Despite the technological advance of our era, cabañuelas, a pre-Hispanic climate prediction method, continue to be used in Mayan communities in Yucatan and below we explain how this model that has been used for centuries really works.
Juan Vázquez Montalvo, meteorologist from the Institutional Committee for the Attention of Extreme Meteorological Phenomena (Ciafeme) of the Autonomous University of Yucatán (Uady), recalled that the cabañuelas begin on January 1, and conclude on January 31.
“Cabañuelas come from the Mayan culture. Somehow they detected that the meteorological year is not from January to December, but rather from winter to winter. Therefore, what happens in winter reveals how the weather will behave throughout the seasons of the year,” explained the specialist.
He said that the peak of the winter season is from December 20 to January 14 approximately, which is why the Mayans chose the month of January to design a method of weather observation and thus be able to predict what was going to happen during the year, in order to guarantee food supply and not suffer hunger.
He pointed out that they made a calendar that they divided into four periods, where the first period corresponds to January 1 to 12, which are the 12 months of the year; Subsequently, a second round is given that begins on January 13, being December, and so on until reaching January 24, which represents the month of January.
“The third round is from January 25 to January 30, where each day corresponds to two months, that is, January 25 is January and February and so on, while the fourth round is January 31, where every two hours is a month, that is, from 00:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. is January and from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. is February and so on,” he said.
Vázquez Montalvo said that once the observation period has concluded, the concordances that were repeated throughout the four observed laps are sought, that is, if on the 8th a cold front arrived with water and wind, that day corresponds to August, so this is usually associated with the arrival of a tropical cyclone.
TYT Newsroom
