National Geographic, September 22, 2010
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| Slithering Into Fall , Photograph by Carver Mostardi, Alamy |
Crowds gather around El Castillo at Mexico's ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza on the autumnal equinox of 2005.
Hitting the pyramid at just the right angle, sunlight casts an undulating shadow on the side of a staircase each equinox. When the shadow aligns with a monumental stone head at El Castillo's base, a titanic, glowing serpent is born.
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| Consumed by History, Photograph by Edgar Romero, AP |
Maya priest Gustavo Pineda, front left, commemorates the 2007 autumnal equinox in Los Planes de Renderos, El Salvador.
The ancient Maya—whose empire thrived between A.D. 250 and 900 in what are now Mexico and Central America—built observatories and, via astronomy and mathematics, learned to accurately predict equinoxes and other celestial phenomena.
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