saturno. También se muestran en este trabajo otros adelantos alcanzados por las culturas Americanas precolombinas que se conocen poco, como son el Grabado al Agua Fuerte, el torno del alfarero rústico, el electro plateado, la brújula, el trabajo de los metales etc.