[Aztlan] The Tzolkin

belleza regia belleza_regia at hotmail.com
Mon Jun 2 04:00:39 CDT 2008


Hi! Listeros

Last time i misedited the end of the post, but was in a hurry (was preparing
the summer course that start tomorrow) And here i try, more or least,
to remake the losted end of the last post.

So, from the "ciclic sampling" theory: another posible "why" more for
the tzolkin, could be... 

If for the ancient mesoamericans the visible planets were their gods,
maybe with their naked eyes and ritual records they could had noticed
the ciclic periods of repetitive movement of them.

Because of their vigesimal system and not working with fractions maybe
they keep counting to exact whole numbers

    sun: 365 kin x 04 = 073 uinals (1460 days from 04 years)
  venus: 584 kin x 05 = 146 uinals (2920 days from 05 venus cycles)
jupiter: 399 kin x 20 = 399 uinals (7980 days from 20 jupiter cycles)
 saturn: 378 kin x 10 = 189 uinals (3780 days from 10 saturn cycles)
mercury: 116 kin x 05 = 029 uinals (0580 days from 05 mercury cycles)

"Playing" with numbers to get ordered lists using "ciclic sampling"
may had found the 13 (modular arithmetic) taking that into acount:

13 x 20: 1 tzolking
    sun: (365 days) cycle x 04 x 13 = 073 tzolking -> list of 052 years of sampled dates
  venus: (584 days) cycle x 05 x 13 = 146 tzolking -> list of 065 cycles of sampled dates
jupiter: (399 days) cycle x 20 x 13 = 399 tzolking -> list of 260 cycles of sampled dates 
 saturn: (378 days) cycle x 10 x 13 = 189 tzolking -> list of 130 cycles of sampled dates
mercury: (116 days) cycle x 05 x 13 = 029 tzolking -> list of 065 cycles of sampled dates
   mars: (780 days) cycle x 01 x 01 = 003 tzolking

I hope had undestanded and explained this well from the workbook  :-\
("reading" the page 85 of http://in.solit.us/archives/show/124955)

I know the modular arithmetic in the workbook could be a little bit messy
but is just an explanation for us, we really dont know how the maya priests
did it (i give them more credit... maybe they discovered some simple graphic
or positional procedure related with our modern group theory?) Maybe they
were really patient and just counted... but i dont think so  

Kind regards, Laura
_________________________________________________________________
Keep your kids safer online with Windows Live Family Safety.
http://www.windowslive.com/family_safety/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_family_safety_052008


More information about the Aztlan mailing list