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A Dresden Codex Mars Table?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Bruce Love
Bruce Love*
Affiliation:
Center for Indigenous Studies, 126 Barret Road, Riverside, CA 92507
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Abstract

The proposal that the Prehispanic Maya recorded the revolutions of the planet Mars was made in the 1920s, and subsequently dismissed by Eric Thompson. Victoria Bricker and Harvey Bricker, followed by John Justeson, have rekindled the debate by proposing new lines of evidence supporting a “Mars Table” in the Dresden Codex. A review of the evidence does not support their contention and concludes that Thompson, following Seler, was essentially correct when he interpreted the “Sky Beast” as associated with rain and lightning. The purported Mars table is in fact a variant of the Chac almanacs that deal with weather and agriculture.

La idea de que la cultura maya prehispánica haya registrado las rotaciones del planeta Marte fue formulada en los años 1920, y fue subsecuentemente rechazada por Eric Thompson. Victoria Bricker y Harvey Bricker, y luego John Justeson, han reabierto el debate por presentar evidencia novedosa a favor del reconocimiento de una “Tabla de Marte” en el códice Dresden. Una revisión de las pruebas no acepta esta contienda sino que más bien indica que Thompson, siguiendo las ideas de Seler, en esencia tenía razón al interpretar que la “Bestia de Cielo” fue asociada con lluvia y relámpagos. La supuesta Tabla de Marte es en realidad una variante de los almanaques del Chac que se refieren al clima y a la agricultura.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 350 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1995

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