Math of the Mayans
The Mayans created a relatively complex numerical system for their time. This numerical system was heavily intertwined with their astronomy, religion, and day to day transactions. It was a base 20 system (vigesimal) that has been conjectured to have been created based upon counting toes and fingers. Another possible explanation is that the number 20 was representative of life or humans and 400 was representative of the year (when dealing with calendars their number normally representing 400 did not mean 400 but it meant 360). As shown below, the Mayan glyph for "being" (top) is of similar structure to the Mayan glyph for "twenty": The Mayans were one of the first civilizations to use the number zero. They utilized it as a placeholder in their number system to help with their calendar. They had symbols representing zero, one, and five that could be used in association with their base system to represent any number they needed to: Some exam