Wavelets: a second breath for models based on fixed cycles

description of the upgrade July 27, 2005 (with August 2, 2005 addition)

written by Sergey Tarassov

 Understanding the core idea

 Astronomy based modification of this model

 Getting a forecast - step by step guide

 Cyclic model of the stock market: a possible theory

Understanding the core idea of wavelets' usage

The first 6 months of Timing Solution program's existence (January, 2005) show that users apply
the great variety of techniques to get the projection line. Sometimes their approach is totally
unexpected for developers. And it is good, because the main goal of Timing Solution is creating a
universal platform for any forecast based on any type of models. If there is anything that might be
predicted, we can create the projection line for it!

The technique discussed further was born in conversations with one of our supporters in Russia, Mr.
Vlad . We have had to add just a few new features to the Timing Solution software to make the
usage of this technique more user friendly.

What is the main idea of this technique? Let us look back. We used to work with models based on
fixed cycles (i.e., cycles that repeat themselves with the same time period). The standard approach
is calculating the spectrum for analyzed price history data. It is a very good technique, it gives us
the information on majority of the cycles working for the analyzed data. Look at this example; this
is the spectrum calculated for the price of Ford Motors Corporation shares (to be exact, for its
detrended oscillator); we use the data from 1977 to 2000:
Peaks of this diagram represent the most influential cycles for this company's shares. We have
chosen only four major cycles: annual (one year) cycle, 303 days cycle, 3.2 years cycle and 4.9
years cycle. There are more cycles that may play some part for this stock, but these four are the
most powerful. Using Timing Solution software, you can get the projection line based on these
cycles by just one mouse click.

The bad news is that the stock market is rather fretful and does not like following any laws/rules all
the time (though it has to do so for shorter periods). Usually, it looks like the stock market follows
some cycle, then "something" occurs, and the stock market "forgets" about this cycle and starts
following another one. We can say that the market has its favorites among cycles (we do not discuss
a possible reason here) and from time to time it trades one favorite cycle to another. The
spectrogram (i.e., spectrum) shows us the "force" of these favorites. Sometimes the market looks
like it becomes crazy and changes favorite cycles every day; its behavior becomes unpredictable (it
is quite probable that Random Walk Theory was born at one of those moments:)). It is good for a
trader when the market follows one of its favorites (cycles); it is not that good when the market is
changing them.

It is a poetical picture, now let us dress it in the clothes of the techniques available in Timing
Solution software. In brief, the main question is: how to find out when the cycles' change take place
and what might be the next favorite?

Start with the spectrum window. Extract the cycles that work for this market; they will be listed in
the bottom part of the window. When you choose any cycle from the list, the program calculates its
"cycles activity diagram" (in our example, it is 303 days cycle):
The red zones represent the periods when the stock market follows this 303 days cycle (this 303
days cycle is in favor). Opposingly, the blue zones represent the periods when the stock market
does not "like" this 303 days cycle and prefers to go for another cycle/cycles. You can take this
diagram as a stock market's mood picture in respect to 303 days cycle. As you see, this mood is very
changeable.

The changeable character of the stock market behavior is the reason of difficulties in modeling a
good projection line, we simply have no permanent factors here that move the stock market, it
strongly depends on the stock market's mood in respect to the chosen cycle. IMHO, understanding
the nature of the stock market's mood contains the keys to improve the forecast's performance
significantly. Right now, two technologies are developing to handle this situation: one of them is
presented in this article (it is an application of the wavelet analysis). Another one is so called
"multiframe technology" that will be released this fall. Both approaches are developing under the
frame of Timing Solution software.

Let us demonstrate how to create a projection line taking into account the cycles that are related to
the "mood" of the market. Suppose we are analyzing 303 days cycle. Click on this button:
You will get one more spectrum diagram, but this spectrum is calculated for "cycles activity
diagram"; it shows the mood of the chosen stock market in respect to this 303 days cycle:

You can pick up any cycle clicking the mouse around the corresponding peak. The most strong
cycle here is 3.5 years. In other words, we can tell that, with the average periodicity of 3.5 years, the
stock market remembers 303 days cycle (that has been "forgotten" for a while) and follows it for
some time.

We have extracted other strong cycles as well: 708 days, 2.5 years, 2.9 years and 5.8 years. These
cycles are displayed in the right window. They all are "favorites" though for different times.
Highlight the next one, 360 days cycle, and calculate the spectrum of cycles activity diagram in
respect to this 360 days cycle.

Thus, in the same spectrum module, you can now extract two kinds of cycles:
1) Cycles that describe the trend movement (calculated in a regular way through Spectrum
window);

2) Cycles that describe the "cycles activity diagram"; in other words, the cycles that reflect the
mood of the stock market. We call them W Cycles (wavelet cycles).

These cycles are presented now in the "Cycle Box" window:

The program puts these cycles into the clipboard automatically. You can use these cycles as inputs
for Neural Net and calculate the projection line based on both types of cycles, regular and "mood"
ones. We provide the step by step instruction how to get the forecast using these cycles in a separate
article.

Astronomy based modification of this model

I am pretty much sure that the astronomy based cycles have the impact on the stock market.
Moreover, the nature of astronomical phenomena is much more interesting than just being a cause
for pushing the prices up/down. It looks like the astronomical cycles change the rules that the stock
market follows. The analogy with the weather is suitable here. Planetary cycles provide a kind of
mass psychology weather at any given moment of time. In the context of this planetary weather,
different cycles have different impact on the stock market, sometimes the same cycles may provide
the opposite effect. Thus, as we have stated earlier, in other articles, the impact of astronomical
factors on the market is non-linear, and the same factor can provide different effect due to its
environment. The astronomical cycles just play important role in this non-linear symphony of
Nature.

More than a year ago I have conducted a research analyzing "crazy" zones - the periods when the
stock market becomes almost unpredictable. I applied then the phase wavelet decomposition. The
most important conclusion was that these zones are better described by astronomy based cycles than
by anything else. Here is the link:
http://www.alphee.com/reading_room/readairfin/sergey_chaos.htm

It gives us hope that through astronomical cycles, we can get the important additional information
about the stock market's "mood" that is impossible to get using regular spectrum analysis. This
information, while being additional, is really important. This analogy may clarify the situation: If
we compare the stock market to a member of some royal family, and the cycles (revealed by
spectrum) to favorites of this person, the role of the trader is that one of a seeker for some benefits.
He will go to any of the favorites (or to all of them), trying to get their help. But the royal person
(sorry, the stock market) is very capricious, and favorites are changed all the time, and there is no
obvious strict rules to follow. What the seeker has to do (i.e., what should the trader do)? - Right,
take any piece of information that shows who is in favor at this moment and how long it will
continue (or - what is the market's "mood" at the moment and what cycle it follows). It is exactly
what Timing Solution (and the new technique described here) does.

Right now, in Timing Solution software, there is a feature to extract the most influential
astronomical cycles for any mood/cycles activity diagram. You can do it clicking on this button:

You will see the window where the most influential astronomical cycles for the market's mood are
revealed:

The preliminary research shows that the mood cycles improve the forecasting ability of the
program. Here is the projection for Ford Motors shares; the blue line is provided by pure spectrum
analysis without mood cycles, the red line is the forecast with added mood cycles:
 :

In this example, taking into account the mood cycles gives us a forecast of March-April swing
(which actually has occurred), while the blue line (a forecast without mood cycles) skips this swing.

Getting a forecast - step by step guide

We believe that the procedure of creating the projection line is the art. It is impossible to use the
same procedure forever and get always a good projection line as well. Life provides us a lot of
variety and surprises. But there are still some typical ways of creating a forecast. These ways vary
for different time periods and analyzed securities/indexes/currencies, but they are the same for the
same type of models. The ways of using the Spectrum module and creating a forecast by cycle
based models are shown in this small article: Click here to read it.

You may try to do it yourself. Then we can discuss your results together.

Cyclic model of the stock market: a possible theory

My first approach to stock market data has occurred in Russia, in the middle of 90s. Due to my
background in nuclear physics and math methods of data analysis, I have started to look at the
market forecast the same way as I used to for any other scientific research. But there was no
appropriate software at that time to deal with. Thus, years were spent in building a computer
program (programs) that will really help in solving this problem. The following is a brief resume of
ideas regarding this problem. It is not just my thoughts, it involves discussions with different people
- traders, scientists, etc.
Dealing with consistent data set, any researcher will start from checking the presence of resonant
oscillations (own oscillations). Applying this to market forecasting, it means that there are market
oscillations that the market "likes" more. Earlier we have compared the market to a member of the
royal family; "resonant oscillations" here mean things that this royal person likes always, no matter
what are the circumstances or who is in favor. Or, better, things that this being likes or dislikes
(these things always provide the same reaction), things that always touch it. Usually, any system has
several (or many) different resonant oscillations.

If this idea makes any sense, we can assume that the market (stock, commodities, futures) speaks to
the world by the language of these resonant oscillations. And here comes the most interesting part -
to understand how much does the market really speaks by this language. There are a lot of
possibilities here. One of them is that any event occuring to(with) the market can be expressed
through those resonant oscillations. In other words, any market action is a simple sum of involved
oscillations. In this case, we deal with a linear system (it is what the physicists prefer).

However, the reality is much more complicated. The language of resonant oscillations intertwines
with other factors presented in the world; they all affect the market somehow (just remember so
called fundamental factors). And the mutual impact of these factors and resonant oscillations is not
obvious. We are dealing here with a non-linear system.

Thus, we have here a wide range of possibilities - from 100% linear system where the result is a
mere sum of involved oscillations to a very non-linear system (its extreme is Chaos). Going back to
analogy with the royal person, we can say that the linear system means a person who always likes
bread with butter and hates porridge. The non-linear system means a person who likes bread and
butter and hates porridge while being together with person A, and hates bread and butter being with
person B, and loves porridge staying at Bahamas hotel without any person at all.

So, the problem is to understand the market's place in this range of possibilities. Here we have a
difference between two the most popular market approaches. Random Walk Theory is the extreme
of a non-linear system; this is one side of extreme. Another extreme is the Romantic approach -
beliefs that somewhere there is something (a cycle, a magic number, etc.) that can explain all
market fluctuations. I prefer the position of the moderate optimist. Briefly, it can be described by
these 2 statements (and I can prove any of them):

1) Fixed cycles: the market has a cyclic nature; at least, a part of registered market fluctuations can
be explained by resonant oscillations. This part is enough to make a workable forecast. Here is the
proof:
This is spectrum for S&P 500 index, 1950 - 2005. The red line uses all available points to calculate
the spectrum. The blue and green lines present the spectrums calculated for two different
independent intervals (within the main time frame). Dots mark zones where the spectrum peaks for
all three lines coincide. In other words, cycles of 2 years, 2.9 years, and 3.5 years (approximately)
are presented for both independent intervals. (For exact numbers, try the program Timing Solution.)
It means that these cycles are of permanent nature for the S&P 500 index.

2) Astronomical factors: the cycles' impact is in correspondence with the impact of astronomical
factors. Astronomical factors mean real physical parameters (such as planetary positions or angles
between the planets) that can be found in any reference book or program. It looks like astronomical
factors define the environment where the cycles act, and they (astro factors) are responsible for a
non-linearity of the whole system.

Here comes a very important notice: astronomical factors are not some fixed parameters. They are
changing with the time; in their nature, they are cycles themselves. The difference is that they have a
non-regular nature, they are non-even - as opposed to normal, fixed cycles. Thus, markets exist in
the continuum of different cycles - astronomical ones that define the scene of the future market
fluctuations; and fixed ones that are the actors on this scene. Or, if you would like, we can take the
analogy with waves and water. Waves are the fixed cycles; but their height, periodicity and other
parameters depend on the environment (whether this is a lake or a running river, winds, the bottom
structure, etc.) which is astronomical cycles.

Astronomical cycles are of a great importance. I tried (and I always start the market research with)
fixed cycles only (extracted from spectrum); but the involvement of astronomical ones gives better
results in forecasting. You have no need to believe me; you can do it yourself.

I need to apologize for the unintended profanation of mathematical ideas. It is not easy to express
these ideas without using the formulas. But I hope that the readers have got the impression of the
basics of harmonic analysis and non-linear dynamics.

