Kukunkan’s temple
Photography by Roberto Lara

Today, the ancient Mayans are particularly famous by their incredible calendar. In fact, Mayans made a really powerful calendar inspired by astronomical events, as they really were essentially farmers and very superstitious. This is the reason why they didn’t have an unique counting system in their calendar, that is, they had ‘sub-calendars’ which different periods as reference. For example, they had a holy calendar (called Tzolkin), which had 260 days, and also a civil solar calendar (called Haab) with 365 days (it’s not clear what was the motivation for the Tzolkin). Tzolkin means “division of days” was probably based on the 224-day Venus sidereal period although there are some hypothesis which defend that it is related with the human gestation period. The Haab calendar consisted in 18 months of 20 days each plus an additional period of five days at the end of the year. It was first used around 500 BC. Mayans were so religious and these astronomical calendars were exposed in their most important buildings like the World-wide famous Temple of Kukulkan (“Feathered serpent”) in the archeological site of Chichen Itza. The temple was founded around 525 AD although the current building was completed between the 9th and the 12th centuries. The pyramid has four sides, each one with 91 steps, which adds up to 364 steps. If we count the last platform as a step we get 365 steps, which is equal to the days we find in the Haab calendar.

Photography by Roberto Lara

But the most famous thing about the Kukulkan’s temple is the descent of Kukulkan: during the autumn and spring equinoxes the late afternoon Sun strikes off the northwest corner of the pyramid and casts a series of triangular shadows against the northwest balustrade, creating the illusion of a feathered serpent ‘crawling’ down the pyramid. We should remark that the balustrade and corners of the pyramid are perfectly aligned, which makes us admire even more the work that Mayans had on the building:

The Feathered Serpent in the Spring Equinox
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The pyramid also shows us that Mayans had some knowledge about acoustics. If you stand in front of any of the four stairway and clap your hands, the pyramid reflects the sound in such way that you hear the sing of a quetzal, a bird from the jungle. It’s fascinating! Isn’t it? Moreover, the shaman was known as ‘the man with the great voice’, because when people met for a ritual, he didn’t have to speak loudly, as everybody could hear him perfectly.

From all these facts, we can easily conclude that mathematics in the ancient Mayan world wasn’t only a help for agriculture but a tool through which the leaders could control the population. In fact, in the picture below we can see the ruins of a Mayan school. Only those from the upper class had access to the education, and we can see from the building they truly wanted to keep it as a privilege!

Photography by Roberto Lara

The hole at the right of the picture was made by an adventurer who thought gold was hiding inside it and used dynamite to enter the building.

This post has been written by Roberto Lara Martín in the subject Història de les Matemàtiques (History of Mathematics, 2014-15).

Location: Chichen Itzá (map)