Venus table of the Dresden Codex
Tablas de Venus del Códice de Dresde
- Date
- c. 1200-1250 · confidence medium
- Place
- Chichén Itzá / Mayapán, Yucatán, Mexico
- Credited to
- Maya priest-astronomers
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
An almanac predicting the appearances of Venus as a morning and evening star over more than a century, using a 584-day period with corrections that reduce the error to a few hours. It is the most precise astronomical table of pre-Columbian America.
The codex is a copy of older materials, perhaps from the 9th-10th century; the base date of the table is debated.
What it led to
- a ritual and war calendar linked to Venus
- the decipherment of Maya astronomy (Förstemann, 1880)