This was the introduction of the theme. It will be continued. I will appreciate any feedback.
 The Fibonacci Numbers:

Connections within the Mathematics and Calendrical Systems

of Ancient Mesoamerica

by Valerie Vaughan

Introduction

Astronomical cycles do not fit neatly into whole-number counting systems created by humans. For
example, we must use decimals to express the tropical year at approximately 365.2422 days, the
lunation at about 29.5306 days, or the average synodical revolution of Venus, which is 583.92 days.
We tend to assume that it is necessary to use fractions or decimal placement in order to express
these kinds of astronomical figures, but that is simply a prejudice based on our familiarity with the
Western method of counting. Long before modern scientists gave us such "precise" measurements,
the ancient Mesoamericans evolved a numerical system that could handle most astronomical
calculations; in fact, all the planetary cycles could be incorporated within their intricate calendrical
system. They succeeded in bringing these cycles into relation with one another and, most
importantly for the Maya, into relation with their sacred (astrological) calendar of 260 days. And
they performed this astonishing feat without any knowledge of fractions or the decimal system. No
wonder the Maya called their calendar "divine!"

The Mesoamericans, like all civilized peoples of the world, developed and abided by a calendar
based on the approximate length of the tropical year (365 days). But they also used a second
calendar unlike any other in the world. Known variously as the tzolkin (Yucatec) or tonalpohaulli
(Nahuatl), it was 260 days in length, and served as an astrological almanac or sacred calendar for all
peoples of ancient Mesoamerica. It is even still in use today in some parts of Mexico and
Guatemala. This calendar guided the daily rituals and cultural achievement of the people, but it also
formed the basis for interconnecting the various measurements of cyclical time.

Despite the importance of the 260-day calendar for ancient Mesoamericans, no explanation has
been generally accepted as to how, why, or exactly where this time-keeping method began. One
astronomer has suggested that its origin was due to a 260-day span of time between zenith positions
of the sun during winter at the latitude of Mesoamerica (around 15 degrees North).[1] But this
theory credits a disproportionately large amount of influence to an incidental measurement; it is
rather like saying that most of the art, religion, mathematics, and astronomy of an entire culture is
based on the geographical address of its capital -- on two days of the year. The theory also ignores
the mathematical genius of the Mayan people and their absolute dedication to astro-numerology.

The fact is that the ancient Maya discovered a mathemagical key that linked nearly every known
astronomical cycle. With the number 260 and its component divisors (13 x 20, 5 x 52, etc.), they
could interconnect all the apparent time sequences of observable celestial cycles -- solar, lunar,
eclipse, Venus, Mars, Mercury, even the cycle of precession. The 260-day calendar was used to
denote multiple interrelated systems; for example, it could be brought into phase with the 365-day
calendar once every 52 years, which was an important cycle for the Maya. This period of 52 years is
called the Calendar Round, the hunab (Maya) or xiuhmolpilli (Nahautl).

In the Dresden Codex (one of the few surviving codices from ancient Mesoamerica) are tables
giving multiples of 780 days (260 x 3), which correlate with the synodic period of Mars (779.936
days). Elsewhere in this codex is a table with a base of 117 days, which is close to the synodic
period of Mercury (116 days) and is also connected to the rhythm of the 260-day calendar.

One of the great intellectual feats of the Mayan sky-watchers was the construction of a table for
predicting when solar eclipses might be visible. This was accomplished without the knowledge that
the sun crossing the moon's path creates a solar eclipse (an event taking place every 173.31 days,
called the eclipse half-year), because supposedly the Maya did not know that the earth revolved
around the sun. Nevertheless, they calculated that three eclipse half-years were approximately equal
to two rounds of the 260-day sacred calendar (3 x 173.31 days = 519.93 days). We know this from
the Dresden Codex table where 69 dates are given for solar eclipses that would occur during 33
years.[2]

The Maya observed that the synodical revolution of Venus averaged 584 days, but they wanted to
incorporate this cycle into their 260-day calendar, which was composed of twenty day-signs that
had coefficients numbered one to thirteen. The most significant day of Venus in the 260-day
calendar was 1-Ahau, also called One Flower. The Maya wanted to know how many synodical
revolutions were necessary before Venus would reappear as a morning star (the heliacal rising after
inferior conjunction with the Sun) on the sacred day 1-Ahau. They recognized that five synodic
periods of Venus (approximately 584 days) corresponded to eight so-called Vague Years of 365
days, as well as being close to 99 lunations. They figured out that, in 104 Vague Years (two times
the Calendar Round, which coordinates the 260-day count with the Vague Year), there are 146 of
the 260-day counts, 65 Venus periods, and 219 times the eclipse cycle. Thus,

2920 = 8 x 365 = 5 x 584

37,960 = 104 x 365 = 65 x 584 = 146 x 260 = 219 x 173.31

This was a neat solution, but astronomical measurements are much more complex. Since the
average synodic cycle of Venus is actually 583.92 days, after 65 revolutions calculated at 584 days,
there is an accumulated error of 5.2 days. This means a gradual displacement of the true helical
rising of Venus at the start of the 104 Vague Year count from its official position, the day One
Flower in the 260-day count, so that the helical rising of Venus would miss the predicted date by
five days. How did the Mayans solve this problem of drift?

In the Central Mexican codices that contain Venus tables, there are five sections that present 65
Venus periods or 104 Vague years. The astronomer John Teeple found that these tables contained
indications of corrections, made by subtracting a few days at the end of the 57th and 61st Venus
periods.[3] Making these alterations brought the final Mayan accuracy to an error of only one day in
6000 years.

The Tropical Year

As should be clear by now, accuracy was a hallmark of the Maya understanding of time and
planetary cycles, so it seems safe to assume that they would have measured the tropical year with
equal rigor. Unfortunately, the hard evidence for this is slim, so we must rely somewhat on
scholarly interpretations. (If the conquering Spanish Catholics had not burned most of the
Mesoamerican literature, this wouldn't be a problem for modern researchers.) Because only a
handful of astronomical codices survive, what modern Mayan scholars must often do is to reason,
"since they knew this, they must have known that," and thus draw out more information by
interpolation.

The question of whether the Maya knew the true length of the year has been discussed by scholars
ever since Diego de Landa's claim in the 16th century that [the Maya] "had a year as perfect [sic] as
ours, consisting of 365 days and 6 hours," and that "from these six hours one day was made very
four years, and so that they had every four years the year of 366 days."[4] In deciding how much we
can rely on Landa's understanding of Mesoamerican astronomy, we must consider the fact that
Bishop Landa was one of the leading Spanish book-burners. According to his own account,
"because the books contained nothing in which there were not superstitions and falsities of the
devil, we burned them all."

What we do know is that the Maya recognized several calendars operating simultaneously. The
Vague Year was a 365-day period divided into eighteen 20-day veintenas (360 days), plus the five
"days without name" at the end. There is no evidence that the Mesoamericans actually ever
intercalated leap days. However, there are several notations in surviving codices that strongly imply
their understanding of the true length of the year. This was revealed in 1930, when John Teeple
published one of the most extensive studies of astronomical practice in the New World. The
conclusions he made were independent of the so-called correlation question (how to correlate the
Mayan Long Count with the European calendar) and were based solely on an examination of
intervals separating Maya dates on the monuments and in the codices.

Regarding the question of leap year corrections, Teeple proposed that the Maya had a system of
"determinants" by which they expressed the accumulated error since the inception of their Long
Count calendar, but another scholar argued that these alleged "determinant" dates were historical
events occurring at irregular intervals.[5] The noted Mayan scholar J. Eric S. Thompson supported
Teeple's proposal, and felt that the skeptics were unjustified.[6] The Vague Year was constantly
creating a discrepancy (just as the Julian calendar did in Europe) which could not have been ignored
by the time-conscious Maya; and we know from other sources that the Maya had a remarkably
accurate knowledge of the true length of the tropical year.[7] Subsequent research has continued to
uncover in the inscriptions certain integral multiples of the true tropical year.[8]

The duration of the solar year as determined by modern astronomy is 365.242191 days.[9] Analysis
of monument dates and codices shows that the Maya understood the tropical year to be 365.2422
days in length (they did not express it in that form, of course, since they did not use fractions or
decimal places, but the indications are clear, as we shall see). This amount is more astronomically
accurate than the Gregorian calendar which is currently in use (365.2425 days). The Mayan
measurement contains an error of one day in 6729 years, while the Gregorian calendar has an error
of one day in 3236 years. The Gregorian Calendar, adopted in 1582, was devised by the Italian
Luigi Lilio (Aloisius Lilius); he proposed the intercalation of 97 days in 400 years (which amounts
to an average year of 365.2425 days). No one knows how this figure was derived.[10]

Actually, modern astronomers believe that the earth has been slowing down, which makes these
figures even more interesting. Observations show that the length of the year is gradually
diminishing, and extrapolations based on current measurements can be used to demonstrate that the
length of the tropical year in 1582 was 365.24222 days.[11] This means that, even after Europeans
devised the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th century, the Christian West has always measured the
year with less accuracy than did the Mayan civilization which Europeans had destroyed in that same
century.

Having laid this background, we are now prepared to introduce the Fibonacci numbers as a possible
key to the Mesoamerican calendrical system.

Fibonacci Numbers

What are Fibonacci numbers? They are a sequence of numbers with several fascinating properties.
The first property is that each term is the sum of the two previous terms. (Zero plus one is one, 1 +
1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, and so on.) Thus,

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597 ...

Fibonacci numbers were first discussed by an Italian mathematician of the 13th century, Leonardo
of Pisa, whose nickname was Fibonacci. The astronomer-astrologer Johannes Kepler recognized
this series as capable of producing the so-called Divine Proportion, but this fact was not explicitly
stated until the 18th century as "the ratios of consecutive terms tend to a limit, which is PHI (), the
Golden Ratio."

Why introduce Fibonacci numbers into a discussion of Mayan mathematics? In other words, how
did I come to connect the Fibonacci numbers with the mathematics of a culture far removed from
Europe? Early in my investigation of leap year calculations, I realized that Fibonacci numbers could
be used to produce a good approximation of the true tropical year. One simply alternates addition
and subtraction of fractions with a denominator in the Fibonacci series:[12]

365 + 1/2 - 1/3 + 1/5 -1/8 = 365.24166666...

Which just happens to an accurate measurement of the tropical year around 2300 A.D. (assuming
the earth keeps on slowing down at its present rate), only 300 years away -- not that far into the
future, calendrically speaking. Compare this with the current value in use (365.2425), which was an
accurate measurement of the tropical year around 500 B.C., about 2500 years ago.

I also noticed that Mesoamerican mathematics-calendrics appeared to be based on continual

additive series; i.e., various important numbers were repeatedly added or subtracted, which is the
initial concept behind Fibonacci numbers. Because Fibonacci numbers are an additive series, each
one can be constructed from combinations of others. The Maya apparently applied the same
principle in their system of interlocking cycles. Their math, astronomy, and calendars were
dominated by several numbers from the Fibonacci sequence (in particular, 5, 8, and 13), as well as
by numbers that were created by the cumulative addition of the Fibonacci numbers (the all-
important Mayan number 20 is the sum of the first six Fibonacci numbers, 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8).
The sum of Fibonacci numbers at any given point in the sequence is never a Fibonacci number
itself, but if you add the second number in the sequence to this sum, the result is the number two
terms ahead. For example, in the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, (13), 21, add the first six numbers, skip
the seventh, and you get the eighth minus the second number, one.

Fibonacci numbers have many fascinating properties. For example, take any three numbers in the
sequence (like 3, 5, 8); square the middle number (5 x 5 = 25); multiply the first and third numbers
(3 x 8 = 24); the difference between the two answers is always one. Or take any four numbers in the
sequence, in order, multiply the two outside numbers and then multiply the two inside numbers. The
first product will be either one more or one less than the second:

2, 3, 5, 8 3, 5, 8, 13

2 x 8 = 16; 3 x 5 = 15 3 x 13 = 39; 5 x 8 = 40

Another property of Fibonacci numbers is that the sum of any ten numbers in the sequence is equal
to eleven times the seventh number in the series, a fact which would not have escaped the notice of
Mesoamericans, who recognized the numbers 7 and 11 as special.

With these ideas as a promising start, I began to uncover more details that seemed to indicate that
the Mesoamericans must have appreciated and used something like what we now call Fibonacci
numbers. I recently discovered that John Major Jenkins investigated the Fibonacci-Mesoamerican
connection in his book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies,[13] which I
encourage readers to find. To my knowledge, Jenkins is the only scholar to have recognized the
Fibonacci connection, and his insights are provocative. My paper here sums up my own research so
far. The only disclaimer I can make is to admit that, once you begin to study the Fibonacci numbers
and the Divine Proportion, there is a danger that you will start to see them in everything. But of
course the Maya evidently had the same fascination for numbers as a key to the cosmos and they
regarded such numbers as divine, so we are perfectly justified in adopting their attitude of reverence
as we study the Mayan system.

