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Mayan Calendar Essay

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Throughout the years, many different cultures have created many different calendars. Each culture like the Mayans and Egyptians and others have all used celestial bodies to help determine the months and years. Each culture has their way of using the celestial bodies to create a calendar because they had different methods of calculating the time. Having a calendar helped them keep track of seasonal and celestial events and on predicting eclipses and moon phases.

Originally, the calendars were constructed by ancient civilizations by using the celestial bodies in which the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were used as references to calculate the time and to determine seasons, months, and years. Every culture has kept track of time in their own …show more content…

The walls have written and paintings on them which, include the calculations of the Mayan Calendar which many people believe their calculation prophesies the “end of the world” which the archaeologist have confirmed not to be true. In Xultun, they have discovered paintings, which according to William Saturno states, “Maya paintings are incredibly rare, not because the Maya didn’t paint them often, but because they rarely preserve in the tropical environment of Guatemala.” These paintings contain illustrations. The first painting has a king wearing a royal outfit that contains feathers and a man kneeling beside the king holding a stylus possible being a scribe. Underneath the painting, there is a label that could be translated to, “Younger Brother Obsidian” or “Junior Obsidian.” The next painting has three men wearing feathered headdresses and medallions which also have a label translated to, “Older Brother Obsidian” or “Senior Obsidian.” The paintings weren’t the only things found, a wall filled with calculation was also found. The wall was filled with charts of numbers representing bars and dots. Maya astronomers, priests, and mathematicians at the time used to calculate the moon ages to create the Mayan Calendar and to predict the next eclipses from observing the heavens. Mayan calculation

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