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HERE鈥橲 one Mayan 2012 story that might not inspire a disaster movie: archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of the Mayan astronomical calendar, painted on the wall of a 9th-century house.
Until now, our main evidence of Mayan astronomical knowledge has come from books, such as the Dresden Codex, produced centuries after their society declined.
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In 2010, William Saturno of Boston University and colleagues were excavating Mayan ruins at Xult煤n in Guatemala. In one house they found a mural covered with pictures of Mayan people (see). In the gaps between the drawings were glyphs: Mayan writing that contained astronomical information (Science, ).
鈥淚t seems obvious that the Maya were making Dresden Codex-like astronomical tables for over 1000 years,鈥� says Joyce Marcus, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The house probably belonged to a senior public figure. That suggests astronomical information was broadly available, says Gary Feinman of the Field Museum in Chicago.