MAYA numbering system and Mayan numbers

The maya were one of the most important civilizations in the Mesoamerican cultural region, being for many the culture that made the greatest advances in the entire American continent. The Mayans were geniuses with regard to science, being very advanced in matters such as mathematics or astronomy, and to know part of this in this lesson from a teacher we are going to talk on the Mayan numbering system and Mayan numbers.

Before talking about the number system of the Mayans we must briefly explain who they were, to understand its enormous relevance in the American world and the great importance of its system numeric.

The mayans They were one of the main cultures of the cultural region known as Mesoamerica, occupying the Central American zone among the 20th centuries BC C. and the XV d. C. It was one of the most important peoples in all of America and played a key role in the cultural evolution of all the American and Mesoamerican regions. Although it was maintained for many centuries, the reality is that not during all of them was it equally important, but still

his math system expanded by many peoples.

Even being such an ancient people, the reality is that the Mayans were one of the more advanced cultures, not only of American history, but of human history, achieving advances in the scientific field before many European nations of the same time.

Linked to the Mayan number system, we find the way to mayan writing, a hieroglyphic system Maya in which an enormous number of glyphs were joined with other symbols to form a wide and complex writing system, possibly being the first great writing system Mesoamerican. To make a parallel with something better known, we can say that the Mayan writing was very similar to the Egyptian writing and especially with regard to the hieroglyphics.

By means of a mechanism similar to that of the glyphs used in writing, we find the existence of the numbering system, which also used a huge number of symbols. The symbols were linked to the days, months and years, since the Mayan number system did not focus on their use for the mathematical problems, but unlike the vast majority of European peoples, the use of their numbering system it was to measure time, since the Mayan calendar it was one of the most important elements of civilization.

The number system of the Maya it was vigesimal and used to represent symbols the elements of stripe, snail and dot, this being the reason why the vast majority of symbols to represent numbers were very similar to each other.

On the other hand, the system was also positional, varying the value of the numbers depending on where the symbol was located, using a system based on numerous heights to increase the number.

On the other hand, we must bear in mind that in this lesson we are talking about the basic numbering system of the Mayans, since there were other simpler systems that they used only for one aspect of life, such as the trading system that it was very little used or the cephalomorphic system used in the inscriptions and in which the numbers were represented by images of heads.

To continue this lesson on the Mayan numbering system and Mayan numbers, we must talk about the mechanisms used to write these numbers, it is essential to see examples to understand the importance of the symbols.

The writing system of the Mayan numbers was based on 3 main elements:

• The point the one that represented the unit
• The stripe symbolized the 5
• The snail was used to represent 0, a very unusual number in the rest of Mesoamerican populations.

By using these three symbols the Mayans created the numbers from 0 to twenty, 0 being the snail and the rest of the numbers being created by adding the lines and dots, such as the six that was represented by a line and a point, since the sum of both a 6. The basic idea of ​​the first twenty numbers was the use of dashes and dots to be able to create any number.

The importance of position in Mayan numbering

For the numbers that went from the twentieth, the importance of place value, varying the figure that depended on the vertical height in which the number will be found. The idea was that in the lower area was the numeral, being any number from 0 to 20, and then at the top another figure was placed that was multiplied by twenty.

On the other hand, the different levels marked the number of times that the first number had to be multiplied by twenty, playing with different heights for the largest numbers.