“The Maya kingdom emerged around 1000 B.C., and lasted until A.D. 1697. All Mayas shared a common culture and religion, but they did not have a sole capital city or ruler. Each city governed itself and had its own noble ruler” (Baquedano, 6). Maya art was expressed through various mediums. There was architecture in general, mural paintings, fine carved jade, bone and shell art work, carved door beams, and wooden lintels, ceramics, stucco, stone carvings and pottery. “By the fourth century A.D., the Maya were living in large cities. They built houses with steam baths and towns with paved avenues, open squares and underwater drainage systems…and all of the surfaces of the Maya temple-cities were highly decorated with flamboyant designs of mythical monsters and religious symbols” (Hull, 7). “For reasons still unknown, the Maya abandoned their cities about 900 A.D. They dispersed to the Yucatan and the highlands of Guatamala. In these areas, the Maya continued to prosper until Spain conquered them in the mid-1500′s” This date of 900 A.D. is typically considered to mark the end of the Classic Period of Maya history. This was marked by the collapse of the southern lowland cities, while Maya cities in the northern Yucatan continued to thrive (Israel, x) The Maya culture is believed to have roots dating back thousands of years before the arrival of European explorers. The first settlers most likely traveled across the Bering Strait and hundreds of miles far south into the area now known as Central America. Eventually settling in present day Mexico, in the rainforest and the highlands, these people found themselves in a most temperate region where argiculture and cultivation alone could allow a society to flourish and rapidly grow into a civilization. “The Mayan culture arose, flourished and vanished in less than a thousand years, reaching its peak between 250 A.D. and 900 A.D. The Maya lived in Central America and south Mexico, and their horizons reached to the Valley of Mexico in the west and to Panama in the east. Their civilization progressed without contact with European or Asian civilizations, although they were influenced by events within their geographic sphere. In spite of their relative isolation, the Maya produced a remarkable architecture and excelled in painting and sculpture. The height of Mayan civilization, 250 A.D. – 900 A.D., is referred to as the Classical Period. It is during this time that the Maya developed their great cities” (Israel, ix). The temple pyramid which symbolizes Maya architectural skill is also a statement of the Maya people and their cosmographic ideas. It showed that everything has a beginning and an end, that everything is the beginning and the end. “The pyramids built by the Maya and the Aztecs were somewhat similar to the ones built by the Egyptians. However, although these ancient Mexican civilizations came later than the Egyptians, they knew nothing about the Egyptian civilization in Africa. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the stepped pyramids of ancient Mexico had temples at the summit. Also, the Mexican pyramids were not always used as tombs, but also as places of worship” (Hull, 9). Archaeologists have determined that the Maya civilization was destroyed by the ultimate breakdown of its society. Some evidence uncovered by archaeological studies show that the Mayan civilization reached a crisis point in the ninth century, rose and fell over the course of two-thousand years. By the time of the European invasion of Central America, many Maya cities had long been abandoned. “Archaeologists have concluded that the society was organized politically into rical city-states, all sharing the same civilization–language, art, farming techniques, and so forth. It was an intensely competitive society, full of wars, annexations, and alliances. In each large city, the king was the equivalent of a god, responsible to his people for the successful functioning of the universe” and for the society. In fact, great warrior kings immortalized themselves and their deeds on stelae, recording for future generations the contributions they had made toward maintaining the cosmic order. (Israel, ix) “Pre-Columbian Americans spoke many different languages. This was because the tribes had migrated to the new World at different times and probably had come from different areas of Asia. Furthermore, once they reached the Americas, they settled in places far apartfrom one another and could not understand one another. The languages spoken by Amerinds fall into what are called language groups” as the Maya “were people of different migrations. But since they were all nomadic, they often came in contact and needed to communicate with one another. To do this, they developed a system of hand signs similar to those used today by the deaf. Some of their signs were like those used all over the world; it wass natural to use them. For example, everyone points to oneself to mean me and to the other person to mean you. Up and down are also universal signs” (Tannenbaum, 52). The Maya people also “used rebuses, or pictures, to represent words and syllables; they also used different colors, each of which had a special meaning” (Tannenbaum, 36). The term Mayan refers to a large number of Maya-speaking peoples whose cultural and political cohesion was quite extraordinary. Despite the general cohesion of Maya culture, “the zenith of their civilization, however, indeed the intellectual climate of all civilizations was the development of a hieroglyphic writing which, moreover, was the only system of the writing