Due to religious prejudice, most of the non-stone Mayan materials were burned by the Spanish. The Mayan civilization did not leave a mathematical legacy to the West, it simply beat the process by hundreds of years. However, in the modern age, as scholars look more and more into the Mayan calculations, they are able to deduce astromical records prior to recorded Western observations, as well as some of the predictions for natural disasters, weather events, and even seasonal migrations. In a typical example of the misinterpretation of a non-Western culture's science, some have postulated that the Mayan caldendar actually predicts the end of the earth in 2012. Instead, what is more likely is that 2012 is the end of a 5,126-year cycle from the Mayan long-count calendar; there may well be atmospheric or celestial convergence, but for the Maya, it was equivalent to a spritual rebirth -- not literally the...
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