© Jon G. Fuller/VWPics/Alamy Stock PhotoThe ruins of the Temple of the Jaguar (Temple I) and the North Acropolis loom over what remains of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal in El Petén, Guatemala. Two major events in the city, the coronation of the 6-year-old Lady of Tikal in 511 CE and a defeat by the city-state Caracol in the 562 CE “Star War,” took place in approximate synchrony with meteor outbursts. Recently published research suggests that the Maya may have linked the timings of events such as royal accessions and wars to astronomical predictions of meteor showers.
In newly published research, the two-person research team has found more than a dozen instances of hieroglyphic records from the Mayan Classic Period (250-909 CE) indicating that important events occurred within just a few days of an outburst of
Eta Aquariid meteor showers, one of the celestial displays tied to the comet.
No Mayan astronomical records from that period survived the Spanish invasion, and the four surviving Mayan codices from later eras do not mention meteor showers. However, the researchers suspect that many significant historical events that coincided with meteor showers, like a ruler's assumption of power or a declaration of war recorded in the codices and carved in stone monuments, are not chance overlaps.
Instead, the Maya most likely predicted meteor showers, the researchers argue in
a paper, already available online, that will be published in the 15 September issue of
Planetary and Space Science. What's more, the ancient civilization might have purposefully timed significant occasions to coincide with portentous celestial events.
If this new research is validated by further computational tests, it would help address a longstanding puzzle, said
David Asher, an astronomy research fellow at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland: How did the ancient Maya, a civilization that meticulously recorded astronomical information about Venus, eclipses, and seasonal patterns, fail to note meteor showers in their astronomical studies? They likely did record meteor showers, assert Asher and his colleague
Hutch Kinsman, who has been an independent scholar of Mayan history and hieroglyphics for nearly 25 years, but the records were lost to us.
Comment: See also: Icy 'Window Fallers' or Frozen Harbingers of Change? The Peculiar Phenomenon of Megacryometeor