in the New World worthy of comparison with the earlier graphic systems of the Old World, such as those of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of China, for example…still, this hieroglyphic writing was doubtless first developed upon wood, fiber-paper or skins, but shortly before the beginning of the Christian era it was transformed to stone, inscribed upon monuments and altars, which were erected in the courts and palaces in front of the principal temples of the different Mayan cities” (Israel, 59-60). Many historians and scholars over the last few centuries have long recognized that Maya writing easily represents the turning point in human history although only one authority, Bishop Diego de Landa, is the only known person to have ever written anything deeply detailed concerning Maya writing, which seems quite remarkable considering that the Maya were the only Pre-Columbian people to ever have invented a complete system of writing in this part of the world. “The study of Maya hieroglyphic writing started in 1827. By 1950, names of gods and animals had been identified. In 1960, researchers realized that Maya inscriptions were primarily historical. They deal with the births, accessions, wars, deaths, and marriages of Maya kings” (Baquedano, 41). However, even today, scientists have yet to decipher completely the Mayan written language. “The Maya hieroglyphic writing is composed of about four hundred different characters or elements, of which probably as high as 90 to 95 per cent are ideographic rather than phonetic, as has been explained. These four hundred odd basic elements, however, are combined in about half as many common compound characters, about half of which in turn have been deciphered” (Israel, 73). With the formation of a language and a writing system also came “the introduction of the phonetic element into writing–that is to say, where a sign or character came to represent a sound, a syllable, or a letter, and ceased to be a picture of an idea…this change in the character of writing symbols, from signs representing ideas to signs representing sounds, was fundamental, and its far-reaching effects cannot be overstated. It soon made possible an enormous expansion in the subjects which could be expressed by writing, and it ultimately enabled mankind to write about everything he could talk or even think about; in short, it reduced his universe to black and white–the written word” (Israel, 63). “At first, scholars assumed that the abundant carvings in the countless monuments were either religious symbols or notations denoting the movement of planets. However, with the realization in the mid-1980′s that the glyphs constituted an actual language of complex words, it was possible to understand inscriptions throughout the Mayan realm. As a result, the romantic conjecture of a peaceful society has now given was to the view that the Maya were warring nations who tortured and sometimes sacrificed their captives. The Mayan writings have now become the most important source for understanding their civilization” (Israel, ix-x). However, one “must abandon the idea that the ancient Maya recorded history in their inscriptions save only in very abbreviated and synoptical allusions to the more important events. We may, on the other hand, console ourselves with the reflection that possibly they were more worthily employed in recording matters of scientific movement, such as the movements of the heavenly bodies” (Israel, 80). “The peculiar importance of the Maya hieroglyphic writing lies in the fact that it represents a stage in the science of expressing thoughts by graphic symbols not exemplified by the writing of any other people, ancient or modern. It stands at that momentous point in the development of the human race where graphic symbols representing sounds were just beginning to replace symbols representing ideas. Man’s first efforts at writing were doubtless as highly realistic as he could make them with his clumsy hands and still clumsier tools and drawing materials. If he wanted to express the idea “horse,” he was obliged to draw the picture of a horse, since he had no symbols or characters by means of which the sound of its name could be indicated…this earliest method of expressing thoughts graphically has been called ideographic writing because its symbols express ideas instead of sounds, as do the characters of our own alphabet” (Israel, 62-63). However, “only the elite, a small fraction of Mesoamerican society, could read and interpret written records” (Baquedano, 40). The Maya religion was esoteric in nature, interpreted by a highly organized priesthood of prophets, mathematicians, astronomers and statesmen. “The role that religion played in Maya life is reflected in their various art forms. Very seldom was the peasant, or bulk of the population, portrayed on the pottery or sculptured carvings. The subject matter of Classical Maya art was the representation of priestly ideas coupled with the glorification of the priestly class” (Spencer, 456). By analzying the art forms expressed in various mediums, one can understand the cultural continuity that constituted Maya society and can easily find elements of social structure, philosophy and religion in the varied art forms. Maya “priests and astronomers were gathering from the stars, the secrets of time and its accurate measure, the revolutions of the sun, moon and planets; their mathematicians and chronologists were devising a calendar and chronology which was without peer on this continent and excelled by none in the Old World at the time” (Israel, 