Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2016

ARCHAEOASTRONOMY 21 I n the first half of May, a rather surprising news began to pop up all over the Web, according to which a teen had discovered a new Mayan city from his bedroom by comparing the shape of constellations to the geographical distribution of known ur- ban settlements of this civilization. In this article, we will examine this episode as it offers the opportunity to demonstrate (if ever there was the need) how any scientific discovery cannot ignore the prerequisite of JULY-AUGUST 2016 , a “ stupefying ” going through the essential steps of the so- called “scientific method”, which involves observation, hypothesis generation and test- ing, formulation of theory, reproducibility. The protagonist of the story is the 15-year- old William Gadoury, from Saint-Jean-de- Matha, Québec. As an archaeology and as- tronomy enthusiast, the young boy had for some years been gathering information on Maya settlements in the Yucatan Penin- sula, and how often done by “little scien- E l Castillo at Chichen Itza is the most popular among the Mayan step-pyramids. The four stair- ways have 91 steps each, which added together with the summit platform give a total of 365 steps.