The missing digit of Stela C

▲ The missing digit of Stela C(johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com)

57 points by chmaynard 5 hours ago | 9 comments

▲ Luc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For those confused like me: the line drawing shows both halves of the stela, including the ‘7’ (-..) just above the break. The bottom half was found 30 years before the top.

▲ RupertSalt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Okay, my fault for skipping a lot of stuff in the middle, but a question began to burn in my mind. They have determined the full inscription, calculated the Olmec date, and correlated it to our Gregorian reckoning. The end of the article says:

  So, while 32 BC seemed awfully early for the Olmecs to carve this stone, there’s no way they could have done it later. (Or earlier, for that matter.)

But I am not sure if this resolves the burning question: what makes everyone believe that the inscription corresponded to the current date? Certainly, that is a common custom when erecting a monument, but what if Olmec logic said "let us commemorate this auspicious event that occurred 300 years ago!" or "Let us anticipate the far future in 5,000 years from now!" for example.

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nraynaud 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Seems to be an eclipse at that date, if they weren’t able to predict them, they had to have seen it.

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RupertSalt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Now that piques my interest. Could you be more specific?

Using Stellarium, set the location to Tres Zapotes, but not knowing how far off the calendar's reckoning would be, the closest I have come is a partial solar eclipse, after 9pm on September 1, -23.

Stellarium literally indicates a "Year 0" so BC years could be off-by-one, or off-by-Julian-and-equinox-precession, I just have no idea.

Wikipedia doesn't list any [Lunar/Solar] that are anywhere near 32 BC.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922610

	▲	nraynaud 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry that was in French https://peuplesautochtones.wordpress.com/2022/05/21/sites-ar... “Il a été proposé qu’elle puisse commémorer une éclipse lunaire qui a précédé une éclipse solaire de deux semaines.” >”It was proposed that it could commemorate a lunar eclipse preceding a solar eclipse by two weeks” I was very lazy in my search, so I didn’t check anything about this page.

▲ cornholio 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Im still unclear how they determined the constant to convert from long mesoamerican to GMT. What common reference event could allow syncing these calendars to a +/- 3 day precision? I would guess some solar eclipse pattern visible from both sides of the Atlantic?

	▲	apothegm 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They knew about and could identify solstices, which gives you day of the year. So then it’s just a matter of matching years, which can be done on the basis of things like comets. Supernovae could also play a factor. Or using tree rings to identify years mentioned as having droughts or floods. Probably a bunch of other things we haven’t thought of.
	▲	gucci-on-fleek 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The Wikipedia page linked in the article [0] has a plausible-sounding explanation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calend...
	▲	nraynaud 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I guess in modern time we can compute eclipses from the past?