One of the first things I attempted to do in this study was to find a fraction that approximated the
leap year (several mathematicians have worked on this -- see footnote 10). The fraction I found
which was closest to the value 0.2422 was 365/1507:

365 / 1507 = .242203 .2422 x 1507 = 364.9954

Here is the solution for the leap day calculation: the true tropical year exceeds the length of the
regular calendar year (365 days) by one day every 1508 days:

365 x 1508  365.2422 x 1507

What does this mean for leap-day calculation? It would certainly simplify things if we just added
one "leap day" after 1507 days, instead of all the rigamarole of "every fourth year, except in
centennial years, unless they are divisible by 400." But we don't, because 1507 is an "odd" amount
(according to our Western way of counting, which is rather stuck on inorganic, square, even
numbers, such as four, six, and 100). But if we did use this formula, and if we "thought"
mathematically in a manner similar to the Mesoamericans (in terms of cumulative addition), we
would first have four regular years of 365 days, and then after an additional 47 days, we would add
the leap day, and then start over again, having four regular years.

365 + 365 + 365 + 365 + 47 = 1507 (plus one leap day = 1508)

Once I had discovered the importance of 1508 for leap year calculation, I found that this particular
number stood out in many of the Mesoamerican calculations and was therefore evidence of the
Mayan understanding of the true tropical year. Before I could begin to congratulate myself on this
discovery, however, I found out that some of my work duplicated that of a certain Mayan scholar,
Munro Edmonson.
In 1988 Munro Edmonson published an intriguing examination of this evidence as The Book of the
Year: Middle American Calendrical Systems. His conclusion is that the ancient Mesoamericans
reached a better accuracy for the year than Western astronomers, and at a far earlier time, and that
"their discovery was as much numerological as it was astronomical."[14] The following table is
from Edmonson's book, demonstrating how the Mesoamericans arrived at their calculation of the
tropical year through their sacred calendar, the 260-day tzolkin, which is 20 times the trecena (a 13-
day period), or 13 times the veintena (a 20-day period).

13 x 4 = 52 One fifth of the tzolkin

13 x 5 = 65 One quarter of the tzolkin

13 x 7 = 91 1/4 of the calculational year (364 days)

13 x 20 = 260 One complete day count in the tzolkin

13 x 28 = 364 One calculational year

13 x 29 = 377 1/4 of the 1508-day leap year interval

13 x 29 x 4 = 1508 One leap year interval (52 x 29)

13 x 365 x 4 = 18,980 One calendar round (52 x 365)

13 x 365 x 29 = 137,605 One quarter of the solar era (1508 years)

13 x 365 x 29 x 4 = 550,420 One solar era

Edmonson believes that the calendar was designed so as to predict the correction for the tropical
year every 1508 years, and that this is demonstrated by the structure and chronological placement of
all the various Mesoamerican calendars with respect to each other. 29 x 52 gives both the leap-year
interval (in days) and the length of the solar era (in years). To quote Edmonson, "Although I cannot
reconstruct how [this formula] was reached, I believe it corresponded to the empirical discovery of
the inequality of the [seasonal] quarters...If the original intuitive grasp of the era was a
numerological rather than an astronomical discovery, the derivation of equal 377-year quarters of a
1508-year era is both logical and mystically attractive (29 trecenas to a quarter and 29 calendar
rounds to an era)."[15]

So, Edmonson recognizes that the discovery might have been numerological, but he cannot
reconstruct how this revelation was reached. This is where my Fibonacci theory comes in. One of
the important numbers here, 377, is a Fibonacci number. In fact, it is the 13th if we begin the
sequence with 1, 2, 3, 5, 8..., and 1508 happens to be the difference between two Fibonacci numbers
(1597 - 89 = 1508). Another important value, 91, which is the number of days in a season or one-
quarter of the calculational year, is the sum of all numbers from 1 to 13.

If you think this analysis is far-fetched, be patient. There's more to come. As we shall demonstrate,
the Fibonacci numbers appear too often in Mesoamerican calculations to be merely coincidental.
You might argue that the reason they do is because of the Mayan focus on such numbers as 5, 8, and
13, and the fact that they counted by 20 (which we have noted is the sum of the Fibonacci sequence
1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8). But that begs the question, why were these numbers so important to the
Maya in the first place? Rephrased, why did they count this way (by 20s and 13s)? Was the
Mesoamerican counting system actually based on an understanding of the concept that is behind
the Fibonacci sequence and its universal applications? This is something to ponder as we go along.

Calculations and Calendrics

Now, as you know, the Gregorian Calendar solution is to add a leap day. Apparently, the
Mesoamericans did the opposite, they subtracted. Recognizing that the 1508 Vague (365-day) Years
of the solar era actually make up only 1507 real tropical years of 365.2422 days, they set out to
erase the extra year by subtracting one 20-day month every 83 years. Actually, this was not in fact
performed as a real correction, because any Mesoamerican calendar was allowed to run its course
without change, but every time that a new calendar was founded, it was timed to the ongoing
awareness of when the era was due to begin and end. By the way, regarding this subtraction of 20
days every 83 years, try this: Take the Fibonacci number 1597, subtract 20 and you get an exact
multiple of 83.

1597 - 20 = 1577 = 83 x 19.

The Mesoamericans used sequences of additive numbers in their astronomical calculations, as is

apparent in their five-part Long Count dating system, composed as follows. (Because 20 and 13 are
involved, the great cycle can also be expressed as 7200 tzolkin, so that the great cycle begins and
ends on the same name day, 4-Ahau, also called Four Flower.)

1 uinal = 20 days

1 tun = 18 uinal = 360 days

1 katun = 20 tuns = 7200 days

1 baktun = 20 katuns = 144,000 days

1 great cycle = 13 baktuns = 1,872,000 days (about 5125 years)

Note the use of the term "sequences of additive numbers," rather than "multiples." There is a subtle
difference here that may assist us in getting into a Mesoamerican "headset." Multiplication is really
a special form of addition. "There is no evidence showing that the Maya ever used their notation for
multiplying numbers, or even that they ever multiplied two numbers, with or without their
notation."[16] Many important numbers of astronomical significance can be created from additive
functions. For example, if you add the numbers one through twenty-seven, you get 378, the synodic
period of Saturn (in days). Adding one through 39 equals 780, the synodic period of Mars. As we
have seen, adding the numbers one through thirteen gives 91, the number of days in a season.

Thinking in terms of consecutive, repetitive cycles is a slightly different approach than straight
multiplying, using fractions, or "reducing to common denominators." For example, if you alternate
the addition of 260 and 364 (the Maya calculational year in days), you get:

260 + 364 + 260 + 364 + 260 = 1508

We could instead think in a Western mathematical fashion and express this as an algebraic equation,
( 3 x 260 ) + ( 2 x 364 ) = 1508. Since 364 can also be expressed as 7 cycles of 52, or 28 cycles of
13, and 260 is 20 x 13, we can rewrite this as 1508 = ( 3 x 13 x 20 ) + ( 2 x 13 x 28), and find the
factor 13.

1508 = 13 x 116

And 116 days just happens to be the synodic cycle of Mercury -- another eerie coincidence of
resonance in the solar system that is revealed through the all-important Mesoamerican number 13 (a
Fibonacci number). The word "coincidence" is used facetiously, of course, for this is no accident.
The Mesoamericans held an astro-numerological key to the structure of astronomical cycles, and
their culture was destroyed "coincidentally" during the rise of the Western European Scientific
Revolution. Johannes Kepler attempted to reveal a similar mathemagical structure, and his work
along these lines has been put down as "mystical" by the modern offspring of that same Scientific
Revolution, the academic mafia. This latter term was coined by the Mesoamerican archaeologist
Michael Coe in his critical assessment of his colleagues and a system that mitigates against
academic heresy:

"Most anthropologists are so fuddy-duddy. They're not willing to let their minds roam ahead,
speculate....There used to be more freedom of thought and expression, less worry about what peers
said. Today there's sort of an academic mafia that runs things....If you say the wrong thing, you're
bad and you don't get in... There are reputable publications that won't accept papers written based
on anything but stuff dug up by archaeologists."[17] Needless to say, the paper you are reading right
now falls into this category.

Modern academic prejudice, the debunking of astrology, or burning sixteenth century works of
"superstition and falsities of the devil" -- what's the difference? Independent thinkers are not
hampered by such restrictions to the growth of knowledge, so let us continue...

It turns out that 1508 days is a key value for determining other astronomical cycles.

1508 + 52 = 1560 = 2 x 780 (Mars cycle) = 9 x 173.31 (eclipse cycle)

= 6 x 260 (sacred calendar)

Also, taking the amount 1508 years (Edmunson's "solar era") and multiplying by 17, we get 25,636
years, a good approximation of the precessional cycle of the equinoxes.

Other calculational values were used repeatedly by the Mesoamericans. In the Dresden Codex, we
find indications for another significant period of time, 1820 days.

1820 = 5 x 364 (calculational year) = 7 x 260

1820 = 1508 + six cycles of 52

One particularly important calculational value was the 819-day-count.[18] In Classic Maya
inscriptions, it was one of the ongoing cycles specified by a Distance Number that was counted
backwards to a particular tzolkin name day that had a coefficient of one. Because 819 is divisible by
13, this coefficient always remained the same. In Mayan hieroglyphics, there are "verb" glyphs that
usually accompanied such a count, such as the God K who was commonly associated with the 819
count. According to some sources, God K was a rain god, possibly related to Mercury. Another
connection with the 819-day-count was the period of forty days, symbolized in the texts by images
of footprints. In the mythological passage from the Chilam Balam of Chumayel called "The
Creation of the Uinal," there are images of footprints used to measure the world,[19] and this period
of 40 days (twice the uinal) is still called by some modern Maya "one foot of the year."[20]

The 819-day-count is an interesting computational formula. It is the sum of the numbers 2 through
40, and can also be expressed as:

819 = 91 + 92 + 93.

819 is divisible by 13, 9, and 7, and can therefore be linked to several other cycles, such as the
computational year:

4 x 819 = 9 x 364

There is much evidence that multiples of 364 days, particularly 20 x 364, were used by the Maya.
The quantity 20 x 819 (or 45 x 364 = 16,380 days) was also used. The 819 days is equivalent to
three tzolkins (39 veintenas) plus 39 days (or 20 x 41, minus one), which means it could function as
a "footstep." In 819 days, the trecena coefficient and that of the Lord of the Night (a multiple of
nine) remains the same, but the day name (and the kin coefficient in the Long Count) drops by one.

One researcher[21] has noted that the Maya could have used the 819-day-count as a means of
tracking planetary positions, because the synodic periods of the visible planets can be integrated
thus:

819 = 780 (one Mars cycle) + 39 (or 3 x 13)

= 2 x 377 (one Saturn cycle) + 65 (or 5 x 13, or 1/4 of a tzolkin)

= 7 x 116 (one Mercury cycle) + 7

= 2 x 399 (one Jupiter cycle) + 21 (or 3 x 7)

Adding together these four equivalents of 819, we get several useful calculational formulae:

819 x 4 = 364 x 9 = 63 x 13 = 117 x 7 = 21 x 39 = 13 x 7 x 9

We also note that 819 days can be linked to the cycle of Venus:

819 x 5 = 7 x 584 (one Venus cycle) + 7

And thus we see the value of the quantity 4 x 5 x 819 (or 20 x 819), which brings the cycle of Venus
into alignment with the other planetary cycles. If we use 585, the Mayan calculational cycle of
Venus, instead of 584, we see even more exact connections. (584 days is technically the mean
synodic period; the cycle actually varies between 581 and 588)[22]
819 x 5 = 585 x 7 = 45 x 13 = 65 x 9

And by linking the 819-count with the 260-day tzolkin, we get a precise earth-Venus relationship:

819 x 260 = 364 x 585

The quantity 819 forms other interesting celestial relationships:

819 x 115.95 (Mercury cycle) = 260 x 365.2425 (tropical year)

819 x 40 (one "footstep of the year") = 360 (one tun) x 91 (one season)

The following fractions are all equivalent and suggest the Maya had an understanding of the
intricate relationships between different cycles:

4 20 28 52 116 364
9 45 63 117 261 819

819 can also be expressed as the sum of various Fibonacci numbers, for example:

819 = 610 + 144 + 34 + 21 + 8 + 2 (or other combinations)

In fact, there are several numbers of astronomical significance that can be created from the
Fibonacci series. For example, 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 +13 + 21 = 52, one-fifth of a tzolkin. We have
mentioned that 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 = 20, and 20 times the next number in the series (13) equals
260. Take seven numbers in the series (8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144), add them together to get 364,
divided by seven is 52. Or take alternating numbers in the series, adding two and skipping one:

0 + 1.....+ 2 + 3.....+ 8 + 13......+ 34 + 55......+ 144 = 260

(1) (5) (21) (89)

Using another sequence from Fibonacci numbers (55, 89, .... 1597), we add the first six:

55 + 89 + 144 + 233 + 377 + 610 = 1508

Continue forward two more in the series (987, 1597), subtract the second number (89), and you
have 1597 - 89 = 1508. As previously mentioned, the reason this works is because of the general
property of Fibonacci numbers: With any sequence of numbers in the Fibonacci series, you get the
sum of all of them by going forward two more numbers in the sequence and subtracting the second
in the sequence.

