How the Mayans were able to accurately predict solar eclipses for centuries

> The Maya Civilization, from Central America, was one of the most advanced ancient civilizations

The Maya are still around! I spent a few months in the Guatemalan highlands last year and all the kids in the village spoke Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages, at home.

(Young people speaking the language is key to language health.)

How does one even come up with 260 day year?

Is the weather in the tropics so similar that year-on-year mismatch stops mattering?

They used past historical data to make predictions without having the need for a helio-centric model?

The sad thing is that for all their advanced ways of the time, they succumbed to the same thing we are experiencing now... being too comfortable to fix what's broken.

The Mayans did not want to give up their lifestyles even in the face of crippling population growth and surrounding natural resource depletion... which led to their downfall.

The original RDB!

Whenever I see these backwards-applied math models I think of the “wet streets cause rain” expression.