Learning in the service of kingship and ritual
Maya scholars were scribes and priests attached to royal courts, and their work served religion and government. Timekeeping, astronomy and mathematics were not pursued as separate sciences in the modern sense; they were tools for scheduling ceremonies, recording royal deeds and interpreting the cycles of the sky. The result was an impressive body of knowledge, most of it recorded in two ways: carved or painted on monuments, and written in folding books. This article concentrates on that learning rather than on kings and wars.
Numbers and the zero symbol
The Maya counted in base 20, with a system built from three signs: a dot for one, a bar for five, and a shell-like glyph for zero. Numbers up to nineteen were written by combining dots and bars, so 13 is two bars and three dots. Larger numbers were written in vertical columns with place values rising by powers of twenty. In the calendar a variation was used: the third place counts 360 (that is, 18 times 20) rather than 400, so that it fits the 360-day count of the calendar.
Their use of a zero as an empty-place marker is well documented on monuments by at least the fourth century CE. Several ancient cultures developed zero independently, and Maya scribes used theirs to write dates and calculations unambiguously, which mattered in a society that measured vast spans of time. The idea that the Maya “invented” zero before anyone else is sometimes repeated, but the earliest zero concepts are a subject of long scholarly discussion and the safest statement is that the Maya developed their own.
Calendar and astronomy
Maya astronomy and mathematics grew together because the calendar demanded careful counting. Two cycles, the 260-day Tzolkin count and a 365-day year, interlocked in the Calendar Round cycle of about 52 years, and the Long Count tracked days elapsed from a mythical starting point. The full workings of the Maya calendar system are a large subject in themselves; the point here is that the cycles were tied to observation.
Priests tracked the sun, moon and planets, and sunrise and sunset alignments appear in several architectural groups. The best evidence for astronomy is in the surviving books. The Dresden Codex Venus table uses the 584-day cycle over which Venus returns to the same position in the sky as seen from Earth, which is close to the modern figure. Five such cycles total 2,920 days, exactly eight 365-day years, and the table appears to use that coincidence to keep its counts in step. The same codex has an eclipse table covering 11,960 days, equivalent to 405 lunar months, which is very close to the real average length of the lunar month (about 29.53 days). Such tables were used to predict when eclipses were possible and to schedule rituals, and as with Babylonian astronomy, they reflect long runs of careful observation rather than a theoretical model of the heavens.
Paper books
Maya scribes wrote on long strips of paper made from the inner bark of fig trees, coated with a thin layer of lime plaster and folded like a screen. Painters used black and red pigments to write glyphs and draw images. These books held almanacs, astronomical tables, ritual instructions and prophecies.
Only four are generally accepted as surviving from before the Spanish conquest: the Dresden, Madrid and Paris Codices and the Grolier Codex, whose authenticity was long questioned but is now widely accepted by specialists. The reason so few remain is partly climate, since paper rots in the tropics, and partly deliberate destruction. In 1562 the Franciscan friar Diego de Landa ordered a mass burning of Maya books and images in Mani during the Spanish conquest of Yucatan. Ironically, Landa also wrote a description of Maya life that contained a list of glyph signs, which later became a partial key for modern readers.
Other knowledge
Scribes also recorded medical and agricultural knowledge, and writing itself was a major achievement. Maya glyph decipherment showed that the script combines signs for whole words with signs for syllables, so any spoken Mayan phrase can in principle be written. Classic Maya art includes scenes of scribes, sometimes named, with brushes and ink pots, and in some courts scribes were of noble rank. Scribes’ patron deities are often shown in Classic art as monkey-like figures.
Popular claims to treat with caution
Maya knowledge has attracted exaggerated claims. The suggestion that their calendar predicted a world-ending event in 2012 is not supported by the inscriptions; the date marked the end of a cycle, not the end of time, and the 2012 doomsday claim appeared mainly in modern books and films. Likewise, talk of alien assistance has no evidence behind it. The real record, a body of sophisticated, home-grown mathematics and observation carried by living scribal traditions, is impressive enough.