Aside from Tikal, I’m not sure there any ancient American archaeological sites that have given me a sense of wonder and inspiration quite the way that Rio Bec, the namesake of the Rio Bec archaeological style, has. That was all any archaeologists had to say to me was to propose that the stately false tower facades of the Rio Bec style might be meant to suggest the lofty pyramid temples of Tikal, and I was on the job, calculator in in hand.
To date, though, I have relatively little finished work on Rio Bec. There’s something about the Rio Bec site proper and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I always end up feeling like I’m looking at the work of a particularly proficient ancient mathematician, and it’s sometimes as confusing as it is humbling. It’s definitely a place to look, though, if you’re eager to learn new things about math, just as is Tikal.
One of the things that Rio Bec provided inspiration for is a series of “Rio Bec Equations” that were hoped would help coordinate identification and correct grouping of calendar values into respective sets.
Rio Bec Equation #1 is a very simple one that may still actually hold up. Rio Bec was where I first learned that 12 x (Pi^2) could be very important to calendars, and Rio Bec Equation 1 reads,
Half Venus Cycle / reciprocal of (12 x (Pi^2)) = Venus Orbital Period.
That truth has held up for both “A” and “B” calendar sets, and is predicted to hold true for any additional calendar sets that may be eventually confirmed, and it exemplifies the way we may be able to “lock” internal ratios of calendar sets. and learn to construct them from these internal formulas.
Notably, the hugely important ratio 1.622311470 is another we should probably expect to see preserved internally within calendar sets.
Looking at the tables for Rio Bec Equation #1, though, I’m increasingly amazed that this VOP-like number that Stonehenge has been showing us, 224.9133273, never managed to get onto the radar at the time that the table was created.
Stonehenge has also been trying to talk to us about 18990.40378 as a viable half Venus cycle apparently, an idea that received even more emphasis today when setting out the first version of the Stonehenge data tables.
Do you know what the 120 Meg Yard = 326.4209971 ft outer sarcen circle circumference is in standard Royal Cubits? Don’t feel bad if you don’t know the answer, I didn’t know it – but it’s 189.9040383
326.4209971 / 1.718873385 = 189.9040383
We can use Rio Bec Equation #1 to see that this and the Venus Orbital Period figure appear to belong to the same set of calendar numbers
189.9040383 / (1 / (12 Pi^2)) = 224.9133273
It might be interesting if we start feeding different Megalithic Yards into that equation. Hopefully Stonehenge’s teaching about representing the Venus Cycle don’t end with this set, which is currently becoming the default “C” set of calendar numbers which hopefully upholds the last attempt at assigning the “C” designation to a calendar number group.
In fact, if we use 120 x Incidental Meg Yard in place of 120 AE Meg Yards, we get the “A” value for the half Venus Cycle – not a new teaching but a nice confirmation of an old one.
Anyway, if I ever get business at Stonehenge tidied up, I’d like to get back to some Mesoamerican studies, and there’s still nothing that intrigues me quite like Rio Bec. I still salute its architect for giving us such a run for our money.
–Luke Piwalker
Luke Piwalker 