Question: How could the Maya civilization predict the eclipses and the movements of the planets?

Hi!
The Maya civilization was incredibly advanced in this kind of predictions and they also had a great understanding of the concept of time, which is pretty amazing if we think about how long ago that was!
They combined their knowledge about astronomy and the formulation of their calendars with very complicated mathematical calculations.
This was really important in their everyday life as it determined how they would build their cities, grow their crops, plan their events. They created very long calendars which went well beyond the extinction of their civilization.
So the main way for them to predict these events was through continuous observations. They realised that some of these events were cyclical and that they would happen again. So they combined the observations with their mathematical calculations, and worked out what the cyclicity was. This is what they used to create their calendars.
Scientifically they were an incredibly advanced and I think that probably we haven’t yet deciphered all of their codes which are probably still full of mysteries!