did the mayans honestly believe the Earth is flat?

the mayans had sophisticated astronomy in their civilization, as did the egyptians, the greeks, the babylonians, etc etc,....

Astronomy is based on keen keen observation, and the Maya were certainly good at that, observing everything outside of the earth. I totally agree, they were pretty skilled in this section. But let me pose you this:

Imagine that you live in their time..... Everyone believed that the Earth was flat, with the same certainty that we today believe that the earth is a sphere. Imagine now.. try to think WHAT would possibly be evidence to you that the earth is round? what could you see ? I bet you can't come up with an answer, cause the idea that the world is a sphere is a highly counter-intuitive idea!

the only thing that people really had as physical evidence of the earth's shape was the shape of the earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, which some clever people observed... but they were few, and their idea was challenged. (how would everything stay on a round earth without falling off?)

no one figured out gravity til Isaac Newton came along in the 1600s, and suddenly the belief in a round earth became a little more plausible.

Humans, as a species have only widely accepted the belief in a spherical earth in the past 400 years of our 200 000 year existence on earth. (that is about the last 0.002% of our existance on earth.)

You can actually still make very accurate astronomical calculations using an earth-centered model, regardless of what shape you think the earth is. As long as you treat the earth as a point in space and understand the movements of other planets in relation to it, you're fine.

Check out the Ptolemaic model of the heavens (used back in ancient Greece). It put Earth as the centre of the solar system (instead of the Sun), and still made accurate predictions.

The answer is yes and no. YEs... the ignorant masses of the Mayan civilization thought that. But the top scientists and astronomers knew it was a sphere and knew about how our universe worked. That is how they were able to roughly predict eclipses. Something that CAN'T be done with the flat earth model.

Yes, it's true! Sir Patrick Moore covers them in his great little book about cranks and 'free-thinkers' "Can you speak Vensulvian". Sending them around the world would not convince them, They have a counter argument for everything! Even the pictures of the Earth from space are either faked or 'distortions of a flat earth caused by the camera lens'!

You can try to answer this question from lots of different perspectives, also we could wonder how another civilization in the future would be surprised by our present day convictions and beliefs.

But most importantly perception of reality is completely subjective and depends on the observer's qualities only.

By the way how can we be sure that the Mayan Civilization truly existed, and they believed in what we think they believed in...?

I hope you find the links below useful on this topic, all the best.

astronomy at the level the mayans practiced it doesn't actually offer much evidence on the shape of the earth. they were restricted to quite a small geographical area, they didn't do long ocean voyages. they were good with numbers but perhaps not so good at geometry. I don't know what they believed but the simplest assumption would be that it's flat, I think it's plausible that they believed that.

I do not know for a fact since I have not done research, but I would agree with you and say it is VERY unlikely. Their understanding of astronomy was so profound that to suggest they thought the Earth was flat is almost perverse.

I think, anyways. Again, I don't have evidence, just postulates.

Edit:

While I'll accept that I am wrong and that they believed the Earth was flat (just did a quick bit of Googling), I think it should be said that it was known for quite some time, during the time of the Mayans, in the European continent that the Earth was round. Hellenistic astronomy was able to establish a spherical Earth in 3rd century BC - the Mayan civilization was at its peak in the third to tenth centuries AD.

The Mayans weren't "intellectually sophisticated"! They practiced human sacrifice and believed in a mysterious underworld. That is primitive thinking. They didn't even know how to hitch a donkey to a cart. The primitive religion of the Mayans proved to be quite useless in guiding their society, and eventually their society faded away almost totally. It's not surprising that they would think that the earth is flat.

It is because the earth is flat we have been lied our while lives to keep The Big Bang "Theory" alive...

They were not seafaring and the gradual curve of the world is so slight that it would be totally reasonable that they believed it was flat. We take it for granted that planets are spherical but what would they go on to think otherwise?

>>>How the hell did I warrant thumbs down by stating the fact that they were not sea faring? Well, just goes to show that, yes, even morons are entitled to opinion.

I hear a few of them serve on the Texas school board.