How did Mayan astronomers know so much?

Question: How did Mayan astronomers know so much?
- Keywords:
  end of the world
Asked by gege12372 to Charlotte, Dhvanil, Frank, Jim, Leila on 12 Mar 2013.
- Dhvanil Karia answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  They used to study the star relative to earths position.
  
  But I guess they stumbled upon a problem in their calender program like Microsoft windows with the year 2000 date problem ( apparently in 90s microsoft machines were programmed with 31/12/1999 as the last date and there was a lot of panic caused with that error which was finally solved)
- Jim O Doherty answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  They were at a great location to view the sky, many hundred metres above sea level. They also had many people who believed what they said and they produced some of the most amazing sky charts that became used by many of the European astronomers. Although the Mayans did believe the world was going to end in 2012!
- Leila Nichol answered on 12 Mar 2013:
  
  They didn’t! They thought the world was going to end on 12/12/12………!

Question: How did Mayan astronomers know so much?