The Evolution of Functional Pottery

That's the bowl. But, of course, you knew that already from reading my previous posts.

It's sitting on display in he Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is the only picture of it that I can find: the shiny internal reflection is pretty awesome, but it's hard to tell if the bowl shape is actually parabolic. The legs are interesting: what are those slots?

I won't learn anything more about this bowl until I get back to New York.

But there are still avenues to explore. There should be precursor bowls, i.e. more primitive versions of this design. Of course, I have no idea why there are bulbous legs, or weird slots, but they are probably there for a reason. So I go searching for variations on this design in Mayan pottery. A number of possible hits turn up. Actually, because I am Bayesian, I also search Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Roman, and Greek pottery: nothing like this appears. Good.

The annoying thing is that most of the hits are "rattle bowls": the hollow legs contain pottery beads that, well, rattle when the item is shaken. About half the candidates are possible telescope elements, but the other half are clearly household pots with rattle legs. Even assuming a functional design element transferred to an everyday item (with loss of function,) the whole rattling telescope bowl thing is looking to be a bit of a stretch.

An example of a functional design element making its way to an everyday item with total loss of function:

Stone Knives and Bearskins

So how do you spin a bowl of mercury?

Anything like a potter's wheel is out: there is no evidence of that sort of technology.

This is the sum total of Mayan technology: stone, flint, obsidian, wood, glue, gum, rubber, cloth, twine, paper, bone, sinew, water, fire, pottery, mirrors, mercury, digging holes, the arch.

And pretty good mathematics: knowledge of zero, a positional notation, plus, minus, multiply, and divide.

And zero science: no scientific method, no sign of designed machinery or scientific instruments.

But some strong astronomy/astrology. There are records of various planets and constellations. Solid tables of eclipses, etc. They may have known about the Orion nebula a thousand years before anyone else (vague Three Hearthstones stuff.)

But they had cities of 100,000+ people. They must have had pretty sophisticated civic management. And a population density that could support a large number of astronomers.

Maybe there was more, but the Spanish burned almost all the Mayan books. All that remain are four books:

1. The Dresden Codex
2. The Madrid Codex
3. The Paris Codex
4. The Grollier Codex

Anyway, how do you spin a bowl given this menu of technology?

It's actually quite simple: you put the bowl in a string basket, i.e put a loop around each leg. Suspend it on a long piece of string (say 40 feet.) Wind the string, then release it and let the torsion rotate the bowl.

The nice thing about this is that you don't need any science. Unlike, say, a glass lens where you have nothing until you've ground it to a precise shape. Here, you have mercury in a bowl (where else would you put it?) You swirl it around and see it does interesting optical things. You know about spindle whorls, so putting the bowl on a spinning string is obvious. 

Obviously, this still has problems. But it's better than trying to spin a bowl by hand.

One of these things is not like the others

So, I'm several beers into my research. The mercury looks fine. Now I just need to find the bowl that spins. I'm embarrassed to say that my mental image at this point was a simple paraboloid bowl that was basically whipped around by hand (maybe the bottom of the bowl would have circular scratch marks or something.)

I spend a few hours browsing images of Mayan pottery. Because I have little idea what I'm looking for, I figure I'll sample the space to get a sense of what is common, then look for bowls that are outliers (because there should only be 1 telescope for every 10000 cooking pots.) Bonus points if the outlier looks like a scientific instrument and seems amenable to spinning. I am so Bayesian.

Finally, I google for "classic Mayan shallow pottery bowl." The bowl shows up on the first page. I dismiss it at first because it has legs: no way will this thing spin nicely. But it's got a lot of things going for it: it's the right shape, it has no decoration, it's described as well-balanced, it even has a small vertical wall around its rim (just like the Large Zenith Telescope - nice to see a design choice repeated across 2000 years.)

I'm not sure how objective I'm being. So, when my kids show up, I ask each of them to find the pot that does not look like the others on the page of images. They both pick the target as their second choice.

I still don't know why the thing has legs, though. How does it spin?

Mercury

Back at the lodge, I retire to the bar where there is satellite internet. Research is a bit tough to do over a 56K connection that drops every few minutes. Still, I can't complain: many rainforests don't have any beer or internet.

The first topic is mercury. 684 grams were found at Caracol. At 13.5 grams per cubic cm, that's about 50 cubic centimeters. Assuming a depth of 5mm, that's a surface of 100 square centimeters, or a puddle with a radius of about 6 cm.

That's pretty cool. Enough mercury to make a 4 1/2 inch reflector. And it turns out that mercury was found at a number of Mayan sites.

Note that the Maya were a stone age civilization. That means no iron, copper, or even gold or silver. Luckily, they had local mercury deposits. Small quantities of liquid mercury could have be obtained either directly as a liquid dripping from certain rocks, or by burning cinnabar.

The lack of gold or silver means the Maya could not have used mercury for precious metal extraction. There aren't many other uses for mercury in a pre-industrial society. Maybe desperate medicine or an ill advised attempt at eternal life. Unfortunately, the absence of practical applications of mercury provides little support of my theory because the null hypothesis (as every science nerd will attest, liquid mercury is just a fun thing to have around and play with) cannot be rejected.

It looks like the Maya had decent quantities of liquid mercury. Enough for liquid mirrors, anyway.

Caracol, Belize

So we're at Caracol, looking at structure A6. The guide is telling us how the Maya used this as an astronomical observatory. He mentions that liquid mercury was found here, and how archeologists speculate that the Maya might have used it in a primitive spirit level sort of device.

The spirit level idea was absurd: mercury does nothing that plain water wouldn't do. But, if we're going to play "guess the use of an ancient object," I figure you put the mercury in a bowl, spin it to form a paraboloid reflector, and you've got the primary lens of a telescope. That's no more absurd than a spirit level, and at least it works in the idea of astronomy.

While the evidence for this theory was a bit on the thin side, and the guide didn't know how much mercury was found, I liked it enough to tell the guide his archeologists were wrong, the Maya had a telescope, and he was lucky to be the second person alive to know this. My wife looked at me witheringly.

Telescope Design

I don't have a complete design for a Mayan telescope, but here is a good start:

It's a Newtonian telescope

The primary mirror is a rotating liquid mercury paraboloid reflector, approx 7" diameter

As telescopes go, it's pretty primitive: it only points straight up.

Think of a telescope as doing two things: collecting light to make dim things visible, and magnifying small images to make them large. A big reflector does the first but not the second. We really need an eyepiece for the second.  

I don't have a good theory for the eyepiece. 

It is possible a light-enhancing, but non-magnifying, system could still be useful.

This is the total claim. If you find it totally implausible, stop now. If you find it merely louche, read the next post...

Introduction

Thesis: the Maya used telescopes.

The claim to be explored is that the Maya invented and used devices that allowed better than naked eye viewing of the sky.

Don't expect von Daniken weirdness here. There is not going to be aliens or lost technology or crystal skulls or strange interpretations of Pacal's sarcophagus.

Don't expect academic rigor. I had hoped this was going to be a simple argument with clear proof. I was wrong: an unassailable argument would require years of reading and physical experimentation in a number of fields.  It's better to throw out an inchoate idea now and hope someone makes something of it: I'm old enough to not care too much about the apportion of credit.

This is a blog. I'll probably talk about what I am thinking and doing rather than presenting a coherent narrative that directly supports my thesis.

Credits: I've had great help from archeologists, physicists, chemists, and other experts. My brain trust of strategists, generalists, and all round very smart people has been invaluable. Given the crackpot nature of this blog's claims, I will not mention anyone by name. Retroactive acknowledgement of contributions will of course be made if the contributor requests it.