The synodic periods of the planets can also be created from Fibonacci numbers. The Mercury cycle
of 116 days is 1508 divided by 13; the Jupiter cycle of 399 days is 34 more than one year, 365 days;
the Saturn cycle of 378 days is 13 more than 365, or 377 plus one. The number of days in the Venus
cycle, 584, is created from the sequence:

8 + 13 + 21 + 34 + 55 + 89 + 144 + 233 = 584 minus 13

The synodic period of Venus can also be expressed via the Fibonacci number 8:

584 = 81 + 82 + 83

What we are talking about here, as we jump back and forth between Maya calculations and
European Fibonacci numbers, from the astrologically-oriented Mesoamerican culture to Western
Science, is nothing less than the grandest quest of the human mind: to understand man's place
within the universe. To perceive the pattern which connects man and nature has been the goal of
many great thinkers. For example, it is the subject of Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, an
extraordinary book by Gregory Bateson, the highly respected modern anthropologist. Posing the
question, "what is the pattern which connects all living creatures," Bateson recognized that spirals,
such as the one produced through the Fibonacci series, the Golden Proportion, are created by living
things. The key, Bateson remarked, is "never quantities, always shapes, forms, and relations."[23]

Form, order, and pattern are terms that continually appear in Bateson's writings. He does not
classify human beings according to category (such as religion, family, gender), but in terms of their
relationships. "Patterns," Bateson said, "are the necessary outward and visible sign of the system
being organized."[24] The numerological understanding of such patterns was also the goal of
Johannes Kepler, of astrology in general, and Mesoamerican "calendrics" in particular. While the
Western mind has investigated the principle of the Divine Proportion, the Mesoamerican mind
observed the Divine Calendar.

Divine Proportion

The Divine Proportion, also called the Golden Ratio, and has been designated by the 21st letter of
the Greek alphabet, PHI  (21 is, of course, a Fibonacci number). PHI is an irrational number
created by the successive convergents of numerators and denominators following the Fibonacci
sequence. To demonstrate this, take any Fibonacci number and divide it by the previous Fibonacci
number. For example, 377 / 233  1.61803. The further you go in the Fibonacci series with this
method, the closer you approach the Divine Proportion, which is equal to

PHI () ( 

Being an irrational number, it extends far beyond 1.618033988749894...but is often approximated at

1.618. The ratios of successive Fibonacci numbers tend toward PHI, so PHI is the limit of the
sequence 2/3, 3/5, 5/8, 8/13, etc. These ratios approach, but never equal PHI. Mathematicians
measure how "irrational" a number is by seeing how quickly the differences between these fractions
and PHI shrink toward zero. It so happens that they shrink more slowly for PHI than for any other
irrational number. This is why number theorists say that PHI is the "most irrational number." Two
fascinating properties of PHI are seen in its reciprocal and its square:

1 =  - 1 or .618...

 2 =  + 1 or 2.618...

Like  2, the higher powers of  can all be expressed very simply in terms of :

2 =  + 1

 3 = 2 + 1

 4 = 3 + 2

 5 = 5 + 3

 6 = 8 + 5

 7 = 13 + 8

... where each power is the sum of the two previous powers, and the coefficients of  form the
Fibonacci sequence over again, as do the integer parts of the powers.

The history of the Western understanding of the Divine Proportion is worth mentioning. There is
some evidence that the ratio was important to the Egyptians, because the Rhind papyrus refers to a
"sacred ratio," and it is also prominent in the dimensions of all the pyramids at Giza.[25] The
ancient Greeks came close to worshipping its aesthetic relationship in their architecture and
sculpture. Indeed, it was the the name of the Greek sculptor Phidias which inspired the modern
invention of the term PHI ().

Leonardo da Vinci was probably the first to refer to the ratio as secto aurea, the Golden Section.
The Italian Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli published a book called De Divina
Proportione, illustrated by his friend da Vinci. "Coincidentally," Pacioli wrote this work in the year
1508 (remember that number?). He was also more than a little interested in probability and in what
came to be known eventually as Pascal's Triangle, which is closely related to the Fibonacci series.
Also "coincidentally," the last pre-Conquest Aztec ceremony was held the previous year, in 1507.
[26]

Pacioli presented thirteen remarkable properties of the Divine Proportion. His "Ninth Most
Excellent Effect" is that two diagonals of a regular pentagon divide each other in the Divine
Proportion. If you tie an ordinary knot in a strip of paper and flatten it, the same figure appears. In
the pentagram, which the Pythagoreans considered a symbol of health, the ratio is the Golden Ratio.
Euclid in his Elements called this division "in the extreme and mean ratio," and used it to construct
a regular pentagon, as well as the dodecahedron and icosahedron.

Kepler called the Divine Proportion one of the two great treasures of Geometry. Renaissance artists
and architects regularly used it to create pleasing proportions, as did the modern architect Le
Corbusier and the painter Georges Seurat. In fact, the Golden Proportion is the basis for many
common objects such as playing cards, book covers, and windows, and psychologists have
demonstrated that it is apparently preferred unconsciously by most people. It has been noted by one
Fibonacci-aficionado, "Greek columns have golden proportions; so do a pack of Marlboros."[27]

Fibonacci numbers and the Divine Proportion also show up repeatedly in music. For example, the
8-note octave is produced on the piano keyboard as five black keys and eight white keys; thus the
sequence 5, 8, 13. It has been suggested that the major 6th chord is "the one our ears like best,"
because the note E vibrates at a ratio of 0.625000 to note C, very close to the golden mean.[28]
These notes produce pleasing vibrations in our inner ear's cochlea, a spiral-shaped organ, a fact that
brings us to the next application of Fibonacci numbers.

PHI, Fibonacci, Phyllotaxis -- plus some Philosophizing

The Fibonacci sequence is also linked with the growth of plants. Certain statements by Kepler
indicate that he understood this,[29] and Goethe wrote a paper about the subject, "Metamorphose
der Pflanzen." The continuous application of PHI produces a logarithmic spiral which is the only
curve in math that enlarges without changing its shape and which occurs frequently in nature.

The Divine Ratio/Fibonacci sequence is not accepted as a universal law in nature, but it is a
fascinating tendency that appears far too often to be discounted as mere chance. Tendrils coil
spirally; protoplasm streams in a spiral course; spiral threads occur in cytoplasm; molecules of DNA
are spiral; and spiral grain has been found almost invariably in tree trunks.[30] Surfers shooting the
gap underneath a breaking wave are covered by a logarithmic spiral of ocean spray. The shoreline of
Cape Cod is a logarithmic spiral. Most of nature's horns, claws, and teeth exhibit the spiral, as in a
ram's horn or parrot's beak, an elephant tusk or lion's claw, and the tusk of the now-extinct
mammoth and saber-toothed tiger. And any dentist knows it is easier to pull a tooth in the direction
of its curve.[31] The Fibonacci sequence reveals the breeding patterns of rabbits and the ratio of
males to females among honey bees. We see the logarithmic spiral in the foetus of humans and
animals, in the multiple reflections of light through mirrors, and the arrangement of spiral shells.

It is most apparent in plants in the distribution of leaves on branches, the seeds of sunflowers and
pinecones, the scales of pineapples, and the spines on certain cacti. Such patterned arrangements of
growth are called phyllotaxis. Some of the most common arrangements are in ratios of alternating
Fibonacci numbers: 2/5, found in roses and fruit trees, or 3/8, which is found in plantains, or 5/13,
found in leeks, almonds, and pussy willows.[32] If you examine the stalk of almost any green plant,
you can observe this in action. Start at the bottom with a given leaf; move up the stalk, counting the
leaves until you reach a leaf that is directly above the first one (do not count the first one), and you
will have a Fibonacci number. In addition, the number of times you have circled the stalk will be
another Fibonacci number. For example, there are generally thirteen buds arranged between two
vertical lines on a pussy willow stem, and to count the buds you must circle the stalk five times.

In one recent survey of nearly 13,000 observations of 650 species, 96.5% conformed to classic,
Fibonacci-type phyllotaxes.[33] Fibonacci numbers are found in the number of petals in a majority
of common flowers: iris (3), primrose and buttercups (5), dahlia (8), ragwort (13), marigold and
aster (21), daisy (34), Michaelmas daisy (55 and 89).[34]
Similar ratios appear in the scales of a fir cone or the florets of a sunflower. Here the packing is
regular, forming sets of spiral rows, or parastichies. A pineapple usually has 5, 8, and sometimes 13
parastichies; a sunflower may have 21/34, 34/55, 55/89, or 89/144. In a good specimen of a
sunflower, this remarkable feature will be seen: two sets of equiangular spirals superimposed or
intertwined, one spiral turning clockwise and the other counterclockwise, with each floret filling a
dual role by belonging to both spirals. Comparable arrangements of opposing spirals associated
with Fibonacci numbers are found in the pine cone (5 and 8).[35]

If you look at the tip of the shoot of a growing plant, you can detect the parts from which all the
main features of the plant form -- leaves, petals, sepals, florets, etc. At the center of the tip is the
apex, and around it, the primordia emerge. Each primordium moves away from the apex and
eventually develops into a leaf or petal. Following their order of appearance, the primordia form a
generative spiral. If you measure the angles between successive primordia, you find they are equal;
their common value is called the divergence angle, and it measures about 137.5 degrees, which is
360 minus 222.5 degrees. It so happens that this angle is 360 degrees multiplied by , the ratio
formed by successive Fibonacci numbers.

While many scientists have considered the subject of phyllotaxis too susceptible to mysticism and
("God-forbid!") nature worship, there are in fact labyrinthine interconnections among several
phenomena studied by mathematicians and biologists: Fibonacci numbers, the Divine Proportion,
parastichies, plant growth and shoot size, branching processes, primordia, divergence angle, spatial
packing, and fractal geometry.

Regarding the Fibonacci number 5, there is a particular preponderance of pentagonal symmetry in

living organisms, especially in botany and among marine animals such as starfish, jellyfish, and
sea-urchins. Noted among the five-petalled flowers (or multiples of five) are all fruit blossoms,
water-lilies, roses, honeysuckle, geraniums, marshmallows, campanulas. Pentadactylism (five
fingers, or corresponding bones) is common in the animal kingdom. According to one authority on
sacred geometry, five is the number of petals on all flowers of the edible fruit-bearing plants:

"Thus, five signals to man his proper foods. Five is dominant in the substructure of living forms,
while 6 and 8 are most characteristic of the geometry of mineral, inanimate structures. The plants
displaying a sixfold structure, such as the tulip, the lily and the poppy, are very often poisonous or
only medicinal for man. Traditional medicine considered seven-petalled plants to be poisonous.
Among these are the tomato and other plants of the belladonna or nightshade family. The very
exotic flowers, on the other hand, the flowers of love such as the orchid, the azalea and the passion
flower, are all governed by pentagonal symmetry."[36] This is why the Pythagoreans considered
five to be a number of life and health. The awareness of sacred time, the harmonious concordance
between heaven and earth, has formed the basis of agricultural cycles in all traditional societies. We
moderns have lost this sense of this sacred connection, which is not surprising since the average
modern person can now acquire all manner of "fresh" produce out-of-season. The question is, can
you trust a tomato in January?[37]

Dr. J. William Littler wrote a paper entitled "On the Adaptability of Man's Hand," where he
suggests that the human hand is composed of finger bones that represent the Fibonacci sequence.
Measured in centimeters and starting with the metacarpal and working out to the finger tip, the
bones average 8.8, 5.5, 3.3, 2.2. This predominance is a definite characteristic of living forms, and
pentagonal forms do not and cannot appear among inorganic, crystalline systems.[38]

Why do living things grow this way, in mathematical patterns? Scientists have often rephrased this
question, as Dick Teresi did in The God Particle, "Why does nature choose math as its language?
Why is it that the overarching principles of the universe can be broken down into equations?" Such
wording can only arise from a distorted anthropocentric approach which puts the cart before the
horse. But Western Science often gets things (literally) ass-backwards, like a current editor of The
Scientist who wrote that "the tendrils of some vines mimic the coil springs of a car."[39] -- Vines
mimic cars? Obviously, nature was here first, and mathematics was a later invention, evolved and
refined through the human attempt to perceive nature.

