Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

Unlike the Ancient Greeks, but like the Ancient Egyptians, the Maya understood that Venus was both ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’.18 They understood other things about it as well. The ‘synodical revolution’ of a planet is the period of time it takes to return to any given point in the sky – as viewed from earth. Venus revolves around the sun every 224.7 days, while the earth follows its own slightly wider orbit. The composite result of these two motions is that Venus rises in exactly the same place in the earth’s sky approximately every 584 days. Whoever invented the sophisticated calendrical system inherited by the Maya had been aware of this and had found ingenious ways to integrate it with other interlocking cycles. Moreover, it is clear from the mathematics which brought these cycles together that the ancient calendar masters had understood that 584 days was only an approximation and that the movements of Venus are by no means regular. They had therefore worked out the exact figure established by today’s science for the average synodical revolution of Venus over very long periods of time.19 That figure is 583.92 days and it was knitted into the fabric of the Mayan calendar in numerous intricate and complex ways.20 For example, to reconcile it with the so-called ‘sacred year’ (the tzolkin of 260 days, which was divided into 13 months of 20 days each) the calendar called for a correction of four days to be made every 61 Venus years. In addition, during every f...