How Did the Maya See and Interpret Sky Phenomena? Anthony F. Aveni - - PDF document

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“How Did the Maya See and Interpret Sky Phenomena?”

Anthony F. Aveni Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor

• f Astronomy, Anthropology and Native American Studies

Colgate University for SAA Symposium on “Celestial References in Mesoamerican Creation Stories” Vancouver, 26-30 Mar 2008 DRAFT WORD COUNT: 3443 DO NOT QUOTE

2 This famous passage from the Annales de Cuauhtitlan (Vol. 3, Appendix) offers perhaps the most detailed account of an astronomically observable manifestation of the Mesoamerican myth of Quetzalcoatl: They said that Quetzalcoatl died when this star became visible, and henceforward they called him the lord of the dawn (Tlahuizcalpan teuctli). They said that when he died he was invisible for four days; they said that he wandered in the underworld, and for four days more he was bone. Not until eight days were past did the great star appear. They said that Quetzalcoatl then ascended the throne as god. (author’s italics) The motion of the planet Venus provides the obvious celestial metaphor for acting out the career

• f the hero who disappears in the desert, is cremated by his servitors, and is then resurrected in

the eastern sky as morning star from the smoke that issues from his body (Nicholson 2001: 16). Why Venus? Unlike the other bright planets, Venus always stays close to the sun and consequently close to the twilit horizon. Once it disappears in the west as evening star it returns to our world just ahead of the rising sun in the east, becoming most luminous in the first few days after it reappears as the morning star – a perfect visual fit with the narrative of the myth of rebirth. What is most striking about the passage from the Annales is the specific reference to the eight-day period of disappearance in the underworld. Astronomically speaking, it refers to the interval surrounding inferior conjunction, when the planet is lost from view in the glare of the

3 sun as it passes from its evening to its morning star aspect. When I traced the actual movement

• f Venus on the sky as it might pertain to specific prognostications in the Maya Venus Table in

the Dresden Codex and its relationship to the Lunar Eclipse Table in the same document (Aveni 1992), I discovered that Venus disappearance intervals around inferior conjunction (i.e. between ELAST and MFIRST) vary substantially, depending largely upon the season of the year in which they occur. The variations I computed ranged between zero and 26 days, the former occurring in February, and the latter in August (Aveni 2001:94, Fig. 41). This variation occurs because the zodiacal band of constellations, which traces the path of Venus among the stars along the ecliptic, tilts at different angles relative to the horizon at various times of rising/setting of the planet over the year. This effect either hastens or delays the planet’s progress through the disappearance interval. I was surprised to discover that the long term average disappearance period around inferior conjunction turns out to be precisely eight days (8 d

• 0 ± 0 d
• 3 p.e.). Thus, the celestial

reference in the Annales cannot be casual. It must have been based on extensive sky

• bservations of a fairly rigorous nature over a long period of time. And so, an interesting

passage about the heroic demi-god, transformed to become a denizen of the Mexica cosmos, yields unanticipated information about the nature of precise knowledge in that culture. Further evidence of close Venus-watching in Mesoamerica is extant in the connection between Venus and the tonalpohualli/tzolkin. I found that the time Venus spends in the sky either as morning or evening star, also a highly variable-interval, averages 263 days (Aveni 2001:87). This may have been one among a number of factors that lent importance to the adoption of the 260-day cycle in Mesoamerica (Aveni 2001: 139-148). At least it has helped to validate an interesting statement about Venus that appears in the ethnohistoric record. I had first

4 learned of it some 30 years ago from Doris Heyden, who referred me to a publication by Zelia Nuttall (1904: 498), who provides the full quotation. In reference to Motolinia’s writings, this statement suggests that the Mexica were well aware of the astronomical basis of the sacred day count: Next to the sun they adored and made more sacrifices to this star than to any other celestial or terrestrial creature. The astronomers knew on what day it would appear in the east after it had lost itself

• r disappeared in the west, and for the first day they prepared a

feast, warfare, and sacrifices. The ruler gave an Indian who was sacrificed at dawn, as soon as the star became visible… In the land the star lingers and rises in the east as many days as in the west – that is to say, for another period of 260 days. Some add thirteen days more, which is one of their weeks… The reason why this star was held in such esteem by the lords and people, and the reason why they counted the days by this star and yielded reverence and

• ffered sacrifices to it, was because the deluded natives thought or

believed that when one of their principal gods, named Topiltzin or Quetzalcoatl, died and left this world, he transformed himself into that resplendent star…. (author’s italics) Here is yet another instance in which an ethnohistoric document implies that care and precision in the observation of nature were part of framing a myth so that it could be reenacted in a visible celestial context.