Botanists do not agree on a scientific explanation for phyllotaxis, despite the mathematicians'
fascination for numbers involved. There is no doubt, however, that people down through the ages
have observed and worshipped the spiral growth in nature. The beauty we admire in ancient Minoan
art, for example, is based almost entirely on organic spiral forms.

We find a great deal of evidence for nature worship in etymology. Words like heliotrope (sunflower)
derive from Greek words meaning "sun turning." From the same root comes the word helix,
meaning "a whorl, curl, or spiral," which has been adopted as the name of the genus of land-snails.
We are also reminded of double helix, the DNA term that holds the secrets of identity for living
things. Just as the flower symbol was used by Mesoamericans to denote their calendrical "first day,"
we note that primrose (one of the 5-petaled flowers and one of the earliest to appear) is derived
from the Latin prima, meaning "first." The daisy, another Fibonacci flower, is a word derived from
the Saxon words for "day's eye." The cosmos, an 8-petaled flower, is named for a word meaning
"order."[40]

Regarding the worship of nature, there is certainly something to be said for the act of meditating
upon "the most irrational number." We might follow the example of the 17th century poet Richard
Lovelace and admire the "Sage snail, within thine own self curled." Or, as one 17th century scholar
put it, "From the contemplation of Plants, men might first be invited to Mathematical
Enquirys."[41]

In the spirit of this advice, we can compare the development of Mesoamerican and Western
European mathematics, and note a general philosophical difference. Mesoamerican mathematics
evidently paid greater attention to numbers associated with organic growth, while Western
mathematics became rather more fixated on the numbers associated with crystalline growth --
"crystalline numbers" which have been subsequently used by scientists to describe an organic
world, rather like forcing a square peg into a round hole. The Divine Proportion and the progression
of the Fibonacci series are better suited to describing organic growth because they have the property
of producing simple addition, the accretion of identical parts, or a succession of similar shapes,
what has been called "gnomonic growth."[42]

The respected naturalist Sir D'Arcy W. Thompson pointed out that "the shell, like the creature
within it, grows in size but does not change its shape. The existence of this constant relativity of
growth, or constant similarity of form, is of the essence." In other words, the very shape of the
logarithmic spiral enables growth to occur without any change in form.[43] The spiral formed by
living things is genetic or developmental, and crystallographic symmetry is absent in spiral
phyllotaxy.

The gnomonic type of growth, from the inside outwards, is associated with living organisms and
allows greater movement potential, whereas in crystals the growth is by agglutination, or simple
addition from outside inwards, and the final distribution of energy in the system being such as to
cause no further motion. This comparison implies that immobility is created through the crystalline
number system of Western mathematics and could therefore be potentially the final product of
Western culture. Perhaps this is what Ian Stewart meant when he called for the development of a
new kind of mathematics that can explain the patterns in nature, complaining that our mathematical
schemes are "too inflexible, geared to the constraints of pencil and paper."[44]

Modern science is equipped with the kind of thinking which rests on analytical mathematics and has
produced the so-called "miracles" of technology. But the successes resulting from the use of
analytical mathematics have eclipsed other ways of mathematical thinking. To transform one's
thinking beyond the inflexible world of measurement requires the development of an awareness that
is independent of the laws manifest in the material world. To quote Rudolf Steiner, "The highest
level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking without reference to a definite perceptual
content."[45] The act of contemplating Infinity is one way to transform thinking, and this can be
performed by meditating upon the logarithmic spiral.

Remember that multiplication is really a special form of addition, and PHI represents a coinciding
of the processes of addition and multiplication. What was a linear accumulation suddenly becomes
a square (  + 1 =  2 ), and there is a leap of growth. In the plant, the simple additive growth in the
stem suddenly erupts into a flower. When such a moment occurs in the context of spiritual
development, it is called enlightenment. In our brains, the additive accumulation of data suddenly
blossoms into a genuine understanding. There is a development from points to lines to planes, and
finally, to volume. This is demonstrated by simultaneously adding and multiplying in the
mathematical equation:[46]

 +  2 =  3 = x  2

Euclidean deductive geometry is directed towards measurement between points and is thus closed
to the concept of infinity, whereas Projective Geometry is based on the idea of relations between
ideal planes and thus opens the thinking. For example, compare two types of spiral. In the first case
there is a spiral staircase, which is built on the principle of the Archimedian screw (useful for
technology but never found in living forms). The other is, of course, the logarithmic spiral based on
the Fibonacci sequence or PHI. Ideally this spiral is posed between two infinitudes; it curves on and
on towards inner and outer points that it will never actually reach. The preponderance of
Fibonacci/PHI spirals in nature offers a multitude of opportunities to discover infinity, and thus,
divinity.[47] In this regard, we quote from William Blake, with italics to emphasize the Fibonacci
significance:

To see the world in a grain of sand,

and a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.

We have travelled far from Fibonacci and PHI to phyllotaxis and finally, to philosophy. Plato
described this same journey in the following way. "The sight of day and night, the months and the
returning years, the equinoxes and solstices, has caused the invention of number, given us the
notion of time, and made us enquire into the nature of the universe; thence we have derived
philosophy."[48] We have seen that organic, developmental numbers are commonly associated with
living, moving forms in nature. It is logical in our progression of thought to suggest that moving
forms such as astronomical cycles may also be expressed by the organic numbers of the Fibonacci
sequence. What Luca Pacioli revealed in De Divina Proportione can be applied to astronomy, and
without crystalline numbers.
Luca in the Sky, without Diamonds

Let us look at the dynamics of the solar system, which is full of resonances or patterns of
relationship created by interlocking cycles, whereby moving bodies take up the same relative
positions at regular intervals. The sidereal periods of all the major planets are approximately in
resonance, which means the relationship between their motions can be expressed as a ratio of whole
numbers, usually in the Fibonacci sequence. For example, it takes Saturn 29.5 years to circle the
sun, while Jupiter takes almost 11.9 years. Twice the Saturn cycle is about equal to five times the
Jupiter cycle, so the ratio of these two cycles is 2:5. Numerous other planetary ratios are formed
with the Fibonacci numbers -- Pluto/Neptune is 2:3, Earth/Venus is 3:5, Mars/Mercury is 1:8, and
so on.[49]

The different kinds of motion of the planets can also be in resonance with each other. For example,
Mercury rotates once every 58.65 days and revolves around the sun every 87.97 days, forming a
resonance of 2:3 (2 x 87.97 = 3 x 58.65). There is a similar relationship between the earth's tropical
year and the rotation of Venus. Venus rotates with a sidereal period of 243 days, forming a close 2:3
ratio with the earth's revolution (243 x 3 is close to 2 x 365).[50] And the daily cycle on Venus is
117 earth days, almost equal to one synodic period of Mercury.

There is also the principle of Bode's Law, which can be understood in terms of the Divine
Proportion. Bode's Law states that the mean distances of the planets from the sun are proportional to
the squares of simple integral numbers, and is usually expressed as

0.4 + (0.3 x 2n)

where n is the number signifying a planet's position from the sun. But substituting  will also
produce close approximations where n is planets beyond earth:

0.4 + (0.618 x 2n)

Modified (Fibonacci) Version of Bode's Law

Bode's Law Distance

Modified Bode Actual
Planet
Distance Distance
(a.u)
Mercury 0.4 + (0.3 x 0) = 0.4 0.39
Venus 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 )= 0.7
0
0.72
Earth 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 1.0
1
0.4 +(0.618 x 2 ) = 1.018
0
1.0
Mars 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 1.6
2
0.4 +(0.618 x 2 ) = 1.636
1
1.52
Asteroids 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 2.8
3
0.4+ (0.618 x 2 ) = 2.47
2
2.8
Jupiter 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 5.2
4
0.4+ (0.618 x 2 ) = 5.34
3
5.2
Saturn 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 10.0
5
0.4+ (0.618 x 2 ) = 10.28
4
9.6
Uranus 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 19.6
6
0.4+ (0.618 x 2 ) = 20.176 19.2
5

Neptune 0.4 + (0.3 x 2 ) = 38.8

7
0.4+ (0.618 x 2 ) = 39.95
6

Pluto 39.5
While astronomers complain that Bode's Law is "not of precise physical significance," they have
still been goaded by its challenge, to question whether the distribution of planetary orbits is due to
chance, or to some "real" physical principle.[51] Bode's Law is, like the equation of PHI, a formula
that cannot be "explained" scientifically; it offends many scientists because it is numerological
(mystical) and yet it works, for it was responsible for at least three valid predictions. The discovery
of both Uranus and Ceres conformed to the formula, and recognition of a similar law led to the
discovery of Saturn's moon Hyperion. The validity of Bode's Law has been supported by computer
simulations of the N-body problem which have shown that arbitrary planetary configurations,
started with purely random initial positions and velocities, tend to "relax" after thousands of years
into a Bode's Law-type of resonant configuration.[52]

Paul Jacques Grillo, author of Form, Function, and Design, has also found evidence of the golden
mean in the distribution of planets. He suggests that such a "coincidence" (he uses quotation marks)
may offer a clue to the evolution of the solar system, that current elliptical paths evolved from the
original form of a log spiral. Swedish astronomer Carl-Gustav Danver studied the characteristic
shape of the great galaxies of outer space. He reported that the predominant appearance is that of
logarithmic spirals.[53]

The subject of orbital resonance is indeed directly related to the initial formation and composition
of the solar system, the question of origin for the known planets and asteroids. Astronomers have
been slow to recognize that the solar system is not orbitally stable, but instead is "in process." They
have thus denied Immanuel Velikovsky's theories about Venus being a newcomer to the solar
system and have similarly rejected postulations about "missing planets" or a hypothetical planet
beyond Pluto.[54] Appropriately for our discussion of Mesoamerican astronomy, one astronomer
has proposed a now-missing planet, originally located in the asteroid belt, whose explosion
produced the current configuration. He called the planet Aztex.55

Astronomers are reluctant to recognize Bode's Law as a "real" principle, and botanists are
uncomfortable with the "magic" of Fibonacci-related phyllotaxis. This is because Western Science
cannot be satisfied that something works without explaining the material cause in scientifically-
acceptable terminology. The Mesoamericans, on the other hand, were quite content to make
monumental achievements without obsessing over causative principles.

Kepler expressed this in his rejection of atomism: "The cause is not to be looked for in the material,
but in an agent." Instead of seeking the causes of material phenomena deep down in the structure of
matter in ever-smaller sub-units, Kepler, like Gregory Bateson, looked for patterns and principles.
Modern science, on the other hand, continues to ask why plants or planets do what they do, and
continues to break down the world into more and more microscopic levels as molecular, atomic,
subatomic, cellular, nuclear, and DNA, ad infinitum. We suggest that all this academically-funded
busywork must eventually reduce to a final cause called "because that's the way it is." Or better yet,
and even more offensive to scientists, "because the gods made it that way."

Kepler's terminology for this final agent was the Facultas Formatrix, the formative faculty, a
morphogenic principle responsible for all organic and inorganic shapes in nature, from snowflakes
and planetary orbits to plants and animals. As Kepler explained it, this was due to the Creator's
design; things were shaped a certain way because "it is in their nature to do so." Modern scientists
are violently opposed this kind of thinking, claiming there is no predictive power in this conclusion.
There is an inconsistency involved here about the predictive value of mathematics, for common
sense dictates that you don't need to understand underlying principles in order to use them, as we
have seen with Bode's Law. If a portion of a pattern has been observed and the symmetry is either
known or suspected, the whole can be predicted. Accepting such a precept and rejecting atomism
would not only put a lot of scientists out of work, it would suggest that time might be better spent in
applying what obviously works and in worshipping nature; i.e., doing what every known culture but
our own modern one has done.

Fibonacci-Related Images in Maya Culture and Hieroglyphics

Let's look closer at how the Mesoamericans applied and worshipped the spiral principle. The Maya
inscriptions include a great number of images of spiral growth patterns from nature, including the
shell, which was used in inscriptions to indicate "zero."

