Читать книгу Astronomy in your pocket - Vladimir Vladimirovich Bereznyakovsky - Страница 6

The ancient Mayan Injuns are considered to be the true intellectuals of pre-Columbian America. The Maya astronomer-priests spent their entire life observing from stone observatories-Caracoles (shells), knew five planets, and only from the priests were instructions about the beginning of agricultural work. About the economic direction of astronomical science, the Mayans say that they called the months: “harvest”, “deer” (hunting season), “cloud” (rainy season). Mayan priests even knew how to calculate solar and lunar eclipses, pretending that many natural phenomena are subject to them. Astronomy in their hands was an instrument of power that kept the people in fear and obedience. The Mayan calendar consisted of a 13-day week, a 20-day month, and a 365 – or 366-day year. Incredibly, it was the most accurate calendar in existence. An extra day in comparison with the true year would run up in it only after 10 thousand years. For comparison, the calendar of Caesar for 128 years gave an error per day, and even our modern – Gregorian-calendar for 3 thousand years gives an error per day.

The Mayan calendar