Word: copan
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...work has tended strongly to confirm the belief of the scientific world that Maya history saw a gradual shifting of population from the south to the north. Why magnificent southern cities like Copan in Northern Honduras and Tikal in Guatemala were abandoned is still a riddle. The exodus from them about 600 A. D. may have been caused by exhaustion of the soil or by epidemic or by some other danger yet unproved. But there seems no doubt that the Mayas did migrate gradually northward and that their cities in Northern Yucatan were the last ones they built...
...certain that there are in this strip important Maya ruins unvisited by archaeologists as men can be certain of things they have not seen. Rumors of such cities have repeatedly come from the natives who are the descendants of the race that built Tulum, Chichen Itza and Copan...
...recorded accurately. On Dec. 10,580 B. C., the perfected calendar was formally inaugurated and functioned without loss of a single day until the Mayan records were destroyed by the Spanish Inquisition in Yucatan, in 1561 A. D. These dates, positively fixed by inscriptions in the Mayan city of Copan, in western Honduras, were probably set by one man, an unknown mathematical and astronomical genius who was unquestionably one of the greatest scientists of all time. The Mayas set the beginning of the world in 3373 B. C., counting back from their fixed date seven cycles of 144,000 days...
Continued explorations at Copan and Quirigua in Guatemala and Honduras show that the southern branch of the Maya civilization not only antedated the Yucatan development by more than 1,000 years, but was superior culturally and artistically...
...hills on either side of the town of Copan in Honduras the ancient Mayans erected two monuments. These points determined a base line, running due cast and west. By standing on the eastern monument the ancient astronomers were able to take accurate measurements of the point at which the sunset. From these observations, which were recorded daily in hieroglyphics, they computed eclipses, and other astronomical data...