Scientists Discovered These Ancient Cities Have a Secret Link to the Cosmos

Archaeologists have discovered that indigenous Mesoamericans developed their unique 260-day calendar more than 3,000 years ago, pushing the timeline of this sophisticated timekeeping system back by several centuries and revealing that ancient settlements were built in alignment with cosmic events, reports a new study.

The oldest known written record of this influential calendar dates to around 250 BCE, but researchers have long suspected that it must have originated much earlier. Its 260-day cycle, which is broken down into 13 periods that last 20 days, was central to the Maya and Olmec civilizations that flourished in central America for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, and is still practiced by some of their descendents to this day.

Now, researchers led by Ivan Šprajc, head of the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies Research Center at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, have used aerial laser observations, known as LiDAR, to show that ancient architectural complexes in southern Mexico are aligned with celestial cycles, such as the rising and setting of the Sun, that correspond to the 260-day calendar.

The discovery provides “the earliest evidence of the use of the 260-day calendar, centuries earlier than its previously known use in textual records,” according to the team’s study, which was published on Friday in Science Advances.

“It is now clear that a complex worldview, in which astronomical knowledge conditioned by practical concerns was intertwined with religious concepts and ritual practices, and which is abundantly evidenced in later Mesoamerica…began to take shape much earlier than previously thought, and was already materialized in the earliest monumental constructions,” Šprajc said.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgp37x/scientists-discovered-these-ancient-cities-have-a-secret-link-to-the-cosmos

More good stuff got y'all to ponder. The people who were here before us weren't "savages".