The cipher (nought, zero) and place numerations are such an integral part of our cultural heritage
and are such obvious conveniences that it is difficult to imagine mathematics without them. Yet they
were a late development in European mathematics; the ancient Greeks and Romans had no
knowledge of "zero" or place numeration, but the Maya did. This is one of the reasons they could
excel at long calculations. Once you have a cipher and a system of place notation, long problems in
simple arithmetic become infinitely easier, and it doesn't matter whether the system is decimal,
vigesimal, or whatever. The Maya system was not decimal but vigesimal, counting by 20s.

Maya numbers were placed in vertical lines, with space fillers somewhat analogous to our "zero,"
but which did not mean "nothing." Rather, the space filler-cipher meant "completion." And the
completion symbol most commonly used was a shell. This is rather interesting, considering the fact
that many shells are formulated according to the divine proportion, or Fibonacci sequence. Among
those that build their tiny bodies in a logarithmic spiral are the globigerinae, planorbis votex,
terebra, turritellae, trochida, and the common snail.[56] The chambered nautilus is a spectacular
example and the one most commonly used to illustrate how the Divine Proportion appears in nature.
It belongs, incidentally, to a group of mollusks that include the 8-tentacled octopus. Outwardly it
resembles the univalves, but the animal inside is more like an octopus.

While several Mesoamerican scholars (Seler, Forstemann, Tozzer) have recognized the snail shell as
a symbol of birth, David Kelley believes that it means "emergence."[57] He notes a repetitive
representation at Palenque of a snail shell with God K and the Corn God emerging from the shell.
The three appear together with a 1-Ahau date, and Kelley further notes that One-Flower is
associated with the Corn God and is also associated elsewhere with the birth date of God K.

The day Kan (the snake) is represented by a glyph which has been identified as a shell. The Yucatec
word kan can be translated as "shells or stones used as money." Kelley points out that the Kan glyph
shows a decided similarity to the "shell variant" of the kin glyph. Mesoamerican scholar Thompson
suggested that the kin (day, sun) glyph represents a five-petaled flower converted to four petals,
because four is the number of the Sun God (Four-Ahau). His first opinion was that it was the five-
petaled tobacco flower, but he later decided it was the five-petaled Plumiera, a flower of great
religious importance in Mesoamerica, which in Maya is known as nicte. Interestingly, this is close
to the word nicotine, which is believed to be adapted from the name of an ambassador, Jean Nicot,
who introduced tobacco into France in 1560.[58] We have to wonder about the true origin of many
New World plant names, however, which is often found in the native languages.

One particular example of word origin is very revealing for our discussion here. We have the word
pineapple because the Spanish recognized that this New World plant resembled the pine cone; they
called it piña de Indias. But how does a pineapple resemble a pine cone? The only visible similarity
is the identical Fibonacci whorls of 8:13.
Spirals associated with Fibonacci numbers are found in some groups of cacti, where the 3:5 ratio
appears as bijugate spirals in paired parastichies of six and ten.[59] The prickly pear cactus,
incidentally, has been cultivated for its fruit in Mexico for over six thousand years, and is called
tuna.60 Is it coincidental that the Maya glyph for tun was used to designate the last day of any
period? In Yucatec, tun means "stone," possibly referring to stones used to count intervals in a
cycle.[61] The connection is not unlike our own word calculus or calculate, which derives from the
Latin word for pebble, used by the ancients for counting.

Although the study of Maya inscriptions is quite complex and not easily understood, we suggest
that the scholars who attempt to decipher inscriptions should take the Fibonacci theory into account.
Is it really just coincidence that there are so many Maya glyphs for Fibonacci objects in nature that
are associated with numbers and calendrical cycles? One Mayan glyph is known to represent a shell
and has been connected with the bar used for the number five, which one scholar has compared with
hub, meaning "large sea shell," and is not unrelated to the word haab which refers to the year.
Another glyph, naab, representing the five-fingered human hand, was used in the Venus table of the
Dresden Codex, and we know that five is an important number for Venus and divides 360 days into
5 x 72. One meaning of the word naab is "to measure," much like we use the word "hand" as a
measure of height for horses. A different hand glyph has been read as ka, which we know as part of
the word katun, a measurement of 7200 days. The hand glyph is also read as lah, which has been
associated with an inverted ahau glyph, and has been read as "end, die" in the compound word for
numbers above ten,[62] as well as "completion" in counting cycles.[63] There is also a glyph called
the "shell star" which appears often in Mesoamerican inscriptions where planetary cycles are
interconnected. This topic of astronomical glyphs has been studied in great detail by David Kelley.
[64]

If we examine Maya inscriptions, we find other evidence that implies an understanding of the
Fibonacci numbers. The ancient Mesoamericans viewed the cosmos as a layered universe. The
heavens were conceived of as thirteen in number, with the earth included as the first layer. There
was also a nine-layered underworld, beginning with the earth again as the first layer. This is
depicted on page 2 of the Codex Vaticanus A.65 This is one of the examples of the use of the
Fibonacci numbers 8, 13 and 21. There are 21 "worlds," when the earth is "counted" twice as the
first world. (We note that the number one appears twice at the beginning of the Fibonacci series).
There is evidence that the Maya also expressed the day as having 13 hours of daylight (the Thirteen
Birds of the Day) and 9 hours of darkness (The Nine Lords of the Night).[66]

Flowers are one of the most consistent expressions of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, and they
also form some of the most important symbols in Mesoamerican writing, mythology, and
calendrics. The sunflower held a particularly important place in ancient Mexican mythology. When
the Spaniards arrived in the New World, they found the sunflower serving in the temples as a sign
and a decoration, and the sun-god's officiating handmaidens wearing upon their breasts
representations of the sacred flower in beaten gold.[67]

As described earlier, the special name-day which began the sacred calendar was 1-Ahau, also called
One-Flower, while the day that began and ended the great cycle was Four-Flower. The word Ahau
means Lord and refers to the Sun, while the glyph used to represent it was a flower.

That the Mesoamericans would link flowers with astronomical cycles should not seem so surprising
to us, since using flowers to mark time has had a long, though obscure, history in Europe. One 18th-
century astronomer, Jean-Jacques De Mairan, noted that the opening and closing of certain
"sensitive plants" followed a specific daily rhythm, and he linked this to the sun's influence. A
similar observation had been made by a general in the travelling army of Alexander the Great. The
great Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus planted a timekeeping garden which he called "Flora's
Clocks." The flower beds were laid out to form a clock face, with each bed representing a different
hour of the day and planted with flowers that were known to open or close at certain times.

It is not only the circadian rhythm that is evident in plants, but also longer cycles. For example,
there is a species of bamboo in Argentina which has a very precise life pattern -- exactly 30 years
from seed to seed. And botanists have discovered that it is not only daylight which regulates the
rhythms of plants; a number of experiments have shown that the length of night is just as important
as the length of day. The chrysanthemum, for example, requires an uninterrupted period of about 13
hours of darkness (an autumn night) before it will flower. Ragweed cannot begin its flowering
process until the summer nights have lengthened to about nine and a half hours.

Finally, and most relevant for our discussion here, there is the 260-day calendar, which we have
shown to be based on Fibonacci numbers. There have been many theories that attempt to explain
the origins of the 260-day cycle, and most of them show the connection with natural cycles. For
example, the cycle of seed-to-harvest for certain types of corn grown in Guatemala is about 260
days. In the Dresden Codex, there are 258 days between Venus rising as an evening star and its
emergence as a morning star, a period which correlates with the Aztec myth of Quetzacoatl's
journey to the underworld. Perhaps the most significant correspondence is the period of human
gestation. Nine lunar months are approximately equal to 260 days. One Mayan scholar discovered
that some modern Mayan people explicitly state the human gestation period as the explanation for
the origin of the tzolkin.68

Conclusions

When we study the "facts" of Mesoamerican mathematics-calendrics, we cannot avoid realizing the
mystical nature of life. To those who would deny the synchronicity, the great Mayan scholar J. Eric
S. Thompson wrote, "One must appreciate the impact of the divinatory aspects of the 260-day
Sacred Almanac, and never lose sight of the fact that the ends of Mayan astronomy were not
scientific, but astrological....Mayan astronomy is too important to be left to the astronomers."

We have seen that the numbers produced by the Fibonacci sequence offer a numerological key to
the inter-relationships between man and the cosmos. The ancient Mesoamericans evidently
recognized the correlations between biological processes, agricultural cycles, and timing of
astronomical events, and they created a mathematical system that could express these connections --
a system that emphasized what we call Fibonacci numbers.

References

[1]Vincent Malmstrom, "Origin of the Mesoamerican 260-Day Calendar," Science, Vol. 181 (Sept.
7, 1973), pp. 939-940; and "A Reconstruction of the Chronology of Mesoamerican Calendrical
Systems," Journal of the History of Astronomy, Vol. 9 (1978), pp. 105-116.

[2]J. Eric S. Thompson, The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization (Univ. of Oklahoma Press), pp.
148-149.
[3]John Teeple. Maya Astronomy. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 403,
Contribution 2 (1930), pp. 94-98. This was confirmed by J.E.S. Thompson in Maya Hieroglyphic
Writing: An Introduction. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 589 (1950), pp. 226-227.

[4]A.M. Tozzer. Landa's relacion de las cosas de Yucatan. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard
Univ., no. 18 (1941), p. 133.

[5]Sharon Gibbs, "Mesoamerican Calendrics as Evidence of Astronomical Activity," in Native

American Astronomy (ed. Anthony Aveni), Univ. of Texas Press (1977), pp.30-31.

[6]J. Eric S. Thompson, The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization (Univ. of Oklahoma Press), pp. 152
ff..

[7]Michael Coe, "Native Astronomy in Mesoamerica," in Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian

America (ed. Anthony Aveni), Univ. of Texas Press (1975), pp.11-12.

[8]David Kelley and K.A. Kerr. "Mayan Astronomy and Astronomical Glyphs," in Mesoamerican
Writing Systems (ed. E. P. Benson), Washington, D.C.:Dumbarton Oaks (1974), pp. 179-215.

[9]Astronomical Almanac for the Year 1989. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office (1988).

[10]For suggestions on the Gregorian leap year determination, see Noel Swerdlow, "The Origin of
the Gregorian Calendar," Journal for the History of Astronomy (1974), pp. 48-49; Jeffrey Shallit,
"Pierce Expansions and Rules for the Determination of Leap Years," Fibonacci Quarterly (Nov.
1994), pp. 416-423; Jacques Dutka, "On the Gregorian Revision of the Julian Calendar," The
Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1988), pp. 56-64; and V. Frederick Rickey,
"Mathematics of the Gregorian Calendar," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1985), pp.
53-56.

[11]Gordon Moyer, "The Gregorian Calendar," Scientific American (May, 1982), p. 151. Such
extrapolations are uncertain. As one calendar scholar remarked, "For one thing, the way in which
Earth's rotation varies is not well understood. For another, the computations depend on Simon
Newcomb's value of the length of the tropical year, which may not be correct." (Charles Kluepfel,
"How Accurate Is the Gregorian Calendar?" Sky and Telescope, Nov. 1982, p. 418)

[12]The process used here is similar to a proven method for creating pi ( [pi] ):

[pi] = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + 1/13 - 1/15 .....

[13]John Major Jenkins, Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies, Borderland Science
(1994).

[14]Munro Edmunson, The Book of the Year. Univ. of Utah Press (1988), p. 112.

[15]Ibid., p. 114.

[16]A. Seidenberg, "The Zero in the Mayan Numerical Notation," in Native American Mathematics,
ed. Michael Closs, Univ. of Texas Press (1986), p. 380.

[17]Caleb Bach, "Michael Coe: "A Question for Every Answer," Americas (Jan/Feb. 1996, pp. 15-
21.
[18]Barbara MacLeod, "The 819-Day-Count: A Soulful Mechanism," in Word and Image in Maya
Culture: Explorations in Language, Writing, and Representation (ed. William Hanks and Don
Rice), University of Utah Press (1989), pp. 112-126.

[19]R. L Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Univ. of Oklahoma Press (1967).

[20]J. E. S. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction, Univ. of Oklahoma Press

(1950), p.248

[21]MacLeod, p. 116.

[22]Bruce Scofield, Signs of Time: An Introduction to Mesoamerican Astrology, One Reed Press
(1994), p. 220; and David Kelley, "Mayan Astronomy and Astronomical Cycles," in Mesoamerican
Writing Systems, ed. Elizabeth Benson, Dumbarton Oaks (1973).

[23]Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Bantam (1988), p. 9.

