Mayan_Astronomy

Uniquely, the Mayans appear to be the only pre-telescopic civilization to evidence knowledge of the Orion Nebula as being fuzzy, i.e. not a stellar pin-point. The information which supports this theory comes from a folk tale that deals with the Orion constellation's part of the sky. Their traditional hearths include in their middle a smudge of glowing fire that corresponds with the Orion nebula. This is a significant clue to support the idea that the Mayans detected a diffuse area of the sky contrary to the pin points of stars before the telescope was invented.The Mayans were very interested in Zenial Passages, the time when the sun passes directly overhead. The latitude of most of their cities being below the tropic of cancer, these Zenial Passages would occur twice a year equidistant from the solstice. To represent this position of the sun overhead, the Mayan's had a god named Diving God. The Dresden Codex contains the highest concentration of astronomical phenomena observations and calculations of any of the surviving texts and it appears that the data in this codex is only of an astronomical nature. Examination and analysis of this codex reveals that Venus is the most important astronomical object to the Mayans, even more important to them than the sun.