Page 178 - A Historical Lie: The Stone Age

Temple of
Inscriptions,
constructed during
the reign of ruler
Pacal

The Mayans: Expert Mathematicians

The Mayans lived in Central America in around 1,000 BCE, at a
considerable distance from other advanced civilizations like those in
Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia. The most important features of the
Mayans are the scientific advances they made in the fields of astron-
omy and mathematics, and their complex written language.
The Mayans' knowledge of time, astronomy and mathematics
was a thousand years ahead of that of the Western world at the time.
For example, their calculation of the Earth's annual cycle was a great
deal more accurate than any other such calculations before the in-
vention of the computer. The Mayans used the mathematical con-
cept of zero a thousand years before its discovery by Western
mathematicians, and used far more advanced figures and signs than
their contemporaries.

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