by Kalyani Kurup

Created on: October 01, 2008

MAYAN MATHEMATICAL SYSTEM

The way softwares and pocket calculators are developing, soon no one will have to bother learning simple arithmetical operations like addition or subtraction. Man has no time to waste on these simple operations and has to do far more important things like creating programs to do these jobs or finding ways to reach the moon.

But ancient mathematical systems, when they first arose, were achievements greater than the invention of computers. Those simple computations show human mind in its brilliant best. It epitomizes the relentless search of human spirit for new ideas, inventions and productions. The amount of precision men of earlier civilizations managed to achieve, in calculating with naturally available objects, is simply astounding.

Ancient mathematical systems arose and flourished in different civilizations. Even though we today take the ten-based system for granted, not all early counting systems based their numbers on the decimal system. For example, the counting system that was in use in ancient Babylon was sexagesimal, i.e. it was based on 60.

The Egyptian system was ten-based and they used hieroglyphs or small pictures to represent numbers, the same way they did for their non-numeric writing as well. In this system, in order to represent a number, as many pictures as the total number of units, tens, hundreds or thousands in a number were necessary. For example, to write 276, they used 2 picture-symbols of hundreds, 7 pictures of tens and 6 of units.

In all civilizations, which were mainly agrarian, mathematical systems arose mainly to assist in farming and related commercial transactions. Mayan mathematical system is also an example of this, though it is a civilization which has left very little relics. Besides the essential agriculture, this civilization is believed to have been the home of well-developed architecture, astronomy and a system of calendar. All these could have aided the growth of a reciprocally beneficial Mayan mathematical system also.

The Mayan mathematical system was vigesimal, that is, it was a system based on twenty. This mode of numeration obviously had its origin in the fact that people used both fingers and toes for counting. The Mayan system was thus not just vigesimal, but was quinquavigesimal as well, because it was based not just on 20, but on 5 and 20. Again, this is evidently the result of the fact that fingers and toes are in sets of five.

A quaint feature of the Mayan mathematical system is that in

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