Students of Palo Alto and Menlo Park are often taught the basic mechanics of mathematics, but are often ignorant of mathematics in history. This is the first article of a new series where we explore the achievements of various ancient civilizations in the noble field of mathematics. In this article, we will be examining the role of mathematics in the Mayan civilization of Central America. Here, we’ve compiled some facts that will hopefully pique the interest of your Palo Alto student.
The Mayans were most well known for their mathematical achievements in astronomy. The Mayans famously created an extremely accurate calendar based on planetary movements, in which math played a key component. Palo Alto students, go up to Rancho San Antonio or some nearby hills, and look up into the night sky! You’ll be seeing the same sky that the Mayans based their math off of.
The Mayans used a number system with base 20. As a result, much of their computational work would look much different from our modern-day Arabic-numeric system, with base 10. In other words, Mayan math students had to memorize a greater base (20 different numbers per base), double of any Palo Alto student!
The Mayans also developed the concept of zero, and there’s evidence that they worked with extremely large sums (up to hundreds of millions). Also, while there is no evidence that the Mayans used fractions, they were still able to determine extremely accurate astronomical calculations. These same calculations would undoubtedly send any Palo Alto student to a calculator!
We hope that Palo Alto students, upon reading about the Mayans, have been inspired to continue learning math!
For more ways to learn about math, visit Mathnasium’s website!