59). At the time, the most powerful people in the Maya world were indeed the priests, “dressed in golden jaguar skins, blood-red robes, and headdresses with feathers from the vivid green Quetzal bird. The most ancient god was Tlaloc, the rain god, and the most powerful god was Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent–both of those gods were adopted by Aztec religion later” (Hull, 7). The Maya have been called “the most intellectual of all the American Indian tribes and nations,” surpassing even the Old World people of antiquity (Driver, 134). To this day, scholars have been able to decipher and transliterate over half of the Mayan language through the use of codices (singular: codex). These were “painted books made from strips of deerskin or pressed tree bark, sewn together in long panels, and folded like a screen. In these codices, the Aztecs and the Maya recorded their astronomical and mathematical knowledge as well as instructions for agriculture and craftwork. The Spaniards, in their zeal to convert Amerinds to Christianity and root out anything they considered Pagan, burned all the codices they could find. Only four escaped the flame and [at least three] are now in musuems in Europe” (Tannenbaum, 36). The Dresden Codex is located at the Royal Library at Dresden and the Peresianus Codex may be found at the Biblioteque National in Paris. The Codex Tro-Cortesianus, one of the most famous of the four, is located at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, and it “contains information about divination (predicting the future) and rituals for Maya priests. Codices were made of carefully prepared paper, cloth made from fibers of the maguey plant, or animal skin. The Maya codices were written or painted with fine brushes on long strips of bark paper, folded like screens and covered with a layer of chalky paste” (Baquedano, 40). Man’s perception of time has played an important role in the development of many civilizations over time and space, most notably, the Maya civiliation. “To prepare astronomical tables for their codices and to predict changes in the seasons, the Aztecs and Maya recorded what they observed in the sky” (Tannenbaum, 36). The issues and theories that were raised by such citizens of the Maya culture was the science of time keeping by use of mathematics and various calendar systems. It is the Maya chronology which serves as the time yardstick for all associated cultures, the Maya writing which “provides us with a system of counting time, a chronological yardstick, as it were, by means of which it will eventually be possible to date all the contiguous ancient American civilizations” (Israel, 81). Scholars of Maya life have also determined that intimately linked to Mayan religion was the impressive development of astronomical studies, along with the use of mathematics. Mayan priest-astronomers made elaborate calculations to catalog the passage of time. There is little or no historical matter to be found in the Maya writings, only that which is concerned with the issue of time. In fact, “it was stated that in so far as they have been deciphered, and it is now possible to read nearly one-half of the Maya hieroglyphics, the Maya inscriptions have been found to deal exclusively with the counting of time in one way or another” (Israel, 75). Indeed, if only one thing could be said about the Maya of pre-Columbian America, it would have to deal with their interests in ‘time’ and their ramifications on that abstract concept. The Maya were fascinated, enchanted, and even verging on the obsessed with the concept of time (Spencer, 461). Their expertise was such, that their error was approximately one day in six-thousand years for the calculation of the planet Venus’ revolutions. Inscriptions have been found that carry calculations 90,000,000 and 400,000,000 years into the past (Thompson, 146). Commonly referred to as “the Greeks of the New World” (Israel, 57), Maya astronomers compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus and were able to predict solar eclipes. With Maya arithmetic, chronological and astronomical facts were expressed through the concept of time. “The Maya, like ourselves, has two different ways of writing their numbers, one by bars and dots, and the other by different types of the human head. The former may be likened to our Roman numerals, and the latter to our Arabic numerals” (Israel, 73). In addition, “the Maya invented the zero long before it was introduced into Europe. This remarkable feat allowed them to make very complex computations. For example, they figured out on what day of the week December 31, 90,000,000 B.C. had occurred…the Maya could use numbers far greater than the Europeans. Even the great mathematical achievements of the Greeks could only go so far without the use of zero” (Tennenbaum, 53-54). The many mathematical and astronomical achievements of the Mayan priests were inextricably interwoven into the religious fabric of the society. While Maya culture has long been popular for its more violent aspects such as human sacrifice rituals performed atop pyramidal temples, the Maya also are respected for developing a sophisticated calendar. The Maya were still a very religious society and almost everything they did was linked into their belief of gods and natural spirits–of the unknown. “For religious purposes, the Aztec and Maya had a 260 day calendar. Each day had a name and a number; there were twenty names and thirteen numbers. This allowed for a combination of 260 since each day had a seperate designation. You can understand how