The Temple of the Seven Dolls at Dzibilchaltun near Merida Marks the Front Shield Stars of Orion at the Celestial Equator ca. 200 B.C.

Merida, the capital city of Yucatan, Mexico is important for Maya calendration, which relies on a so-called "correlation date" for the founding of Merida, which, as you can read at the end of this posting, is simply wrong. In any case, the area was important long before that and marked the front "shield" stars of Orion, seen as "the seven dolls" at Dzibilchaltun.

The nearby site of Dzibilchaltun is the location of the famed Temple of the Seven Dolls, Templo de las Siete Muñecas, whose significance thus far has been unknown. As written at the Wikipedia under Dzibilchaltun, the site is known to have been inhabited for thousands of years and to have astronomical aspects:

"The site has been continuously occupied for thousands of years.... The most famous structure is the Temple of the Seven Dolls, so named because of seven small effigies found at the site when the temple was discovered under the ruins of a later temple pyramid by archaeologists in the 1950s. On the vernal equinox, the sun rises so that it shines directly through one window of the temple and out the other.... The temple is connected to the rest of the site by a sacbe, or "white road," so-called because they were originally coated with white limestone, built over stone-and-rubble fill." [emphasis added]

Merida and Dzibilchaltun fall approximately right on our triangulation line from the Lepus and Columba sites in Oaxaca to the Miami Circle in Florida, so we decided to take a look at Merida and Dizbilchaltun more closely.

Aided by the incomparable pages of Jim & Carole's Mexico Adventure, which serve as design models for other archaeology online presentations, we have been able to decipher the ancient architectural facility of Dzibilchaltun, in which buildings are placed according to the stars.

We always redraw petroglpyhs, mound plans and ground plans, also here, to get a better feel for the terrain, so that our Dzibilchaltun map is not  official, and for graphic images of better quality, see Jim & Carole's site, with whom we have no affiliation. We just wish our pages were as beautifully done as theirs are.

According to our decipherment of Dzibilichaltun, the Temple of the Seven Dolls at Dzibilchaltun near Merida marks the front "shield" stars of Orion with the star Pi3 Orionis of that vertical line of stars fronting Orion and also Omega Orionis of the main Orion figure both being on the line of the precessionally moving Celestial Equator ca. 200 B.C., which these stars marked in that specific era.

According to Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Pliny considered the stars to the front of Orion to be "the Shield, made from the bull's hide of the Hyriean legend". Below is our decipherment image of the Temple of the Seven Dolls and the Grand Plaza of Dzibilchaltun:

The result is devastatingly clear, with none of the problems attendant to interpreting petroglyphs. Dzibilchaltun is an architectural design, which the ancients built to mark the stars of Orion on the Celestial Equator ca. 200 B.C.

For an excellent discussion of Dzibilchaltun, igo to 3.2.4. Mayan and Inca temples at Quadrilectic Architecture, where Figure 14 shows a megalith stela "in alignment with the Temple of the Seven Dolls (in the background) at Dzibilchaltun (Yucatan, Mexico) when the sun passes through the ‘Temple of the House of the Seven Dolls’ at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes."

Dzibilchaltun is a mere 10 miles (ca. 15 kilometers) from Merida, Yucatan, an eminently important geographical location of the ancient world, especially in Mesoamerican Maya calendration. We have written previously in LexiLine at The Maya Calendar, Piedras Negras, Halley's Comet as follows:

The calendar, with adjustments for the tropical year, starts on Julian date 583297. The Maya Calendar allegedly started on Julian date 584283. The Maya date is correlated to the alleged foundation of Merida, Yucatan on November 14, 1539 close to the date of the Long Count Maya katun 11.16.0.0.0   =   11 baktuns, 16 katuns, 0 tuns, 0 uinals, and 0 kins. In Maya chronology, 1 baktun = 144000 days, 1 katun = 7200 days, 1 tun = 360 days, 1 uinal = 20 days, 1 kin = 1 day. The  Maya Data 11.16.0.0.0 as a chronological date thus involves the following calculation:

11 x 144000 days (=1584000 days) + 16 x 7200 days (=115200 days) = 1699200 days

i.e. 1699200 continous solar days have elapsed since the Long Count katun 0.0.0.0.0.
This is a continous count WITHOUT adjustment for the tropical year.

Let us now adjust that figure for the tropical year - which will give us the correct "astronomical", i.e. "star date".
How many 365-day years are there in 1699200 days? = 4655 years. BUT, 4655 years of ca 365.25-days (actually 365.22 days) = 1700238 days rather than 1699200 days.

1700238 days plus the Julian date 583297 (Dec. 25, 3117 BC) as the start of the calendar gives Julian date 2283535 and that is in fact the expected Solstice date, December 25, 1539 AD at Merida.

The Merida "Maya" date of November 14, 1539 AD should thus actually be December 25, 1539 AD, and that is the correct Long Count Maya katun 11.16.0.0.0. The 365-day year katun date must simply be converted to 365.25-day years, which gives an identical starting date to the Pharaonic Calendar. They ARE related.

We wrote that years ago and note in this regard that the foundation of Merida is still celebrated today as having taken place on January 6, 1542, which we assume to be the Gregorian date. The Gregorian Calendar date of 6 January, 1542 translates into 27 December, 1541 by the Julian Calendar, using John Walker's Fourmilab Calendar Converter. In other words, we continue to argue that the scholars are wrong in their November 14, 1539 AD date, both as to the calendar day as well as to the year.

This means that all Maya dating is erroneous as based on the prevailing Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation which erroneously places katun 13 Ahau on November 14 in the year 1539.

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 27 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

The Temple of the Seven Dolls at Dzibilchaltun near Merida Marks the Front Shield Stars of Orion at the Celestial Equator ca. 200 B.C.