The great calculators of antiquity are remembered by name — Pythagoras, and later Galileo and Newton. From the Maya world, by contrast, not a single one was known, even though their calendars betray a deep command of astronomy. That has now changed: for the first time, a specific Maya mathematician can be named — Sak Tahn Waax, or "White-chested Fox."
The signature was found on a wall of the ruined city of Xultun in northern Guatemala. Back in 2010, an excavation team came upon a shaft dug by looters that opened onto a small, painted chamber. Hidden in its plaster were more than 50 tiny mathematical and astronomical notes — a kind of scratch pad for calculations, of a sort not previously known from the Maya world.
A formula and an author
For a decade, the researchers puzzled over the faded marks. Eventually they deciphered eleven hieroglyphs. They form not only a formula linking the cycles of Venus and Mars to the 260-day ritual calendar and the solar year, but also explicitly credit the calculation to a person. "The scholars behind this timekeeping have remained anonymous," said lead author Franco D. Rossi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The signatures of artists and sculptors were known; those of mathematicians were not.
For the specialists involved, the find is more than a footnote. "In a real way, we're looking at an old whiteboard in someone's abandoned office," said epigrapher David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin. "To have a name attached to it makes Maya science much more human." Heather Hurst of Skidmore College, who directs the excavation, likens the fleeting calculations to the draft of a famous manuscript — a rare glimpse of the thinking itself.
The study, published in the journal Antiquity, brings a long-anonymous scholarly tradition into the light — embodied in a single person who lived and calculated some 1,200 years ago, in the eighth century.