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:
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.
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