5 That Mesoamericans would go through the trouble to set such a pristine cosmic stage makes sense given the elaborate nature of their rituals and the fact that many of them were likely conducted out of doors amidst assembled throngs in large open spaces fronting their ceremonial

• buildings. In these theaters, where culture confronted nature, a re-enactment of the mythic past

would play out beneath a planetarium-like sky. The role of the professional skywatcher would have been to see to it that the celestial luminaries made their appointments on the ritual stage at the appropriate times and in their proper places. (For examples involving timed celestial events associated with ritual, see Aveni 2001: Ch. 5). Concerning the nature of indigenous precise knowledge, I have always been fascinated by the way Mesoamerican documents repeatedly employ special numbers (e.g. 13, 20, 52, 65, 260) to signify sacred cycles both in the long and short term. For example, Vail (2004) offers an interesting example of how certain almanacs in the Madrid Codex can be interpreted to function either as day or year counts. The chronology of the Quetzalcoatl myth as recounted in the early colonial sources offers another example. Here I will employ Nicholson’s (2001:16) recounting, which divides the myth into 17 successive episodes, only the last ten of which concern us here: …(8) Quetzalcoatl’s happy reign of 160 years is interrupted by the appearance of a rival, the god Tezcatlipoca, who is bent on mischief; (9) after disguising himself as a pauper, transforming himself into various fearful shapes, stealing and hiding Quetzalcoatl’s powerful rain-producing magic mirror, and destroying his effigy in the temple dedicated to him, Tezcatlipoca succeeds in his goal of driving Quetzalcoatl and his people from Tollan; (10) the latter and a few attendants travel to Tenanyocan,

6 where they reside for some time, then to Colhuacan for an even longer time, then over the mountains of Cuauhquechollan, where Quetzalcoatl successfully establishes himself, adored as their sole god, for 290 years; (11) leaving behind a lord named Matlacxochitl, Quetzalcoatl moves on to Cholollan, where the great pyramid, built by the giants, is raised in his honor; (12) after 160 years in Cholollan, he flees to Cempohuallan, where he resides 260 years before his old antagonist, Tezcatlipoca, arrives to further persecute him.” Then comes the final episode in which Quetzalcoatl disappears from the scene. While I have yet to find an interpretation of the numbers 160 and 290 in the context of

• bservable Venus periods, I think it is quite likely that the last number, read as 260 days of real

time instead of years of mythic time, was intended to map out, in microcosm, the movement of the planetary deity over the precise interval during which he appears in the evening sky as seen from a fixed location, in this instance Cempohuallan. I believe that this statement is yet another example of embedding precise astronomy in mythic form. Recent research suggests that ceremonial architecture and associated iconography may constitute another text – call it a ritual stage – related to the reenactment of creation mythology. Thus Masson and Peraza (2007) propose that the story of the voyage of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca into the underworld, where they defeat a crocodilian monster and recreate the earth

• ut of his dismembered cadaver, is precisely articulated in the arrangement of burial shaft

temples at Mayapan.

7 Another example of mapping the numbers of time ritual space can be found in the 16th c. Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 (Carrasco and Sessions, 2007). The left side of this magnificent picture document maps out an impossible 20-day journey from Cholula to the cave of creation undertaken by the heroic founders of Cuauhtinchan. Boone (2000) has suggested that the full cycle of 20 day names which serve as marking posts along the way actually represent a longer cycle of indeterminate length. Such a scheme may be not unlike the seven days of creation in the Old Testament, which need not be taken literally to represent the seven (24-hour) days of the week, the point being that a full cycle of creation had occurred. Returning to the Mesoamerican fixation concerning Venus, I believe this has as much to do with the planet’s periodic commensurability with a number of other cycles known to have been important, as it does with Venus’ extraordinary brightness. Thus: 5 x 583d.92 (5 Venus cycles) = 2920d – 0d.40 8 x 365d.2422 (8 Tropical years) = 2920d – 1d.94 99 x 29d.530589 (99 Lunar synodic months) = 2920d – 3d.53 and, in terms of larger cycles 65 x 583d.92 = (Length of the actual Venus Great Round) = 37954d.8 146 x 260 = 37960d (Length of the Canonic Venus Great Round). The format of the five-page Dresden Venus Table, which pictures different manifestations of the Venus deity, likely relates to the five aspects that characterize the movement of Venus mapped out over successive 260d± appearances in the sky as evening (morning) star. There are five and only five such courses and they repeat endlessly (Aveni 1989:226). It is worth noting that in many instances the Maya may have been recognizing and

