37. Mayan Skies
Stone monuments and written texts from Mesoamerica confirm the Mayans and the Aztecs were avid sky-watchers. Documents that have come down to us include several species of calendars, dates of events, and tables of planetary periods.
The planetary periods are accurately represented, which indicates the Mayans monitored the sky carefully over long periods of time. Records of their original observations have not survived.
38. Mayan Calendars
Historians have identified at least two Mayan calendars, but they have not been reliably linked to a modern calendar.
The context of Mayan records is conjectural. At one time dates and other text inscribed on monuments were thought to log astronomical observations, but current translations treat them mostly as mundane history chronicling the exploits of kings. Whatever the case, the full import of Mayan astronomy has yet to be revealed.
39. Chinese Bones
An ancient chronicle from the Chinese province of Lu, the birthplace of Confucius, cites many astronomical events. The original texts inscribed on bone have not survived, but the authenticity of preserved copies is firmly established.
Ch'un-ch'iu (Spring and Autumn Annals) and its supplement register 37 solar eclipses between 720 BC and 481 BC. Four of the eclipses could not have been seen in Lu. The other 33 records conform to the description of the eclipses computed by modern methods.
41. Ammizaduga times
The Venus Tablet of Ammizaduga is a curious Babylonian record tentatively dated to the 2nd millennium BC. The text registers many observations of Venus over a period of decades, which normally would suffice to date the tablet astronomically. However, never in historical times has there been an orbit of Venus that fits the recorded data.
The preserved copies of the tablet are not sports from a single cache of unknown provenance. The Venus Tablet belongs to the canonical series Enuma Anu Enlil, which was still being copied centuries later in Hellenistic times.
42. Ammizaduga times 2
For more than a century, researchers have tried to make sense of the observations recorded in the Venus Tablet. Typically they eliminate the records that do not fit, and alter the text they deem scribal error. In recent years, statistical analysis was enlisted to work out the most probable result. The dates are now reduced to a few contending chronologies - high, middle and low, all in the 2nd millennium BC. This vagueness is typical of astronomical chronology prior to the 8th century BC.