After each interval the calendar would reset itself like a clock.īecause the Calendar Round measured time in an endless loop, it was a poor way to fix events in an absolute chronology or in relationship to one another over a long period. Every 52 years counted as a single interval, or Calendar Round. Under this system, each day was assigned four pieces of identifying information: a day number and day name in the sacred calendar and a day number and month name in the secular calendar. The first, known as the Calendar Round, was based on two overlapping annual cycles: a 260-day sacred year and a 365-day secular year. They also used astrological cycles to aid in planting and harvesting and developed two calendars that are as precise as those we use today. Consequently, Mayan knowledge and understanding of celestial bodies was advanced for their time: For example, they knew how to predict solar eclipses. The Maya strongly believed in the influence of the cosmos on daily life. READ MORE: Why the Maya Abandoned Their Cities Mayan Astronomy and Calendar-Making As a result, there were three or four different ways to write almost every word in the Mayan language. Each one represented a word or a syllable, and could be combined with the others in an almost infinite number of ways. They also figured out how to grow corn, beans, squash and cassava in sometimes-inhospitable places how to build elaborate cities without modern machinery how to communicate with one another using one of the world’s first written languages and how to measure time using not one but two complicated calendar systems.ĭid you know? The written language of the Maya was made up of about 800 glyphs, or symbols. During that time, the Maya developed a complex understanding of astronomy. to 900 A.D., known as the Classic Period, was its heyday. And there are probably further discoveries about this ancient people’s calculating abilities to be discovered.Mayan civilization lasted for more than 2,000 years, but the period from about 300 A.D. It has long been known that Babylonian astronomers tracked the planets with incredible precision, but not exactly how until now. The Babylonians’ elegant solution to the Jupiter problem will be familiar to modern students, who use similar techniques today (except for the wet clay). In algebra, Babylonians apparently had the means to solve quadratic equations (remember those?) and perhaps even higher-order cubic equations. They also estimated π to 3.125, very close to the now-accepted value of 3.14. In geometry, for instance, Babylonian mathematicians seem to have been aware of the Pythagorean Theorem long before Pythagoras, and were able to calculate the area of a trapezoid. The Babylonians knew other advanced mathematical tricks. Many fractions are actually easier to reduce than in our base 10 system. Base 60 is also more intuitive than base 10 when calculating arcs of a circle. For larger numbers, those above 3,600, everything was scaled up and the first (leftmost) numeral referred to how many multiples of 3,600 were present. 3,600 might seem like a strange cutoff, but the use of placeholders to make large numbers manageable eluded even the famed mathematicians of ancient Greece.Īlthough unwieldy, base 60 math had a few unexpected advantages. ![]() ![]() The Babylonian number 3 3, for example, meant 3 × 60 + 3, or 183. For numbers above 60, a different system was used. The number concept of “one” was depicted as with “V” symbol, and numbers up to 60 were written out using a combination of these “V”s and “<“s, the symbol for 10. These early achievements may even be more amazing when you consider that, instead of the base 10 number system we use now, theirs was a unique base 60 system. Our knowledge of this is derived from writings much older than these tablets, reaching back to 3000-2000 BCE. “Remarkable” is a fine description of Babylonian math. As Mathieu Ossendrijver, the scientist behind the discovery, told the Times, the etchings on the tablets display “a remarkably modern concept.” The tablets are dated to about 350 BCE, fifteen centuries before a similar discovery was made in Europe. These Babylonian mathematicians were able to accurately predict the distance Jupiter would travel in 60 days (half the planet’s 120-day arc of visibility from Earth). As The New York Times recently reported, researchers have discovered clay tablets indicating that Babylonian astronomers were able to track Jupiter’s movement across the sky using a very advanced method, graphing the planet’s velocity over time.
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