THE SOUTHERNMOST RISE OF VENUS AT UXMAL, 1997 AND 2005
The renewal of the Grand Cycle of Venus' patterns in the sky
occurs only once every eight years and was of enormous significance to the ancient Maya.
Results of this effort to document and photograph this rare event may provide new insight
into the architectural philosophy behind astronomically oriented Maya
structures.
UPDATE note: The latest southernmost Venus rise just occurred and my photos
came out nicely. Here are a couple. Click them to view larger copies. Meanwhile, keep watching the page for a complete update coming very soon!
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Now, back to the story...
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Overview
The ancient Maya were very likely the most sophisticated astronomers and
mathematicians of their era. Much evidence of their accomplishments was destroyed
during the Spanish Conquest of the 16th Century but, during the past three decades,
contemporary scholars have made enormous strides in understanding this mysterious
culture.
Evidence has recently been uncovered providing a far more intimate connection between the planet Venus and the Maya culture, as
embodied in the
Palace of the Governor, a richly adorned
building in Uxmal, the capital of an ancient city-state in western Yucatán. The Palace of the
Governor and several other major structures in Uxmal are characteristic of the Terminal
Classic Period, believed to have been completed in the early Tenth Century, A. D.
Long understood to be closely connected with Venus, owing to
the more than 350 Venus-related glyphs adorning its architecture, the
Palace of the Governor was also built with its long-axis
skewed nineteen degrees
with respect to the primary orientation of other
Uxmal structures. In 1975, measurements from the Palace's central
doorway (Aveni and Hartung) indicated that a perpendicular to the
building's axis might define a sightline running across the center of
the double-headed jaguar throne in its courtyard to a pyramid-like
structure on the southeastern horizon. This direction, Aveni and
Hartung determined, closely approximated the southernmost rise
location of the planet Venus, an event which takes place only once
every eight years.
To the Maya who assiduously observed and worshiped Venus as a primary deity,
this eight-year periodicity was extremely significant. The planet's synodic period (the time
between successive conjunctions with the sun) is 584 days, during which it sweeps out one
of five characteristic paths through the sky as both a morning and evening object. At the
end of five synodic cycles, the patterns begin again. This periodicity is referred to by
contemporary astronomers as Venus' "Grand Cycle." But, interestingly, it also
corresponds nearly precisely to eight 365-day years. To the calendar-conscious Maya--well aware of the Earth's 365-day annual cycle--this must have provided a compelling
demonstration of Venus' divine connections. Specific evidence of the significance of this
five-to-eight relationship is suggested by the Maya numeral eight (a line and three dots)
carved into the supraorbital plates of Chac masks found at
the northwestern and northeastern corners of the Palace (the southern corners have not yet
been excavated).
Since 1990, I had been preparing to document and photograph the actual occurrence
of Venus' southernmost rise. Working with the assistance of Maya scholars, Harvey
Bricker (Tulane University), Jeff Kowalski (Northern Illinois University), and Susan
Milbrath (Florida Museum of Natural History), I traveled to Uxmal in September of 1996
to make preliminary measurements to capture the event which my calculations determined
would take place in January 1997.
CONTINUE
David Rosenthal
E-mail: n6tst--then the "at" symbol--ridgenet.net. (Note: As a result of the unavoidable nuisance now posed by spammers and their automated Web page-scanning, e-mail address-collecting software, I can no longer use the conventional name@server.com address format [humorously, that aforementioned e-mail address-collecting software will likely find my "name@server.com" address example, harvest it, and try to send spam to it. Ha!]).
Web page: www.ridgenet.net/~n6tst