8 making use of celestial periodicities not known to western astronomers (cf. e.g. Bricker, Aveni, and Bricker (2001) and Aveni, Bricker, and Bricker (2003)). Analyzing the almanac’s pages we discover that, unlike the modern western way of knowing nature, the Maya science of time was motivated not so much by a desire to express the formulaic way nature functions in terms of inert mathematical equations, but rather by a need to know how to mediate the alliance between the awesome power inherent in the universe and the direct physical well-being of society and the individual—the alliance that binds the acquisition

• f knowledge with human action. This mediating process is precisely where the tie between

religious ritual and the observation of nature took place. Today’s professional skywatchers might attribute a planet’s change of color to an atmospheric effect, a shift in position to a dynamic effect, an alteration in brightness to a distance effect. The Maya would closely observe the color, brightness, position, and movement of the planets because they believed all of these properties considered together were indices of the power and intended course of action of the gods, whom they hoped to influence through dialogue and debt payment. I believe that in the hands of investigators who are informed about the nature of Maya timekeeping and skywatching, post-conquest Maya literature holds potential as a vital source in understanding the relationship between Maya culture and the natural world. These texts shed light on the complex syncretic process of the transformation of time that took place when Maya and West European religion and philosophy confronted one another. For example, Tedlock (1985) has interpreted the Popol Vuh creation myth as an alphabetic version of the pre-Conquest hieroglyphic codices, with precise timekeeping woven via a simple story line, as in Homer and

• Hesiod. The principal characters in the myth are hero twins who represent Venus and the sun.

9 The peregrination of these two luminaries provides a kind of cosmic musical score for the enactment of the myth. In the Maya genesis story the gods come across as far more humanlike than Jehovah of the Old Testament. They fail three times at the act of creation. Only when they fashion people

• ut of corn, thus upholding the universal maxim “You are what you eat,” do they finally create

the race they desire – people who talk, walk, and worship them. Even older than these makers and modelers of men is an elderly couple whose calendrical names correspond to the day names in the sacred 260-day round when Venus appears and disappears. The epic, too detailed to recount here, but undoubtedly quite familiar to most conferees, goes on to tell of the adventures in the underworld of their sons and grandsons, from whom the Maya lineage is said to have

• descended. Great moments of tension and climax are linked to important days in the Venus
• cycle. The thread that weaves the mythic fabric together is the cyclic rising in the east of Venus.

As in the Quetzalcoatl myth discussed above, the birth of Venus becomes a microcosm of the recurring starting point in the great cyclic creations of the entire universe. Tedlock notes that episodes in the Popul Vuh seem to come in groups of five, which is in accord with the way the Maya saw the motion of Venus as divisible into the five repeatable, though slightly different cycles that take place over the course of eight years. This Venus "fiveness" is, of course, the leitmotif behind the layout of the Dresden Venus table, with its five pages and five manifestations of the feathered serpent deity Kukulcan in different costumes, each spearing a different victim. The Popul Vuh reminds us in many ways of the time-related myths of the Old World, e.g. the Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Greek Theogony. The Maya creation story is filled with acts displaying parallels between the celestial and human realms—acts that continually repeat

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• themselves. For the Maya, the creation process seems to consist of two steps: a sowing and a
• dawning. Seeds are sown in the earth; the sun, moon, and stars in the sky; and humans in the
• womb. The chaos that precedes the creation is a condition much like that found in the Old

World creation stories. Sky and sea are separated by a vast chaos that lies between them. The episodic wanderings of the twin sons and grandsons of the ancient creator pair take the form of cyclic happenings at two levels: those that occur on the surface of the earth, and the ones that take place in the underworld. When, in the final chapter, the heads of the lineage who descended from the hero twins make their pilgrimage in search of divine elements in their own lives, they do not repeat precisely the route their mythical cosmic hero-twin ancestors took (nor do the celestial bodies); but their actions leave no doubt about their blood ties: “And then they remember what they had said about the east. This is when they remembered the restrictions of their fathers. The ancient things received from their fathers were not lost. The tribes gave them their wives, becoming their fathers…” And there were three of them who said, as they were about to go away: 'We are going to the east where our fathers came from,' they said, then they followed their road….There were only three who went, but they had skill and knowledge. Their being was not quite that of mere humans. They advised all their brothers, elder and younger, who were left behind. They were glad to go. 'We’re not dying. We’re coming back,' they said when they went; yet it was these same three who went clear across the sea." (Tedlock 1985, p 203) Evoking the theme of the mythic return of Kukulcan, these princes, from whom the Quiché Maya lineage is derived and for whom the Popul Vuh was written, had claimed their descent, a class of nobility influenced directly by the gods and commanded to repeat and reenact

