The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has puzzled scientists for decades, but new research shows how it aligns with 45-year planetary cycles. This is a much broader view of the dangerous calendar than anyone has tried to take before. In a study published in the journal Ancient MesoamericaTwo scientists from Tulane University emphasized that researchers could never explain the 819-day calendar without expanding their view.

“While previous studies have aimed to show planetary connections for the 819-day count, the four-part color scheme is too short to match the synodic periods of the visible planets,” the study authors wrote. “By increasing the length of the calendar to 20 periods of 819 days, a regularity emerges in which the synodic periods of all visible planets are proportional to the station points in the larger 819-day calendar.” This means that the Maya took a 45-year view of the planetary arrangement and encoded it into a calendar that modern scientists are scratching their heads in amazement.

While ancient Mayan culture offered different types of calendars, it is this 819-day calendar found in glyph texts that surprises scholars the most. Researchers have long believed that this calendar relates to the movements of the planets, particularly the synodic periods of key planets when a planet rotates to the same place in the sky as visually seen from Earth. However, each planet moves quite differently, and it didn’t make sense to put multiple planets side by side in a time frame of 819 days.

But when you look at 16,380 days (about 45 years), not just 819 days. This is a total timeline of 20,819 days.

Mercury has always been the starting point for a challenging timeline because its synodic period of 117 days coincides perfectly with 819. every major planet in the mix.

And Mars may be better than overall length. With a synodic period of 780 days, 21 periods correspond to exactly 16,380, or 20 cycles of 819. Venus needs seven periods to correspond to five 819-day counts, Saturn has 13 periods to correspond to six 819-day counts, and Jupiter 39 periods. It reached 19,819 points.

“Rather than limiting their attention to any one planet,” the authors write, “the Mayan astronomers who created the 819-day count envisioned it as a larger calendar system that could be used to predict the synodic periods of all visible planets, as well as their measurability points with their cycles in Tsolkin and the Calendar Tour. aspect.”