That's also true!

I think a lot of this stuff makes the origins of religions much more understandable.

You see people try to justify the historical reality of "the great flood" by saying how every culture on Earth has a story about an ancient great flood.

Almost like maybe there was no massive flood and we were all just surrounded by the same basic conditions, leading us to similar conclusions.

It's like how every culture independently creates some form of flatbread: that doesn't make the bread divine (though, historically, many people associate bread and the divine - Yahweh rained bread down from Heaven, etc.).

Or how the universe was created by Hera, spilling her breastmilk, creating the stars in the sky: that's why we call The Milky Way...The Milky Way.

The Chinese actually call it "The Silver River," to this day, because they didn't have the same origin story for it.

OK, I gotta' stop...I'd be the worst history teacher...I'd be the guy that kids are like "Just ask any question, then let him go..." hahaha

That's an excellent hypothesis.

I have done zero research but here's my guess.

Modern pregnancy lasts 280 days.

Malnutrition and other lifestyle factors shorten that, so a 260-day gestation may have been standard, at the time and in that place.

The corn part, I imagine, is actually broken down into three cycles of just over 86 days, which is right around how long corn takes to go from seed to harvest: so each year allowed for three cycles of crop, because they were in the tropics, where you can grow all year.

It's also important to understand that this idea of "day" is different, in cultures who use multiple calendars - the Chinese and the Jewish are known for using both a solar and a lunar calendar, which don't sync up, but are used together to understand one's position in time.

I'd guess that's more how this calendar worked, as it was more about seasons than it was about the length of a day, because it's not like you'd have a 260-day year that resulted in 33-hour days: you can't change the earth's rotation any more than you can the position of the moon and stars.

So the functional day was still 24-hours-ish, but then there was another calendar used for rituals, planting, etc.: basically every civilization makes calendars to figure out when floods come.

Floods bring fertility to the soil, allowing it to produce - that's why all major civilizations originate in flood plains - it's why, once you figure out the flood cycle, complex language and temporality emerge very quickly.

Humans are already familiar with cyclic floods in our own, everywhere we exist, from pre-history: we saw that people producing children also seemed to have a cycle and it gets kinda'...wet.

Women's menstrual cycle has been referred to as a "flood" in many cultures, throughout history, strengthening this connection, with the time of menstruation also called a "moon," in many cultures, strengthening that connection, as well.

In ancient Rome, the owning couple was required to have sex in any newly-anointed agricultural field, to ensure productivity.

Connections between sex and agriculture exist in nearly every culture.

So my guess is that the Mesoamericans were birthing slightly malnourished children slightly premature, and it was the standard at the time, while also bringing in a corn crop three times a year (let's call them "trimesters" wink wink).