this works if you imagine two interlocking cogwheels or gears. The first–the number wheel–has thirteen teeth; the second–the name wheel–has twenty teeth…After twenty cycles, all 260 possible combinations have been used and a new year begins” (Tannenbaum, 54-57). In addition to the 260 day calendar, the Maya also used a simple solar calendar for agricultural purposes. “The calendar was composed of eighteen months of twenty days each for a total of 360 days. But they knew that there were approximately 365 1/4 days in a year, so they left five blank days, which were called ‘extra’ or ‘useless’ days and had no names. These five days were considered unlucky; people born on them were thought to be unfortunate. To make up for the quarter-day, they had a leap year similar to ours. Another Mesoamerican calendar was used to record historical events” (Tannenbaum, 57). The detailed Maya architecture which emerged from the rainforests of Guetemala and Yucatan was a fitting monument to the highly sophisticated civilization that existed in the region before the Spanish arrived. The stone cities complete with temples, palaces, tombs, and ball courts are fitting monuments to the complex civilization that existed in these regions for many centuries. Maya culture, in fact, was more than a collection of buildings in that every aspect of architecture was linked to the sacred world around. In fact, “their builders were developing an architecture at once unique, dignified and beautiful; their sculptors were carving the most elaborate compositions and designs in stone; their leaders had mastered the problems of social and governmental organization and were administering the state adaquetely and well. In short, a great national life was quickening to its fullest expression” (Israel, 59). Another important “use for counting was in trade. Amerinds had no regular system of money; occasionally, they used rare or beautiful items such as jade or special bird feathers as payment…the Maya were fond of cacao beans, which were hard to come by and often used them as a standard of exchange; for example, one hundred cacao beans could be exchanged for one slave” (Tannenbaum, 59-61). Maya communities exist today, and the people in these civilizations still believe their lives and destinies are tied directly into their family, community, history and to the supernatural world of their gods. Each important step in their lives is still marked by elaborate and sacred rituals, as they were in ancient times. By attempting to study the Maya peoples in Mexico and Guatemala, the rich cultural heritage of the civilizations will be shown to have contributed greatly toward forming the current societies of Latin America.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
A Glimpse into the Mathematics, Language and Culture of a Civilization
“The Maya kingdom emerged around 1000 B.C., and lasted until A.D. 1697. All Mayas shared a common culture and religion, but they did not have a sole capital city or ruler. Each city governed itself and had its own noble ruler” (Baquedano, 6). Maya art was expressed through various mediums. There was architecture in general, mural paintings, fine carved jade, bone and shell art work, carved door beams, and wooden lintels, ceramics, stucco, stone carvings and pottery. “By the fourth century A.D., the Maya were living in large cities. They built houses with steam baths and towns with paved avenues, open squares and underwater drainage systems…and all of the surfaces of the Maya temple-cities were highly decorated with flamboyant designs of mythical monsters and religious symbols” (Hull, 7). “For reasons still unknown, the Maya abandoned their cities about 900 A.D. They dispersed to the Yucatan and the highlands of Guatamala. In these areas, the Maya continued to prosper until Spain conquered them in the mid-1500′s” This date of 900 A.D. is typically considered to mark the end of the Classic Period of Maya history. This was marked by the collapse of the southern lowland cities, while Maya cities in the northern Yucatan continued to thrive (Israel, x) The Maya culture is believed to have roots dating back thousands of years before the arrival of European explorers. The first settlers most likely traveled across the Bering Strait and hundreds of miles far south into the area now known as Central America. Eventually settling in present day Mexico, in the rainforest and the highlands, these people found themselves in a most temperate region where argiculture and cultivation alone could allow a society to flourish and rapidly grow into a civilization. “The Mayan culture arose, flourished and vanished in less than a thousand years, reaching its peak between 250 A.D. and 900 A.D. The Maya lived in Central America and south Mexico, and their horizons reached to the Valley of Mexico in the west and to Panama in the east. Their civilization progressed without contact with European or Asian civilizations, although they were influenced by events within their geographic sphere. In spite of their relative isolation, the Maya produced a remarkable architecture and excelled in painting and sculpture. The height of Mayan civilization, 250 A.D. – 900 A.D., is referred to as the Classical Period. It is during this time that the Maya developed their great cities” (Israel, ix). The temple pyramid which symbolizes Maya architectural skill is also a statement of the Maya people and their cosmographic ideas. It showed that everything has a beginning and an end, that everything is the beginning and the end. “The pyramids built by the Maya and the Aztecs were somewhat similar to the ones built by the Egyptians. However, although these ancient Mexican civilizations came later than the Egyptians, they knew nothing about the Egyptian civilization in Africa. