On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

the various surviving Mayan codices . . . mentions nowhere ‘Hey it’s a good idea to put temples/cities here, here and here, to match the stars’, which you would think it would do if it was truly that obsessively important to the Mayans.

That omission could simply be a case of everybody already knowing something, so there was no need to write that "something" down. That is especially likely in a society (such as the Mayan appears to have been) where only the upper classes were literate.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.