Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Long ago, the Maya people lived in Central America. They watched the sky very closely.
Now scientists have found a name. A man called Sak Tahn Waax wrote a math formula on a wall.
The wall is in a place called Xultun, in Guatemala. It is about 1,200 years old.
The formula is about Venus, Mars and the sun. He is the first Maya scientist we know by name.
- Maya
- An ancient people of Central America.
- wall
- The side of a room or a house.
- formula
- A rule written with numbers.
- sky
- Everything above us, like the sun and stars.
- scientist
- A person who studies the world.
- ancient
- Very, very old.
- name
- What people call you.
- planet
- A big world that moves around the sun, like Venus.
Level 2 — Elementary
Archaeologists have found the name of a Maya scientist for the first time. His name was Sak Tahn Waax, which means White-chested Fox.
He wrote a math formula on the wall of a small room at Xultun, a Maya city in Guatemala. The writing is from about the year 781, more than 1,200 years ago.
The formula uses the 260 day ritual calendar, the 365 day year, Venus's 584 day cycle and Mars's 780 day cycle. It ends with two signs that mean roughly, so says Sak Tahn Waax.
Scientists say this is the first time a Classic Maya mathematician is credited by name for his own work.
- archaeologist
- A scientist who studies the past by digging up old things.
- calendar
- A system for counting days and years.
- cycle
- Something that repeats again and again.
- credit
- To say who did a piece of work.
- ritual
- A special action done for religious reasons.
- sign
- A symbol or glyph.
- mathematician
- A person who works with numbers.
- Classic Maya
- The Maya at the time of their greatest cities.
Level 3 — Intermediate
For centuries, the astronomers who tracked the heavens for the ancient Maya remained anonymous. Now researchers have read a name on a wall: Sak Tahn Waax, or White-chested Fox, the first Classic Maya mathematician and astronomer credited by name for his own calculation.
The text is one of more than 50 small writings, called microtexts, preserved in Structure 10K-2 at Xultun, Guatemala. The team, publishing in the journal Antiquity, reconstructed an eleven glyph formula dated to around 781 CE. It combines the 260 day ritual calendar, the 365 day solar year, an approximate 584 day cycle for Venus and a 780 day cycle for Mars.
These cycles meet inside a span of 2,920 days, when five Venus cycles line up with eight solar years. The arrangement is not found in any other surviving Maya text, which suggests that the author was doing original work rather than copying established tables.
The formula closes with two glyphs that read roughly as, so says Sak Tahn Waax. It is a signature on a piece of science nearly 1,250 years old.
- anonymous
- Without a known name.
- astronomer
- A scientist who studies stars and planets.
- microtext
- A small piece of writing, often on a wall.
- glyph
- A carved or painted symbol used in writing.
- reconstruct
- To build back something from pieces.
- solar year
- The time the Earth takes to go around the sun.
- line up
- To fit together or match.
- original
- New and not copied.
Level 4 — Advanced
Archaeology rarely delivers a signature, and rarer still is one attached to science. Yet on an interior wall of Structure 10K-2 at Xultun, a Maya site in Guatemala, researchers have decoded a calculation that ends by naming its author: Sak Tahn Waax, or White-chested Fox, the first Classic Maya mathematician and astronomer credited individually for his work.
Writing in Antiquity, the team describes a reconstructed eleven glyph microtext dated to roughly 781 CE, one of more than fifty such scribbles preserved in the chamber. Its formula knits together the 260 day ritual count, the 365 day solar year, an approximate 584 day synodic cycle for Venus and a 780 day cycle for Mars, in an arrangement unattested elsewhere in surviving Maya writing.
The mathematics has an elegant core. Five Venus cycles fit exactly into 2,920 days, the same span as eight solar years, a coincidence of the sky that Maya scholars evidently prized. Because the combination is new, the authors argue Sak Tahn Waax was articulating his own insight rather than transcribing inherited tables.
That distinction matters. It reframes Maya astronomy as the work of individual thinkers with names and ideas, not only an anonymous institution, and it ends with a line that reads, so says Sak Tahn Waax: a scientist's byline, painted nearly twelve and a half centuries ago.
- decode
- To work out the meaning of a coded or unknown writing.
- attribute
- To say that something was done by a particular person.
- synodic cycle
- The time a planet takes to return to the same position relative to the Earth and sun.
- unattested
- Not recorded in any known source.
- knit together
- To combine into a single whole.
- transcribe
- To copy out in writing.
- reframe
- To see something in a new way.
- byline
- A line naming the author of a work.
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