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the stepped pyramids of ancient Mexico had temples at the summit. Also, the Mexican pyramids were not always used as tombs, but also as places of worship” (Hull, 9). Archaeologists have determined that the Maya civilization was destroyed by the ultimate breakdown of its society. Some evidence uncovered by archaeological studies show that the Mayan civilization reached a crisis point in the ninth century, rose and fell over the course of two-thousand years. By the time of the European invasion of Central America, many Maya cities had long been abandoned. “Archaeologists have concluded that the society was organized politically into rical city-states, all sharing the same civilization–language, art, farming techniques, and so forth. It was an intensely competitive society, full of wars, annexations, and alliances. In each large city, the king was the equivalent of a god, responsible to his people for the successful functioning of the universe” and for the society. In fact, great warrior kings immortalized themselves and their deeds on stelae, recording for future generations the contributions they had made toward maintaining the cosmic order. (Israel, ix) “Pre-Columbian Americans spoke many different languages. This was because the tribes had migrated to the new World at different times and probably had come from different areas of Asia. Furthermore, once they reached the Americas, they settled in places far apartfrom one another and could not understand one another. The languages spoken by Amerinds fall into what are called language groups” as the Maya “were people of different migrations. But since they were all nomadic, they often came in contact and needed to communicate with one another. To do this, they developed a system of hand signs similar to those used today by the deaf. Some of their signs were like those used all over the world; it wass natural to use them. For example, everyone points to oneself to mean me and to the other person to mean you. Up and down are also universal signs” (Tannenbaum, 52). The Maya people also “used rebuses, or pictures, to represent words and syllables; they also used different colors, each of which had a special meaning” (Tannenbaum, 36). The term Mayan refers to a large number of Maya-speaking peoples whose cultural and political cohesion was quite extraordinary. Despite the general cohesion of Maya culture, “the zenith of their civilization, however, indeed the intellectual climate of all civilizations was the development of a hieroglyphic writing which, moreover, was the only system of the writing in the New World worthy of comparison with the earlier graphic systems of the Old World, such as those of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of China, for example…still, this hieroglyphic writing was doubtless first developed upon wood, fiber-paper or skins, but shortly before the beginning of the Christian era it was transformed to stone, inscribed upon monuments and altars, which were erected in the courts and palaces in front of the principal temples of the different Mayan cities” (Israel, 59-60). Many historians and scholars over the last few centuries have long recognized that Maya writing easily represents the turning point in human history although only one authority, Bishop Diego de Landa, is the only known person to have ever written anything deeply detailed concerning Maya writing, which seems quite remarkable considering that the Maya were the only Pre-Columbian people to ever have invented a complete system of writing in this part of the world. “The study of Maya hieroglyphic writing started in 1827. By 1950, names of gods and animals had been identified. In 1960, researchers realized that Maya inscriptions were primarily historical. They deal with the births, accessions, wars, deaths, and marriages of Maya kings” (Baquedano, 41). However, even today, scientists have yet to decipher completely the Mayan written language. “The Maya hieroglyphic writing is composed of about four hundred different characters or elements, of which probably as high as 90 to 95 per cent are ideographic rather than phonetic, as has been explained. These four hundred odd basic elements, however, are combined in about half as many common compound characters, about half of which in turn have been deciphered” (Israel, 73). With the formation of a language and a writing system also came “the introduction of the phonetic element into writing–that is to say, where a sign or character came to represent a sound, a syllable, or a letter, and ceased to be a picture of an idea…this change in the character of writing symbols, from signs representing ideas to signs representing sounds, was fundamental, and its far-reaching effects cannot be overstated. It soon made possible an enormous expansion in the subjects which could be expressed by writing, and it ultimately enabled mankind to write about everything he could talk or even think about; in short, it reduced his universe to black and white–the written word” (Israel, 63). “At first, scholars assumed that the abundant carvings in the countless monuments were either religious symbols or notations denoting the movement of planets. However, with the realization in the mid-1980′s that the glyphs constituted an actual language of complex words, it was possible to understand inscriptions