[24]Rollo May, "Gregory Bateson and Humanistic Psychology," Journal of Humanistic Psychology,
Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 1976), p. 40.

[25]William Hoffer, "A Magic Ratio Recurs throughout Art & Nature," Orion (Winter 1985), p. 31.

[26]Bruce Scofield, Signs of Time: An Introduction to Mesoamerican Astrology, One Reed

Publications (1994), p. 207.

[27]The Sand Dollar and the Slide Rule, p. 99.

[28]Randy Moore, The Numbers of Life.

[29]See Kepler's The Six-Cornered Snowflake and Harmonices Mundi Libri V.

[30]Edmund Sinnott, Plant Morphogenesis, Krieger (1979), p. 165.

[31]Hoffer, "A Magic Ratio," Orion (Winter 1985), pp. 28-38.

[32]H.E. Huntley, The Divine Proportion: A Study in Mathematical Beauty, Dover (1970), p.162.
See also Peter Stevens, Patterns in Nature, Atlantic Monthly (1974).

[33]Roger V. Jean, Phyllotaxis: A Systemic Study in Plant Morphogenesis, Cambridge Univ. Press
(1994).

[34]Huntley, p. 163; Ian Stewart, "Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do," Scientific American
(Jan. 1995), pp. 96-99; D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, Vol. II, Cambridge
Univ. Press (1968), p. 930. Thompson's chapter "On Leaf-Arrangement, or Phyllotaxis" is
particularly informative, pp. 912-933. See also Jay Kappraff, Connections: The Geometric Bridge
between Art and Science, McGraw-Hill (1991).

[35]Huntley, pp. 164-165.

[36]Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, Crossroad (1982), p. 58.
[37]Vince Staten, Can You Trust a Tomato in January: Everything You Wanted to Know (And a Few
Things You Didn't) about Food in the Grocery Store, Simon & Schuster (1993).

[38]Matila Ghyka, The Geometry of Art and Life, Dover (1977), p. 18.

[39]John Carey, "Spiral Effect," National Wildlife (April/May 1989), p. 56.

[40]Stephen Potter, Pedigree: The Origins of Words from Nature, Taplinger (1974).

[41]Nehemiah Grew, The Anatomy of Plants (1682), p. 152, quoted in D'Arcy Wentworth
Thompson, On Growth and Form, Vol. II, Cambridge Univ. Press (1968), p. 912.

[42]D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form.

[43]Hoffer, "A Magic Ratio," p. 38.

[44]Ian Stewart, Nature's Numbers: The Unreal reality of Mathematical Imagination, BasicBooks
(1995), p. 148.

[45]Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Anthroposophical Press.

[46]Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, Crossroad (1982), p. 56.

[47]For more on this topic, see George Adams and Olive Whicher, The Plant Between Sun and
Earth, Rudolf Steiner Press (1980).

[48]Plato, The Timaeus and the Critias, translated by Thomas Taylor, Pantheon (1952), p. 164.

[49]See A.E. Roy and M.W. Ovenden, "On the Occurrence of Commensurable Mean Motions in the
Solar System," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 114 (1954), pp. 232-241, and
"The Mirror Theorem, Part II," MNRAS, 115 (1955), pp. 296-309.

[50]Fred Whipple, Orbiting the Sun: Planets and Satellites of the Solar System, Harvard Univ. Press
(1981), p. 184.

[51]Valerie Vaughan, Persephone Is Transpluto: The Scientific, Mythological and Astrological

Discovery of the Planet Beyond Pluto, One Reed Publications (1994), pp. 91-92.

[52]J.G. Hillis, "Dynamic Relaxation of Planetary Systems and Bode's Law," Nature, 225 (1970),
pp. 840-842. This phenomenon was also foreseen by Ernest W. Brown (see his "Observation and
Gravitational Theory in the Solar System," Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
44 (1932), pp. 21-40).

[53]Hoffer, "A Magic Ratio," p. 36.

[54]See Valerie Vaughan, Persephone Is Transpluto.

55
Michael W. Ovenden, "Planetary Distances and the Missing Planet," Recent Advances in
Dynamical Astronomy, Reidel (1973), pp. 319-332.

[56]Hoffer, "A Magic Ratio," p. 34.

[57]David Kelley, Deciphering the Maya Script, Univ. of Texas (1976).

[58]Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, Macmillan

(1958).

[59]Edmund Sinnott, Plant Morphogenesis, Krieger (1979), p. 163.

60
Robb Walsh, "Prickly Paradox," Natural History (June 1996), p. 62-65.

[61]David Kelley, Deciphering the Maya Script, Univ. of Texas Press (1976), p. 135.

[62]Kelley, Deciphering, p. 139.

[63]Kelley, Deciphering, p. 35.

[64]David Kelley, "Mayan Astronomy and Astronomical Glyphs," in Mesoamerican Writing

Systems, ed. Elizabeth Benson, Dumbarton Oaks (1973).
65
Michael Coe, "Native Astronomy in Mesoamerica," in Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian
America (ed. Anthony Aveni), Univ. of Texas Press (1975), pp. 7-8.

[66]Coe, "Native Astronomy," p.14.

[67]Mrs. William Starr Dana, How to Know the Wild Flowers, Dover (1963), p. 212.
68
Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya.

August 2006
from Antikythera-Mechanism Website

By T. Freeth1,2 , Y. Bitsakis3,5 , X. Moussas3, J.H. Seiradakis4, A.Tselikas5, E. Magkou6, M. Zafeiropoulou6, R. Hadland7, D.

Bate7, A. Ramsey7, M. Allen7, A. Crawley7, P. Hockley7, T. Malzbender8, D. Gelb8, W. Ambrisco9 and M.G. Edmunds1

1. Cardiff University, School of Physics and Astronomy, Queens Buildings, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK. Mike
Edmunds Mike.Edmunds @ astro.cf.ac.uk
2. Images First Ltd 10 Hereford Road, South Ealing, London W5 4SE, UK. Tony Freeth tony @ imagesfirst.com
3. National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics,
Panepistimiopolis, GR15783, Zographos, Greece. Xenophon Moussas, xmoussas @ phys.uoa.gr
4. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Physics, Section of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics,
GR54124 Thessaloniki, Greece. John Seiradakis jhs @ astro.auth.gr
5. Centre for History and Palaeography, National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, P. Skouze 3, 10560 Athens,
Greece. Yanis Bitsakis bitsakis @ gmail.com
6. National Archaeological Museum of Athens, 44 Patission Str, 106 82 Athens, Greece.
 7. XTek Systems Ltd, Tring Business Centre, Icknield Way, Tring, Herts HP23 4JX, UK.
8. HewlettPackard Laboratories, 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
9. Foxhollow Technologies Inc., 740 Bay Road, Redwood City, CA 94063, USA.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a unique Greek geared device, constructed around the end of the 2 nd Century
BC.

From previous work1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 it is known that it calculated and displayed celestial information, particularly
cycles such as the phases of the moon and a luni-solar calendar. Calendars were important to ancient
societies10 for timing agricultural activity and fixing religious festivals. Eclipses and planetary motions were
often interpreted as omens, while the calm regularity of the astronomical cycles must have been
philosophically attractive in an uncertain and violent world.

Named after its place of discovery in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck, the Mechanism is technically more
complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards. Its specific functions have remained
controversial11,12,13,14 because its gears and the inscriptions upon its faces are only fragmentary. Here we
report surface imaging and high-resolution X-ray tomography of the surviving fragments, enabling us to
reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions.

The Mechanism predicted lunar and solar eclipses based on Babylonian arithmetic-progression cycles. The
inscriptions support suggestions of mechanical display of planetary positions 9,14,16, now lost. In the second
century BC, Hipparchos developed a theory to explain the irregularities of the Moon's motion across the sky
caused by its elliptic orbit.

We find a mechanical realization of this theory in the gearing of the Mechanism, revealing an unexpected
degree of technical sophistication for the period.

Figure 1:
The surviving fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism. The 82 fragments that survive in the
National Archaeological Museum in Athens are shown to scale. A key and dimensions are
provided in Supplementary Notes 1 (Fragments).

The major fragments A, B, C, D are across the top, starting at top left, with E, F, G immediately
below them. 27 hand-cut bronze gears are in fragment A and one gear in each of fragments B,
C and D. Segments of display scales are in fragments B, C, E and F. A schematic reconstruction
is given in Figure 2.

It is not certain that every one of the remaining fragments (numbered 175) belong to the
Mechanism. The distinctive fragment A, which contains most of the gears, is approximately 180
x 150 mm in size.
We have used three principal techniques to investigate the structure and inscriptions of the
Antikythera Mechanism.
i. 3-dimensional Xray microfocus computed tomography17 (CT), developed
by XTek Systems Ltd. The use of CT has been crucial in making the text
legible just beneath the current surfaces.
ii. Digital optical imaging to reveal faint surface detail using Polynomial
Texture Mapping (PTM)18,19 , developed by Hewlett-Packard Inc.
iii. Digitized high quality conventional film photography.

The bronze Mechanism (Figure 1 above), probably hand-driven, was originally housed in a wooden-framed
case1 of (uncertain) overall size 340 x 180 x 90 mm.

It had front and back doors, with astronomical inscriptions covering much of the exterior of the Mechanism
(Figure 2 below). Our new transcriptions and translations of the Greek texts are given in Supplementary
Notes 2 (Glyphs & Inscriptions).

Figure 2:
A schematic view of the Mechanism to illustrate the position of major inscriptions and dials. The
Front Dial has two concentric scales. The inner scale shows the Greek Zodiac with 360 divisions.

There are occasional Greek letters denoting references to the Parapegma inscription, and we
add three further reference letters (Z, H, Θ) to Price’s description1. The Parapegma is a star
almanac showing rising and settings at dawn or evening of particular stars or constellations,
which we will discuss elsewhere. Its form is consistent with a late 2nd Century BC date. The
outer (originally) movable scale is a Calendar carrying the Egyptian names of the months with
Greek letters.

The Egyptian Calendar of 365 days, with twelve 30day months and 5 extra (epagomenai) days
was in standard use in Greek astronomy. The effect of the extra quarter day in a year could be
corrected by turning the scale one day every four years – and a sequence of holes to take a
locking pin is observed under the scale. We find that spacing of the holes is indeed what would
be expected for a total of 365 days, with a possible range 363365.

The position of the Sun and Moon would have been indicated by pointers across the dial scales,
and a device7 showing the phase of the Moon was probably carried round on the lunar pointer.
It is not clear whether the Sun position pointer would have been separated from a date pointer,
or whether any planetary positions might have been displayed.

The spiral Upper Back Dial displays the lunisolar Metonic sequence of 235 lunar months with a
subsidiary dial showing the Callippic cycle, while the spiral Lower Back Dial displays the 223
lunar month Saros eclipse cycle with a subsidiary dial showing the Exeligmos cycle.

The detailed form of the lettering can be dated to the second half of the 2nd Century BC, implying that that
the Mechanism was constructed during the period 150-100 BC, slightly earlier than previously suggested 1.

This is consistent with a date of around 80-60 BC of the wreck 1,20 from which the mechanism was recovered
by some of the first underwater archaeology. We are able to complete the reconstruction1 of the Back Door
inscription with text from fragment E, and characters from fragments A and F.

The Front Door is mainly from fragment G. The text is astronomical with many numbers that could be related
to planetary motions. The use of “sterigmos [ΣΤΗΡΙΓΜΟΣ] – station or stationary point” means where a
planet’s apparent motion changes direction and the numbers may relate to planetary cycles. The Back Door
inscription mixes mechanical terms about construction (“trunnions”, “gnomon”, “perforations”) with
astronomical periods.

Of the periods, 223 is the Saros eclipse cycle (see 'Box' below for brief explanation of astronomical cycles
and periods).

Box
Astronomical Cycles known to the Babylonians
The lunar (or synodic) month is the interval between the Moon being at the same phase
– e.g. full moon to full moon. The Metonic Cycle results from the close equality of 19
years to 235 lunar months. It represents the return to the same phase of the Moon on
the same date in the year. After the Cycle the Sun, Moon and Earth are back in nearly
the same relative orientations.

The Moon appears to return to the same point in the sky relative to the zodiac in a
sidereal month, and in 19 years there are 235 + 19 = 254 sidereal months. The 76year
Callippic Cycle is four Metonic Cycles minus one day and improves the accuracy of
reconciling solar years with whole numbers of lunar months.

The Saros is an eclipse repeat cycle. If either a solar or lunar eclipse occurs, a very
similar eclipse will occur 223 lunar months later21. A record of past eclipses can thus
be used to predict future occurrences. The cycle arises from the coincidence of three
orbital periods of the Moon.

