|
Star War
A star war was a decisive conflict between rival polities of the Maya civilization during the first millennium AD. The term comes from a specific type of glyph used in the Maya script, which depicts a star showering the earth with liquid droplets, or a star over a shell. It represents a verb but its phonemic value and specific meaning have not yet been deciphered. The name "star war" was coined by the epigrapher Linda Schele to refer to the glyph, and by extension to the type of conflict that it indicates. Examples Maya inscriptions assign episodes of Maya warfare to four distinct categories, each represented by its own glyph. Those accorded the greatest significance by the Maya were described with the "star war" glyph, representing a major war resulting in the defeat of one polity by another. This represents the installation of a new dynastic line of rulers, complete dominion of one polity over another, or a successful war of independence by a formerly dominated polity. Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization () was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmospheric pressure is a few thousandths of Earth's, atmospheric temperature ranges from and cosmic radiation is high. Mars retains some water, in the ground as well as thinly in the atmosphere, forming cirrus clouds, frost, larger polar regions of permafrost and ice caps (with seasonal snow), but no liquid surface water. Its surface gravity is roughly a third of Earth's or double that of the Moon. It is half as wide as Earth or twice the Moon, with a diameter of , and has a surface area the size of all the dry land of Earth. Fine dust is prevalent across the surface and the atmosphere, being picked up and spread at the low Martian gravity even by the weak wind of the tenuous atmosphere. The terrain of Mars roughly follows a north-south ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Corona
La Corona is the name given by archaeologists to an ancient Maya court residence in Guatemala's Petén department that was discovered in 1996, and later identified as the long-sought "Site Q", the source of a long series of unprovenanced limestone reliefs of exceptional artistic quality. The site's Classical name appears to have been Sak-Nikte' ('White-Flower'). The search for 'Site Q' During the 1960s, looted Maya reliefs from a then-unknown city surfaced on the international art market. One of these reliefs, showing a ball player, is now in the Chicago Art Institute; another is in the Dallas Museum of Art. Peter Mathews, then a Yale graduate student, dubbed the city "Site Q" (short for ''¿Qué?'' panish for "what?". "La Corona was located in February 1996 when a jaguar poacher and looter turned eco-tourism promoter named Carlos Catalán led Santiago Billy, a researcher on a Conservation International campaign to protect scarlet macaws, to the heavily looted site" Ian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palenque
Palenque (; Yucatec Maya: ), also anciently known in the Itza Language as Lakamha ("big water" or "big waters"), was a Maya city-state in southern Mexico that perished in the 8th century. The Palenque ruins date from ca. 226 BC to ca. 799 AD. After its decline, it was overgrown by the jungle of cedar, mahogany, and sapodilla trees, but has since been excavated and restored. It is located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about south of Ciudad del Carmen, above sea level. It is adjacent to the modern town of Palenque, Chiapas. It averages a humid with roughly of rain a year. Palenque is a medium-sized site, smaller than Tikal, Chichen Itza, or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayas produced. Much of the history of Palenque has been reconstructed from reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the many monuments; historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dyn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dos Pilas
Dos Pilas is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in what is now the department of Petén, Guatemala. It dates to the Late Classic Period, and was founded by an offshoot of the dynasty of the great city of Tikal in AD 629 in order to control trade routes in the Petexbatún region, particularly the Pasión River.Salisbury, Koumenalis & Barbara Moffett 2002. In AD 648 Dos Pilas broke away from Tikal and became a vassal state of Calakmul, although the first two kings of Dos Pilas continued to use the same emblem glyph that Tikal did.Webster 2002, p. 263. It was a predator state from the beginning, conquering Itzan, Arroyo de Piedra and Tamarindito. Dos Pilas and a nearby city, Aguateca, eventually became the twin capitals of a single ruling dynasty. The kingdom as a whole has been named as the Petexbatun Kingdom, after Petexbatún Lake, a body of water draining into the Pasión River. Dos Pilas gives an important glimpse into the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Calendar
The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 5th century BC. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec civilization, Zapotec and Olmec and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. By the Maya mythology, Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendrical system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing system, writing in general and other foundational aspects of Mayan culture. Overview The Maya calendar consists of several cycle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregorian Calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years slightly differently to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long rather than the Julian calendar's 365.25 days, thus more closely approximating the 365.2422-day tropical year, "tropical" or "solar" year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. The rule for leap years is that every year divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are divisible by 100, except in turn for years also divisible by 400. For example 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was. There were two reasons to establish the Gregorian calendar. First, the Julian calendar was based on the estimate that the average solar year is exactly 365.25 days long, an overestimate of a li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Oklahoma Press