11 past divine action. Believing themselves to possess blood ties with such princes, modern-day Quiché Maya still recognize their special nature; it is they who were chosen to be the one true people who serve the gods. Just as the Medieval concept of geocentric spheres went beyond pure materialism and spatiality and penetrated far into the realm of the spiritual, so too was there more to Maya timekeeping than the pure science of chronology. Skywatching is intimately connected to it. Consistent with the notion that the same number can be employed to express a multiplicity of cycles, the behavior of Venus was likely conceived as a mirror in miniature of the long era cycles

• f which the Maya believed time to consist. And the great meetings or conjunctions of the

denizens of the sky were an application in microcosm of the philosophy of repetition and recursiveness expressed in the Popul Vuh – and likely in other creation stories being explored at this conference. Such empirically determined cycles were among a rather large number of nature’s celestial rounds (of which I have mentioned but a handful) the Maya employed in order to give structure to their history and to enable them to survive – even thrive – amidst the chaotic forces of nature. It is no surprise that past cycles of the most pristine and predictable events of the heavens would come to serve as numbers on the blank pages on which the Maya would write future

• history. What the Maya gave back to nature was a similar structuring principle, a heaven thought

to consist of cosmic cycles which, if watched closely and understood correctly, would ultimately be found to interlock commensurately not only with one another but also with the cycles of human life—all conceived in a kind of unity and harmony that we, in our most reflective moments, must admit we probably never can hope to fully comprehend.

12 Telling stories of creation and witnessing changes in the world of nature – connecting the two is a logical way both to embellish life and to lend meaningful structure to history. With the process of story-telling comes an inevitable expansion into more fundamental and speculative questions—the ones we insist, in our western taxonomy of disciplines, upon relegating to the domain of religion: Where did we come from? What will happen to us? In some instances— and this was especially so in certain highly structured hierarchical societies like the Maya—the relationship between people and the sky became formalized through the ruling class. Cosmic myths expanded to extraordinary proportions as did the temporal cycles that framed them. Scholars may debate where myth and history intersect in the writing they decipher in the material record the Maya have left behind, but we can be sure that the rhyme and meter of many of the stories we have been discussing find their parallels in the cosmos.

13 References Cited Aveni, A. 1989 Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks and Cultures NY: Basic. Aveni, A. 1992 “The Moon and the Venus Table: An Example of Commensuration in the Maya Calendar” In The Sky in Mayan Literature ed. A. Aveni, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 87-101. Aveni, A. 2001 Skywatchers: A Revised, Updated Version of Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, Austin, University of Texas Press. Aveni, A., H. Bricker,, and V. Bricker 2003 “Seeking the Sidereal: Observable Planetary Stations and the Ancient Maya Record” Journal for the History of Astronomy 34: 145- 61. Boone, E. 2000 Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs Austin, University of Texas Press. Bricker, H., A. Aveni, and V. Bricker 2001 “Ancient Maya Documents Concerning the Movement of Mars” Proc. National Acad. Sci. 98:2107-10. Carrasco, D. and S. Sessions (eds.) 2007 Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 Masson, M. and C. Peraza L. 2007 “Kukulcan/Quetzalcoatl, Death God, and Creation Mythology of Burial Shaft Temples at Mayapan” Mexicon 29(3): 77-85. Nicholson, H.B. 2001 Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl, The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs Boulder, University Press of Colorado. Nuttall, Z. 1904 “The Periodical Adjustments of the Ancient Mexican Calendar” American Anthropologist, New Series 6(4): 486-500.

14 Tedlock, D. 1985 Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings NY, Simon and Schuster Vail, G. 2004 “A Reinterpretation of Tzol’kin Almanacs in the Madrid Codex” In The Madrid Codex: New Approaches to Understanding an Ancient Maya Document ed. G. Vail and

• A. Aveni, Boulder, University Press of Colorado, pp. 215-252.