These are:
i. same phase to same phase, 223 synodic months, eclipses will of course only
occur at new or full Moon in the month
ii. the lunar crossing of the EarthSun orbital plane, 242 draconitic months –
eclipses can only occur near these points (nodes) of coalignment
iii. similar EarthMoon distances which occur on the period from apogee to apogee
of the Moon’s orbit, 239 anomalistic months
The distance will determine the magnitude of the eclipse, ensuring the similarity of
eclipses at the period of the cycle. The Saros Cycle is not an integer number of days
(6585�), causing the eclipses in successive cycles to be displaced by eight hours in time (and solar eclipses,
only visible at limited geographical locations, to be displaced by 120˚ in longitude).

True repeats come after 3 Saros cycles, the 54year Exeligmos cycle, but not with
identical solar eclipse paths.

We discover the inscription “spiral divided into 235 sections”, which is the key to understanding the function 6
of the Upper Back Dial. The references to “golden little sphere” and “little sphere” probably refer to the front
zodiac display for the Sun and Moon – including phase for the latter.

The text near the Lower Back Dial includes “Pharos” and “From South (about/around)… Spain ten”. These
geographical references, together with previous readings1 of “Towards the East”, “WestNorthWest” and
“WestSouthWest” suggest an eclipse function for the dial, since solar eclipses occur only at limited often
recorded 22,23,24 geographical sites, and winds were in antiquity with eclipse observations.

Possibly this information was added to the Mechanism during use.

Turning to the dials themselves, the Front Dial displays the position of the Sun and Moon in the Zodiac, and a
corresponding calendar1 of 365 days that could be adjusted for leap years. Previously 1, it was suggested that
the Upper Back Dial might have five concentric rings with 47 divisions per turn, showing the 235 months of
the 19year Metonic Cycle. A later proposal 5 augments this with the Upper Subsidiary Dial showing the
76year Callippic Cycle.

Our optical and CT imaging confirm these proposals, with 34 scale markings discovered on the Upper Back
Dial. Based on a statistical analysis analogous to that described for gear tooth counts below, we confirm the
235 total divisions.

We also find from the CT that the subsidiary dial is indeed divided into quadrants 1,6, as required for a Callippic
Dial.

In agreement with the Back Door inscription, we also substantiate the perceptive proposal5,25 that the dial is in
fact a spiral, made from semicircular arcs displaced to two centers on the vertical midline. In the CT of
fragment B we find a new feature that explains why the dial is a spiral: a “PointerFollower” device (see Figure
3 below) traveled around the spiral groove to indicate which month (across the five turns of the scale) should
be read.

Figure 3:
The “pointer-follower” lunar month indicator of the Upper Back Dial. On the left, false-color
sections through CT images, analyzed with VG-Studio Max software by Volume Graphics GmbH.

These show two views at right angles of the pointer-follower in the Metonic dial in fragment B.
On the right, a computer reconstruction of the device from two different angles (with the
Metonic scale omitted for clarity). The pin was constrained to follow the groove between the
spiral scales (the scale is shown in Figure 4 below), causing the device to slide along the month
pointer to indicate which ring on the spiral scale specified the month. A similar pointer-follower
would have been present on the Lower Back (Saros) Dial.

The Metonic dial would have required resetting every 19 years, the Saros dial after 18 years.
The groove-pin may have been held in place by the small pin through the front of the device,
enabling its removal for resetting.
 Figure 4:
Reconstruction of the Back Dials. A composite of fragments A, B, E and F. The Metonic Calendar
is at top, with its subsidiary Callippic dial. The Saros eclipse cycle is below, with its subsidiary
Exeligmos dial.

The 16 observed eclipse glyphs are shown in turquoise on the Saros dial, with 35 hypothetical
glyphs in violet. The hypothetical glyphs are based on the criterion that 99% of the 121
sequences exactly matching the observed glyphs have an eclipse at the month position. Both
main dials would have a “pointerfollower” (see Figure 3 above) to indicate the relevant lunar
month on the spiral.

The monthly divisions on the Metonic Upper Back Dial are not simply scribed directly across all
five turns, as might be expected for simplicity of construction. There are small misalignments,
implying a systematic attempt at marking full (30day) and hollow (29day) months. The
incomplete data does not allow good analysis, other than a hint of bimodality in the interval
distribution.

If the marking out of the scale were carried out using the Mechanism’s gearing, then this would
greatly predate known “dividing engines”27 by many centuries.

From our CT data of the 48 scale divisions observed in fragments A, E and F, we establish 223 divisions in
the fourturn5,25 spiral on the Lower Back Dial, the spiral starting at the bottom of the dial.

This is the Saros eclipse cycle, whose number is on the Back Door inscription. The 54-year Exeligmos cycle
of three Saros cycles is shown on the Lower Subsidiary Dial.

Between the scale divisions of the Saros Dial we have identified 16 blocks of characters, or “glyphs” (see
'Glyphs & Inscriptions', below) at intervals of one, five and six months.
Symbols (glyphs) in the Saros spiral scale
Lunar Glyphs
 Solar Glyphs

Lunar & Solar Glyphs

These are eclipse predictions and contain either Σ for a lunar eclipse (from ΣΕΛΗΝΗ, Moon) or H for a solar
eclipse (from ΗΛΙΟΣ, Sun) or both.

A correlation analysis (analogous to DNA sequence matching) with historic eclipse data26 indicates that over
a period of 400 – 1 BC the sequence of eclipses marked by the identified glyphs would be exactly matched
by 121 possible start dates.

The matching only occurs if the lunar month starts at first crescent and confirms this choice of month start in
the Mechanism.

The sequences of eclipses can then be used to predict the expected position of glyphs on the whole dial, as
seen in Figure 4 far below. The dial starts and finishes with an eclipse. Although Ptolemy indicates that the
Greeks recorded eclipses in the 2nd century BC, the Babylonian Saros Canon 22,23,24 is the only known source
of sufficient data to construct the dial.

The functions of the Mechanism are determined by the tooth counts of the gears. These are based mainly on
the CT, using angular measurement from a nominal centre to the remains of tooth tips. In a few cases all
teeth can be seen, but many gears are incomplete. Counts are established by fitting models with regularly
spaced teeth and minimizing the r.m.s. deviation from the measurements—varying the centre in software
(when unclear) to find the best-fit solution or solutions.

We have adopted a systematic nomenclature of lower case letters for the axis of the gear, with numbering
increasing with ordering from the front of the Mechanism. Hypothetical (lost) gears are denoted by italics.

Several models have been proposed for the gear trains 1,2,4,5,6,8. We agree with the assumption of four missing
gears (n1, n2, p1, p2) to drive the Metonic and Callippic Dials 4.

We propose a new reconstruction for the other trains, which uses all extant gears (except the lone r1 from
the separate fragment D). The proposed model is shown in Figure 5 below.

We require the assumption of only one further gear (m3) whose proposed shaft is clearly broken off in the
CT.
 Figure 5:
New Reconstruction of the Gear Trains. A schematic sectional diagram (not to scale) of the
gearing, following the style of Price1 and Wright4. The viewpoint is looking down from the top
right of the Mechanism, and is stretched in the direction of the main axes to show the structure.

Features that are outlined or labeled in red are hypothetical. Gears are lettered with their shaft,
and numbered with increasing distance from the Front Dial. The two-or-three digit number on
the gear is its actual or assumed tooth count (See Supplementary Notes 3 - Gears).
Hypothetical gears n1, n2, p1, p2 have been proposed previously, the gear m3 on the broken-
off shaft m is our addition.

All gears, except the lone one in fragment D, are now accounted for in the Mechanism. The
function of the trains is outlined in the text. We find no evidence in the CT for an idler wheel
carried on e3 and between e5 and k1 or between k2 and e6, as has been previously
proposed1,2,4. The CT shows a pin through axis e between gears e1 and e2.

We believe its purpose is to retain the square-bossed e1 on the shaft, but its passage right
through the axis rules out previous reconstructions1,2,4 where e1 and e2 were joined by an outer
pipe rotating around the shaft e.

Of particular note is the dual use of the large gear, e3, at the back of the Mechanism, which has found no use
in previous models. In our model, it is powered by m3 as part of a fixed-axis train that turns the Saros and
Exeligmos Dials for eclipse prediction and also doubles as the “epicyclic table” for the gears k1, k2.

These are part of epicyclic gearing that calculates the theory of the irregular motion of the moon, developed
by Hipparchos sometime between 146 and 128 BC28—the “first anomaly”, caused by its elliptical orbit about
the Earth. The period of this anomaly is the period from apogee to apogee (the anomalistic month). To realize
this theory, the mean sidereal lunar motion is first calculated by gears on axes c, d and e and this is then fed
into the epicyclic system.

As explained in Figure 6 below, a pin-and-slot device on the epicyclic gears k1 and k2, clearly seen in the CT,
provides the variation.
 Figure 6:
The “Hipparchos” Lunar Mechanism mounted on gear e3. The figure is based on a CT slice of
part of fragment A, showing (top) shaft e and (bottom) shaft k. The complete geometry cannot
be seen in a single CT slice. The two gears on the e axis (e5 and e6) are coaxial, while the two k
gears rotate on slightly displaced axes. k1 has a pin on its face that engages with a radial slot
in k2 (and this was previously reported5).

In the figure the pitch circles of e5 and k1 are shown in turquoise and those of e6 and k2 in
pink. The gear e5 drives k1, which drives k2 via the pin-and-slot introducing a quasi-sinusoidal
variation in the motion, which is then transmitted to e6. Our estimate of the distance between
the arbors on the k gears is about 1.1 mm, with a pin distance of 9.6 mm, giving an angular
variation of 6.5o.

According to Ptolemy15, Hipparchos made two estimates for a lunar anomaly parameter, based
on eclipse data, which would require angular variations of 5.9˚ or 4.5˚ here – although
estimates of the anomaly from Babylonian astronomy were generally larger. The difference
from our estimated value is probably not significant given the difficulty of precise measurement
of the axes in the CT.

The harmonic variation, together with the effect of carrying the gears on e3 which rotates at
the period of the Moon’s apogee around the Earth, would simulate the correct variation for the
Moon’s mean (sidereal) rotation rate on the Front Dial. An (unexplained) regular pentagon is
visible at the centre of gear e5.

It is tempting to associate the conception of the Mechanism with Hipparchos himself, but he
was not the first to assume eccentric or epicyclic models.

This was previously identified4, but rejected as a lunar mechanism.

The remarkable purpose of mounting the pin-and-slot mechanism on the gear e3 is to change the period of
variation from sidereal month (i.e. the time taken for the Moon to orbit the Earth relative to the zodiac), which
would occur if k1 and k2 were on fixed axes, to anomalistic month—by carrying the gears epicyclically at a
rate that is the difference between the rates of the sidereal and anomalistic months, i.e. at the rate of rotation
of about 9 years of the Moon’s apogee.

Gears with 53-teeth are awkward to divide. So it may seem surprising that the gearing includes two gears
with 53 teeth (f1, l2), whose effects cancel in the train leading to the Saros Dial. But the gearing has been
specifically designed so that the “epicyclic table” e3 turns at the rate of rotation of the Moon’s apogee—the
factor 53 being derived from the calculation of this rotation from the Metonic and Saros cycles, which are the
basis for all the prime factors in the tooth counts of the gears.

The establishment of the 53 tooth count of these gears is powerful confirmation of our proposed model of
Hipparchos’ lunar theory. The output of this complex system is carried from e6 back through e3 and thence,
via e1 and b3, to the zodiac scale on the Front Dial and the lunar phase 7 mechanism. Our CT confirms the
complex structure of axis e that this model entails.

A major aim of this investigation is to set up a data archive to allow noninvasive future research, and access
to this will start in 2007. Details will be available on www.antikytheramechanism.gr.

The Antikythera Mechanism shows such great economy and ingenuity of design.

It stands as a witness to the extraordinary technological potential of Ancient Greece, apparently lost within
the Roman Empire.

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BC, Trans Am. Philos. Soc., New Series, 64, Part 7 (reprinted as Science History Publications, NY 1975),
(1974)
2-Wright, M.T. Epicyclic Gearing and the Antikythera Mechanism, Part I, Antiquarian Horology, Vol. 27 No. 3,
pp. 270279, March (2003)
3-Wright, M.T., Bromley, A. G. and Magkou, E. Simple XRay Tomography and the Antikythera Mechanism,
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(1991)
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