Dresden Codex pages 51-58 cover ~33 years across 405 lunar months. Maya restarted tables at 223 or 358 month intervals—the Saros and Imex eclipse cycles. A 2025 study by Justeson and Lowry found 55 of 69 entries targeted solar eclipses. This overlap strategy could keep forecasts reliable for millennia.
Maya eclipse table used Saros and Imex cycles to forecast solar eclipses for millennia
Key facts
- Dresden Codex eclipse table spans pages 51-58, covering roughly 33 years across 405 lunar months
- Maya overlapped tables by beginning new ones 223 or 358 lunar months into the current one
- 223 lunar months corresponds to the Saros cycle; 358 corresponds to the Imex cycle
- A 2025 study by John Justeson and Justin Lowry analyzed 69 eclipse table entries
- 55 entries were intended to identify potential solar eclipse dates
- Restarting the table at 223 or 358 month intervals could keep the system reliable for thousands of years
Sources
historyofinformation.com
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futurity.org
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mayan.org
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The design and reconstructible history of the Mayan ...science.org
Willson (18) was the first scholar to realize that pages 51a to 58b of the Dresden Codex were an eclipse table. Teeple (15) elaborated that ...
Eclipse Tableuser.tu-berlin.de
This table in the Dresden codex is interpreted by most researchers as giving a list of 69 possible solar eclipse dates (68 table positions and the base date).
Scientists found the key to accurate Maya eclipse tablesarstechnica.com
Eclipse tables in the Dresden Codex were based on lunar tables and adjusted for slippage over time.
Content - SLUB Dresdenslub-dresden.de
Page 51- 58: Eclipse tables The eclipse tables were used to predict solar and lunar eclipses, which were possible at intervals of five or six lunar orbits
An Unusual “13” in the Dresden Codex?mayadecipherment.com
The nature of the table on pages 58-59 is complex and subject to some debate, and here I will happily put aside any in-depth discussion of its ...
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