Mayan Numbers

Basics

Zero & Place Values

Place values 1’s 20’s 400’s 8000’s

Addition + = Eight-teen Rabbit and Six Sky want to buy a new ball at the market. A ball costs cacao beans, Eight-teen Rabbit has cacao beans and Six Sky has cacao beans, together do they have enough cacao beans to buy a new ball?

+ =

Subtraction = 329

Codices “We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all…” - Friar Diego de Landa  Four Codices  Madrid Codex – 22 feet long contains horoscopes and almanacs.  Paris Codex – Mayan religion and zodiac, is in poor condition.  Grolier Codex – fragmented, seems to be dedicated to the cycles of Venus.  Dresden Codex – is in best condition although some damage was sustained during World War II

Dresden Codex 11½ ft. long and contains 74 folios with text and paintings in bright colors. 1-15: almanacs and astrology 16-23: dedicated to the Moon Goddess 25-28: details new year ceremonies 29-45: agricultural almanacs 46-50: plot the cycles of Venus stretching back 300 years 61-73: are annual flood and storm recordings 74: deals with the end of the current world cycle  Strictly business in terms of mathematics.  Invaluable in the deciphering of the Mayan written system.

Dresden Codex

Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov

Tatiana Proskouriakoff

The Calendar Round  The basic unit was the K’in or day  Each K’in was its own entity and had to be properly worshiped. The Tzolk’in or Sacred Calendar  260 days  Made up of two calendars that fit together like the gears of a clock  The first gear was a count from 1 to 13  The second gear was a series of 20 glyphs representing the god to be worshiped. The Haab or vague year  365 days  18 months each with 20 days  One 5 day month known as Wayeb was considered unlucky and dangerous

Long Count Calendar  Start date (August 13, 3114 B.C.)  20 k’ins = 1 winal ( )  20 day  18 winals = 1 tun ( )  360 days  20 tuns = 1 k’atun ( )  7200 days  20 k’atuns = 1 b’ak’tun ( )  144,000 days  13 b’ak’tuns = new era of creation ( )  1,872,000 days 1,872,000 – 1,870,302 = 1,698 days until the next creation event. 1’s 20’s 360’s 7200’s ’s (05/08/2008)