Recording Eternity
How the lowland Maya bound time to paper and stoneAstronomy inscribed in pigment
Each Venus table spans 104 tropical years, predicting heliacal rises within a single day's margin.
Numbers as living vessels
Bar-and-dot notation carries tribute counts, prophecy dates, and three millennia of k'atun cycles.
Sacred paper outlasts empires
Amate bark beaten smooth and stuccoed with lime survives a thousand years of jungle rain.
Red marks the turning of days
Cinnabar pigment highlights day-signs and cardinal points in the twenty-day sacred round.