February 21, 2001
The Maya knew their Mars

Maya astronomers apparently understood the movements of Mars better than
modern scientists had thought. New studies of the Dresden Codex, a
pre-Columbian Maya book chronicling astronomical events, have revealed an
elaborate scheme for keeping track of Mars' apparently random motion in the
sky.

The Maya not only understood how long it took Mars to return to the same
place in the sky, but also were interested in how long the Red Planet took
to orbit the sun -- which is much harder to observe.

Anthropologists from Tulane University in New Orleans, and an
archaeoastronomer from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., presented their
findings in February 2001 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.