ARCH-ASTRONOMY

The ancient Maya, like many other great cultures, attempted to connect religion, astronomy and architecture in an attempt to link their knowledge of the heavens with the Earth. The result is that their cities and temples were astronomical instruments, giant diagrams designed to join man with space-time.

    The Maya carefully oriented, designed and constructed their urban centers in accordance with what they considered to be the orbits of the stars; they thought stars were gods. Their cities were timepieces that served—with amazing exactitude—as giant stone calendars for civic, religious and agricultural purposes.

    To achieve this, the Maya measured the rising and setting sun during the solstices and equinoxes, as well as its passing through the zenith. They recorded the cardinal points and data related to other stars, the Moon, planets (mainly Venus) and the constellations.

   Today many cities in the Mundo Maya are being studied by anthropologists and archaeologists; working to decipher the secrets of this geometric and mathematical language, and its relation to the cosmos.