throughout the Mayan realm. As a result, the romantic conjecture of a peaceful society has now given was to the view that the Maya were warring nations who tortured and sometimes sacrificed their captives. The Mayan writings have now become the most important source for understanding their civilization” (Israel, ix-x). However, one “must abandon the idea that the ancient Maya recorded history in their inscriptions save only in very abbreviated and synoptical allusions to the more important events. We may, on the other hand, console ourselves with the reflection that possibly they were more worthily employed in recording matters of scientific movement, such as the movements of the heavenly bodies” (Israel, 80). “The peculiar importance of the Maya hieroglyphic writing lies in the fact that it represents a stage in the science of expressing thoughts by graphic symbols not exemplified by the writing of any other people, ancient or modern. It stands at that momentous point in the development of the human race where graphic symbols representing sounds were just beginning to replace symbols representing ideas. Man’s first efforts at writing were doubtless as highly realistic as he could make them with his clumsy hands and still clumsier tools and drawing materials. If he wanted to express the idea “horse,” he was obliged to draw the picture of a horse, since he had no symbols or characters by means of which the sound of its name could be indicated…this earliest method of expressing thoughts graphically has been called ideographic writing because its symbols express ideas instead of sounds, as do the characters of our own alphabet” (Israel, 62-63). However, “only the elite, a small fraction of Mesoamerican society, could read and interpret written records” (Baquedano, 40). The Maya religion was esoteric in nature, interpreted by a highly organized priesthood of prophets, mathematicians, astronomers and statesmen. “The role that religion played in Maya life is reflected in their various art forms. Very seldom was the peasant, or bulk of the population, portrayed on the pottery or sculptured carvings. The subject matter of Classical Maya art was the representation of priestly ideas coupled with the glorification of the priestly class” (Spencer, 456). By analzying the art forms expressed in various mediums, one can understand the cultural continuity that constituted Maya society and can easily find elements of social structure, philosophy and religion in the varied art forms. Maya “priests and astronomers were gathering from the stars, the secrets of time and its accurate measure, the revolutions of the sun, moon and planets; their mathematicians and chronologists were devising a calendar and chronology which was without peer on this continent and excelled by none in the Old World at the time” (Israel, 59). At the time, the most powerful people in the Maya world were indeed the priests, “dressed in golden jaguar skins, blood-red robes, and headdresses with feathers from the vivid green Quetzal bird. The most ancient god was Tlaloc, the rain god, and the most powerful god was Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent–both of those gods were adopted by Aztec religion later” (Hull, 7). The Maya have been called “the most intellectual of all the American Indian tribes and nations,” surpassing even the Old World people of antiquity (Driver, 134). To this day, scholars have been able to decipher and transliterate over half of the Mayan language through the use of codices (singular: codex). These were “painted books made from strips of deerskin or pressed tree bark, sewn together in long panels, and folded like a screen. In these codices, the Aztecs and the Maya recorded their astronomical and mathematical knowledge as well as instructions for agriculture and craftwork. The Spaniards, in their zeal to convert Amerinds to Christianity and root out anything they considered Pagan, burned all the codices they could find. Only four escaped the flame and [at least three] are now in musuems in Europe” (Tannenbaum, 36). The Dresden Codex is located at the Royal Library at Dresden and the Peresianus Codex may be found at the Biblioteque National in Paris. The Codex Tro-Cortesianus, one of the most famous of the four, is located at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, and it “contains information about divination (predicting the future) and rituals for Maya priests. Codices were made of carefully prepared paper, cloth made from fibers of the maguey plant, or animal skin. The Maya codices were written or painted with fine brushes on long strips of bark paper, folded like screens and covered with a layer of chalky paste” (Baquedano, 40). Man’s perception of time has played an important role in the development of many civilizations over time and space, most notably, the Maya civiliation. “To prepare astronomical tables for their codices and to predict changes in the seasons, the Aztecs and Maya recorded what they observed in the sky” (Tannenbaum, 36). The issues and theories that were raised by such citizens of the Maya culture was the science of time keeping by use of mathematics and various calendar systems. It is the Maya chronology which serves as the time yardstick for all associated cultures, the Maya writing which “provides us with a system of counting time, a chronological yardstick, as it were, by means of which it will eventually be possible to date all the contiguous ancient American civilizations” (Israel, 81). Scholars of Maya life have also determined that intimately linked to Mayan religion