AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

Desynchronized stelae

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Desynchronized stelae. Early-warning theory of critical transitions says complex systems approaching a tipping point betray themselves in advance — variance and autocorrelation rise as the system loses resilience. This conjecture applies those signals to Maya epigraphy. The Classic Maya katun-ending dedication network was a field of coupled oscillators: cities dedicated monuments on shared calendrical period endings, held in phase by political and ritual ties. As the system neared collapse that coupling should have weakened first, so dedication timing should desynchronize before the final dates: cross-site variance of offsets from period endings rising by half or more, and inter-dedication intervals becoming more sluggishly autocorrelated, over the final sixty years before each epigraphic region's terminal long-count date, relative to that region's Late Classic baseline, in most regions. Collapse arriving out of a clear sky — no prior desynchronization — kills it.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In monument dedication dates, the cross-site variance of offsets from period endings rises >= 50% and the lag-1 autocorrelation of inter-dedication intervals rises by >= 0.2 during the final 60 years before each epigraphic region's terminal long-count date, relative to that region's Late Classic baseline, in at least three of four regions; collapse arriving with no prior desynchronization kills it.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Maya Hieroglyphic Database dedication-date tables.

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo/web/DB access); titles-only knowledge of existing items, embedded in titles_supplied per the batch-2 lane rule; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH3_20260705.md (b043140). Novelty unverified by construction. titles_supplied stripped to the committed sidecar conjecture_fresh_fablemax_batch3_titles_supplied_20260705.md at import (schema additionalProperties:false; relaxation queued).

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

Both halves are mature: early-warning-signal theory (Scheffer et al.) and a decades-long statistical literature on Maya terminal long-count dates (including spatial-autocorrelation methodological debates and sub-regional abandonment timing). The join — temporal EWS statistics on dedication-interval series per region — was not located; the existing autocorrelation work is spatial, not temporal.

Scheffer et al., 'Early-Warning Signals for Critical Transitions', Nature 461 — The EWS framework
'Terminal Long Count Dates and the Disintegration of Classic Period Maya Polities' — Quantitative work on the same dataset, spatial framing

Predictions

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