The test of time

[FireGarden]

Amongst the many cultures that have lived on this Earth, there have been many beliefs/ideas/conjectures. Some handed down, some discovered and (if it's a process different to the first two) some revealed.

Using this page as a source for Mayan history (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Mayan_mathematics.html)
The classical period of Mayan history is taken to be from 250 to 900AD. More than a 1000 years later, you are in a position to note the following two things:

1. The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that Venus's synodic period (after which it has returned to the same position) was 584 days. The modern measure/belief/whatever is 583.92 days

2. (According to some historians) The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that the date of creaton was 12 August 3113 BC. The modern measures/beliefs/whatevers range from "2 seconds ago" to about 13 or 14 billion years ago

[Dancing David]

I had a pagan friend who liked to date everything from the rise of agriculture, so she could have the oldest dating system. I always liked the BP designation, before present which was set at 1950.

[Dorian Gray]

Based on what you posted, the Mayans so far have been right about 50% of the time. That's why I feel we were all descended from the Randomchancians.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by FireGarden
1. The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that Venus's synodic period (after which it has returned to the same position) was 584 days. The modern measure/belief/whatever is 583.92 days
Even more proof for the existence aliens. Obviously.

[FireGarden]

Dorian and Yahweh
Based on what you posted, the Mayans so far have been right about 50% of the time. That's why I feel we were all descended from the Randomchancians.

Even more proof for the existence aliens. Obviously.
Whilst appreciating the humour, I would like to say that the answer to both your points is in the title of the thread.

One belief/discovery/whatever has stood the test of time. The other hasn't really done so.

I would like to draw a conclusion from that but, with the plethora of very old religions in the world, I don't feel I can. So it's just an observation. (Although I could add something about independent sources, since we didn't learn about Venus from the Maya.)


Dancing David
I had a pagan friend who liked to date everything from the rise of agriculture, so she could have the oldest dating system. I always liked the BP designation, before present which was set at 1950.
You mean that she knows when this species of ant began cultivating fungus?
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/dailynews/antfarm980924.html
:)

[The Don]

Originally posted by FireGarden
Amongst the many cultures that have lived on this Earth, there have been many beliefs/ideas/conjectures. Some handed down, some discovered and (if it's a process different to the first two) some revealed.

Using this page as a source for Mayan history (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Mayan_mathematics.html)
The classical period of Mayan history is taken to be from 250 to 900AD. More than a 1000 years later, you are in a position to note the following two things:

1. The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that Venus's synodic period (after which it has returned to the same position) was 584 days. The modern measure/belief/whatever is 583.92 days

2. (According to some historians) The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that the date of creaton was 12 August 3113 BC. The modern measures/beliefs/whatevers range from "2 seconds ago" to about 13 or 14 billion years ago

The means by which they could do the former is well established. You just keep looking at the bright light in the sky and keep a track of how long it takes to do its thing. A quite impressive piece of observation but not unprecedented in technologically unadvanced societies. The key is that it can be discivered with a single set of observations and can easily be proved/disproved

The second requries a much more extensive set of observations and theories. There isn't a single set of unequivocal phenomena which allows us to determine the age of the universe. What happens in this case is that an hypothesis is made ("you can determine the age of the universe by starting at the date of the founding of the temple, cross reference it with Egyptian rulers and count backward through the Patriachs" or "you can determine the age of the universe by assuming a big bang and work out how long it would take everything to get where it is") and carry out the necessary investigations and/or observations to complete your theory.

Given that there are two points of difference (different theories and different analysis within a single theory) and that there isn't one single common observable for the age of the universe, no suprise that there are a range of different answers.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I had a pagan friend who liked to date everything from the rise of agriculture, so she could have the oldest dating system. I always liked the BP designation, before present which was set at 1950.

We are living in the first century. Year one is 1935 CE. The birth of Elvis, of course.

[xouper]

Pardon while I put on my pedant's hat. :)

FireGarden: 2. (According to some historians) The Maya measured/believed/somehow came to the conclusion that the date of creaton was 12 August 3113 BC.I don't know where the author of that article got that date (I didn't see any reference cited), but that is not the most commonly accepted Gregorian date for the start of the Mayan calendar. Using the standard Goodman-Martinez-Thompson (GMT) correlation constant 584283,

Mayan Long Count 0.0.0.0.0 = August 11, 3114 BC.

Perhaps the problem in the year is from a confusion in converting negative years to BC notation.

<div style="border: solid black 1px; margin: 0 80px 0 40px; padding: 24px; background-color: #fff8f0;">Review: When using negative year numbers in the Gregorian proleptic calendar, there is a year zero, so this must be accounted for in converting to BC, which has no year zero.

-1 = 2 BC
0 = 1 BC
1 = 1 AD
etc.

And thus -3113 = 3114 BC.</div>
Interestingly, one of the references (http://www.mayacalendar.com/mayacalendar/menu.html) cited in that article places the start of the Long Count at August 13, 3114 BC, based on the less popular Lounsbury correlation constant, 584285.

I only post this info in case anyone is interested. If not, carry on. :)

[FireGarden]

The Don
That's a good point.

I could have used some other facet of the Mayan religion, but I couldn't be bothered to do any research. I just happened to see those two numbers on the same page.

I was going to use something like "does peer review work?" as the title of the thread. I suppose that may have been better.

It's the fact that two cultures can independently reach the same conclusion that makes science/maths so appealling to me.



xouper,
pedant a way to you're harts content! :)

I was interested!

[c4ts]

I prefer to use my own made up dates, where the year zero was the year I was born, and then I scrambled all the names of the months. Right now it is Jumbemberarch the 16 in the year 20.