The University of Oklahoma Press (OU Press) is the publishing arm of the University of Oklahoma. Founded in 1929 by the fifth president of the University of Oklahoma, William Bennett Bizzell, it was the first university press to be established in the American Southwest. The OU Press is one of the leading presses in the region, and is primarily known for its titles on the American West and Native Americans. OU Press also publishes books on topics ranging from animals to ancient languages.Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopaedia of Oklahoma History and Culture Tornadoes and severe weather Severe weather is any dangerous meteorological phenomenon with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or loss of human life. These vary depending on the latitude, altitude, topography, and atmospheric conditions. High ... are another focus. The press releases around 80 books every year. A profile of the University of Oklahoma Press from 2018 quotes OU Preside ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retrograde And Prograde Motion
Retrograde motion in astronomy is, in general, orbital or rotational motion of an object in the direction opposite the rotation of its primary, that is, the central object (right figure). It may also describe other motions such as precession or nutation of an object's rotational axis. Prograde or direct motion is more normal motion in the same direction as the primary rotates. However, "retrograde" and "prograde" can also refer to an object other than the primary if so described. The direction of rotation is determined by an inertial frame of reference, such as distant fixed stars. In the Solar System, the orbits around the Sun of all planets and dwarf planets and most small Solar System bodies, except many comets and few distant objects, are prograde. They orbit around the Sun in the same direction as the sun rotates about its axis, which is counterclockwise when observed from above the Sun's north pole. Except for Venus and Uranus, planetary rotations around their axis are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Eclipse
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs approximately every six months, during the eclipse season in its new moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to Ecliptic, the plane of Earth's orbit. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In #Types, partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured. Unlike a lunar eclipse, which may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth, a solar eclipse can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world. As such, although total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every 18 months on average, they recur at any given place only once every 360 to 410 years. If the Moon were in a perfectly circular orbit and in the same orbital plane as Earth, there would be total solar eclipses once a month, at every new moon. Instead, because the Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Texas Press
The University of Texas Press (or UT Press) is the university press of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly and trade books in several areas, including Latin American studies, Caribbean, Caribbean studies, U.S. Latino studies, Latinx studies, Texana, Native American studies, Black studies, Middle Eastern studies, Jewish studies, gender studies, Film studies, film & media studies, music, art, architecture, archaeology, classics, anthropology, food studies and natural history. The Press also publishes journals relating to their major subject areas. The Press produces approximately one hundred new books and thirteen journals each year. In 2025, the University of Texas Press celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. During its time in operation, the Press has published more than 4,000 titles. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. History The University of Texas Press was formally founded in 1950, though the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phases Of Venus
The phases of Venus are the variations of lighting seen on the planet's surface, similar to lunar phases. The first recorded observations of them are thought to have been telescopic observations by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Although the extreme crescent phase of Venus has since been observed with the naked eye, there are no indisputable historical pre-telescopic records of it being described or known. Observation The orbit of Venus is 224.7 Earth days (7.4 avg. Earth months 0.4 days. The phases of Venus result from the planet's orbit around the Sun inside the Earth's orbit giving the telescopic observer a sequence of progressive lighting similar in appearance to the Moon's phases. It presents a ''full'' image when it is on the opposite side of the Sun. It is a ''gibbous'' phase when it approaches or leaves the opposite side of the Sun. It shows a ''quarter phase'' when it is at its maximum elongation from the Sun. Venus presents a ''thin crescent'' in telescopic views as it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
