Meso-American

Theory
PAUL KIRCHOFF
 Was born on August 17, 1900 in Halle, Province
of Westphalia.
 Died December 9, 1972
 Was a German- Mexican anthropologist, most
noted for his seminal work in defining and
elaborating the culture area of Mesoamerica, a
term he coined
 He was the founder of Mexico’s National School
of Anthropology and History in 1938, and held a
research position at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico.
 What is Mesoamerica?
 The term Mesoamerica is derived from the Greek and means "Middle
America." It refers to a geographical and cultural area which extends from
central Mexico down through Central America, including the territory
which is now made up of the countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and
El Salvador.
 'Meso' means 'middle', and these Mesoamerican cultures are the early
advanced civilizations of Mexico and Central America. First, there were
many unique groups inhabiting this region over time but for our purposes,
we are going to focus in on the Olmec, the Maya and the Aztecs.
The Olmec
 First Great civilization of Mesoamerica.
 First complex society in the region.
 Their name comes from what the Aztecs refer
to them by: 'The Rubber People', or in the
language of the Aztecs, 'The Olmec'.
Copernican heliocentrism

 The name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus

Copernicus and published in 1543. This model positioned the Sun
near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other
planets orbiting around it in circular paths, modified by epicycles,
and at uniform speeds.
Aristarchus
 Copernicus was aware that the ancient Greek Aristarchus had
already proposed a heliocentric theory, and cited him as a proponent
of it in a reference that was deleted before publication; however,
there is no evidence that Copernicus had knowledge of, or access to,
the specific details of Aristarchus' theory.
 Although he had circulated an outline of his own
heliocentric theory to colleagues sometime before 1514,
he did not decide to publish it until he was urged to do so

late in his life by his pupil Rheticus.

 The center of the universe is near the Sun. Around the Sun, in order, are
Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars.

 The Earth is one of several planets revolving around a stationary sun in a

determined order. The Earth has three motions: daily rotation, annual
revolution, and annual tilting of its axis. Retrograde motion of the planets is
explained by the Earth's motion. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is small
compared to the distance from the Sun to the stars.
 The Heliocentric System
 In a book called On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies (that
was published as Copernicus lay on his deathbed), Copernicus
proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the Solar
System. Such a model is called a heliocentric system. The ordering
of the planets known to Copernicus in this new system is illustrated
in the following figure, which we recognize as the modern ordering
of those planets.
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (first edition 1543 in Nuremberg,
second edition 1566 in Basel), was a compendium of six books published during
the year of his death, though he had arrived at his theory several decades earlier.
The work marks the beginning of the shift away from a geocentric (and
anthropocentric) universe with the Earth at its center.

 In it, Copernicus established that the planets orbited the sun rather than the Earth.
He laid out his model of the solar system and the path of the planets
 He diplomatically dedicated the book to Pope Paul III. The church did not
immediately condemn the book as heretical, perhaps because the printer added a
note that said even though the book's theory was unusual, if it helped astronomers
with their calculations, it didn't matter if it wasn't really true, according to Famous
Scientists. It probably also helped that the subject was so difficult that only highly
educated people could understand it. The Church did eventually ban the book in
1616.

 The Catholic Church wasn't the only Christian faith to reject Copernicus' idea.
The Copernican Universe
 In this new ordering the Earth is just another planet (the third
outward from the Sun), and the Moon is in orbit around the Earth,
not the Sun. The stars are distant objects that do not revolve around
the Sun. Instead, the Earth is assumed to rotate once in 24 hours,
causing the stars to appear to revolve around the Earth in the
opposite direction.
 The Copernican system by banishing the idea that the
Earth was the center of the Solar System, immediately led
to a simple explanation of both the varying brightness of
the planets and retrograde motion: The­planets in such a
system naturally vary in brightness because they are not
always the same distance from the Earth.
Geocentric and Heliocentric Model
 The idea of Copernicus was not really new! A sun-
centered Solar System had been proposed as early
as about 200 B.C. by Aristarchus of Samos (Samos
is an island off the coast of what is now Turkey).