This is, CBS, I and the world, I'm John Bachelor.

Mars, the planet that we all gaze at when we see it turn red, sometimes bright red,

depending upon the Martian dust storms. The fact that we gaze upon it is a way

of connecting us to our ancients, our progenitors, the people who first gazed on Mars

without our instruments and robots and success.

Someone who tells this story wonderfully, I welcome Matthew Schendell,

he is a space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and his new book is

for the love of Mars, a human history of the Red planet. The ancients did not shy away from interpreting

Mars so Matt congratulations and good evening. We go immediately to the Mayans who looked upon Mars as a Zumor, a Mars beast.

What did they make of that red planet in the sky?

Good evening to you. Thank you, John. Yeah, so you know the story of

the Mayans is very interesting. I was attracted to that story partly because you know the the Mayans have this incredibly you know robust

understanding of cosmology of you know the the role that the planets played in their world and, you know, I really wanted to learn a little bit more while I was writing this book about how they saw Mars and what it meant to them.

And in reading a lot of the anthropological literature about that relationship between the

Mayans and the sky. I did find archaeologists who are making this argument

that in this one particular codex,

the Dresden codex, there was a table related to the motions of Mars and in that table they found

depictions of what they ended up calling the Mars Beast. So I want to be clear

it's not the Mayans that called it the Mars Beast. It's these particular

archaeologists who, you know, their argument is that what you see in that codex in those pages where the Mars Beast appears is the beast coming down from the sky,

making itself more visible and then going back up.

And what they argued is that what you're seeing there is Mars during an opposition.

...