A medieval Maya text for predicting solar eclipses has confused Western readers for centuries, but a pair of researchers may have finally cracked how it's really meant to work.

Indigenous civilizations in Mexico and Guatemala kept calendars for more than two millennia before Europeans invaded the Americas, helping them to predict the timing of important events in the heavens and on Earth with extraordinary accuracy.

Unfortunately, much of this knowledge – and the texts that contained it – was destroyed during the Spanish Inquisition , leaving only a few bits and pieces from which to reconstruct these advanced methods for celestial prediction.

Dating to the 11th or 12th century, the Dresden Codex is one of only four hieroglyphic Maya codices to survive European colonization.

The

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