Researchers have reconstructed and transcribed a mathematical formula from the site of Xultun, Guatemala, revealing the name of a Maya astronomer for the first time.
During the Classic period (250–900 CE), mathematics and astronomy were a key part of Maya society, with complex calculations based on calendar dates and astronomical observations influencing everything from the erection of monuments to the inauguration of kings and queens.
However, the identities of the ‘mathematician-astronomers’ who carried out these elaborate calculations remained unknown to us, as no surviving evidence of a mathematician-astronomer signing their work had ever been found.
“While artists’ and sculptors’ signatures for painted ceramic vessels and carved monuments have been identified, the scholars behind computational timekeeping have remained anonymous”, says lead author of the research, Franco D. Rossi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Therefore, the discovery of more than 50 mathematical and astronomical microtexts inscribed on the wall of a small building at the Classic Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala provided a unique opportunity to observe the inner workings of Maya mathematics.
“These ‘rough draft’ calculations and tables are akin to finding an early version of a well-known manuscript, or a sketch of a great artwork”, explains co-author Heather Hurst, director of the San Bartolo-Xultun Project. “This fills out an important dimension of Classic Maya life that had typically been reconstructed through ethnohistories and Spanish accounts written centuries later.”
To reconstruct these inscriptions, Professor Rossi and colleagues produced scale drawings, photographs and scans of the imagery and digitally enhanced them, revealing eleven hieroglyphs which they then deciphered.
They found that the text did not only contain a mathematical formula, but also glyphs crediting the work to somebody named Sak Tahn Waax (‘White-chested Fox’). To date, this is the only known example of work being attributed to an individual Classic Maya mathematician.
Importantly, the mathematical formula itself is also exceptional. Whilst it makes use of familiar astronomical and calendrical units of time, the relationships between them are unique among Maya texts, noting the movement of Venus and other planetary bodies in a completely new way.
“The math involves his unique understanding of connections and patterns between several cycles of time, including the 260-day ritual day-count, the solar year, as well as the cycles of Venus and Mars”, says project epigrapher and co-author, David Stuart from the University of Texas at Austin.
This is a creative expression of mathematical thought, and identifying the personal name of the mathematician behind it connects us to an individual Maya mathematician-astronomer from the 8th century.
These findings provide an unprecedented glimpse into the intellectual and scientific insights of Indigenous Maya scholars.
“Contemporaries of the ancient world in India, Iraq, China, and Greece were similarly calculating solar and planetary cycles, predicting eclipses, and charting star progressions, their achievements often ascribed to individual thinkers”, Rossi concludes. “We can now add Sak Tahn Waax to such thinkers, highlighting the great Indigenous astronomy and calendrical traditions of the Americas.”