was the impressive development of astronomical studies, along with the use of mathematics. Mayan priest-astronomers made elaborate calculations to catalog the passage of time. There is little or no historical matter to be found in the Maya writings, only that which is concerned with the issue of time. In fact, “it was stated that in so far as they have been deciphered, and it is now possible to read nearly one-half of the Maya hieroglyphics, the Maya inscriptions have been found to deal exclusively with the counting of time in one way or another” (Israel, 75). Indeed, if only one thing could be said about the Maya of pre-Columbian America, it would have to deal with their interests in ‘time’ and their ramifications on that abstract concept. The Maya were fascinated, enchanted, and even verging on the obsessed with the concept of time (Spencer, 461). Their expertise was such, that their error was approximately one day in six-thousand years for the calculation of the planet Venus’ revolutions. Inscriptions have been found that carry calculations 90,000,000 and 400,000,000 years into the past (Thompson, 146). Commonly referred to as “the Greeks of the New World” (Israel, 57), Maya astronomers compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus and were able to predict solar eclipes. With Maya arithmetic, chronological and astronomical facts were expressed through the concept of time. “The Maya, like ourselves, has two different ways of writing their numbers, one by bars and dots, and the other by different types of the human head. The former may be likened to our Roman numerals, and the latter to our Arabic numerals” (Israel, 73). In addition, “the Maya invented the zero long before it was introduced into Europe. This remarkable feat allowed them to make very complex computations. For example, they figured out on what day of the week December 31, 90,000,000 B.C. had occurred…the Maya could use numbers far greater than the Europeans. Even the great mathematical achievements of the Greeks could only go so far without the use of zero” (Tennenbaum, 53-54). The many mathematical and astronomical achievements of the Mayan priests were inextricably interwoven into the religious fabric of the society. While Maya culture has long been popular for its more violent aspects such as human sacrifice rituals performed atop pyramidal temples, the Maya also are respected for developing a sophisticated calendar. The Maya were still a very religious society and almost everything they did was linked into their belief of gods and natural spirits–of the unknown. “For religious purposes, the Aztec and Maya had a 260 day calendar. Each day had a name and a number; there were twenty names and thirteen numbers. This allowed for a combination of 260 since each day had a seperate designation. You can understand how this works if you imagine two interlocking cogwheels or gears. The first–the number wheel–has thirteen teeth; the second–the name wheel–has twenty teeth…After twenty cycles, all 260 possible combinations have been used and a new year begins” (Tannenbaum, 54-57). In addition to the 260 day calendar, the Maya also used a simple solar calendar for agricultural purposes. “The calendar was composed of eighteen months of twenty days each for a total of 360 days. But they knew that there were approximately 365 1/4 days in a year, so they left five blank days, which were called ‘extra’ or ‘useless’ days and had no names. These five days were considered unlucky; people born on them were thought to be unfortunate. To make up for the quarter-day, they had a leap year similar to ours. Another Mesoamerican calendar was used to record historical events” (Tannenbaum, 57). The detailed Maya architecture which emerged from the rainforests of Guetemala and Yucatan was a fitting monument to the highly sophisticated civilization that existed in the region before the Spanish arrived. The stone cities complete with temples, palaces, tombs, and ball courts are fitting monuments to the complex civilization that existed in these regions for many centuries. Maya culture, in fact, was more than a collection of buildings in that every aspect of architecture was linked to the sacred world around. In fact, “their builders were developing an architecture at once unique, dignified and beautiful; their sculptors were carving the most elaborate compositions and designs in stone; their leaders had mastered the problems of social and governmental organization and were administering the state adaquetely and well. In short, a great national life was quickening to its fullest expression” (Israel, 59). Another important “use for counting was in trade. Amerinds had no regular system of money; occasionally, they used rare or beautiful items such as jade or special bird feathers as payment…the Maya were fond of cacao beans, which were hard to come by and often used them as a standard of exchange; for example, one hundred cacao beans could be exchanged for one slave” (Tannenbaum, 59-61). Maya communities exist today, and the people in these civilizations still believe their lives and destinies are tied directly into their family, community, history and to the supernatural world of their gods. Each important step in their lives is still marked by elaborate and sacred rituals, as they were in ancient times. By attempting to study the Maya peoples in Mexico and Guatemala, the rich cultural heritage of the civilizations will be shown to have contributed greatly toward forming the current societies of Latin America.
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