Although I understood Mayan lore spoke of gods from outerspace, I always thought that people built cities at locations where they found water for consumption and transportation, wild foods to forage, places to grow crops, abundant hunting grounds, and something to construct shelter with.
The idea that people studied the sky, mapped out the stars, and then superimposed the star-map over the earth and used that to determine the locations of their cities is mind-boggling.
Or (since the article spoke of Mayan constellations) did the Mayans build the cities first, then study the sky and map out only those stars which seemed to correspond to the earthly map of their cities?
On one hand it sounds like fantasy... the kind of connection and theory that only a kid could conceive of: someone who doesn't understand how things really work and tries to make connections between unrelated things, as kids often do. On the other hand, this is a a wondrous, ponderous amount of mathematical calculation and measurement... then and now.
This has me very curious to learn more about ancient Mayan culture and civilization.
