Maya Achievements and Inventions Activity
I'm Counting on You
Maya art and architecture, as well as their hierarchical system of government easily provide enough evidence to call the Maya civilization great. After reading your lesson, I hope you will also agree that the innovations and achievements of the Maya rival any of those you've learned about while studying other ancient civilizations. Two of those achievements, I might argue, elevate them above some of those other civilizations. Those two things are their math and their writing.
Their base-twenty math system, along with their use of zero allowed them to perform computations at the very highest level. That ability made them expert astronomers and allowed them to create their calendar and calculate events into the very distant future. Their writing system is one of only five independently created writing systems in the history of humankind, and the only one created in the Americas.
For this fun activity, you will get practice using Maya numbers for a bit of math. You will then combine Maya numbers with an alphabet to create a coded message, thereby using their numbers to write.
Their base-twenty math system, along with their use of zero allowed them to perform computations at the very highest level. That ability made them expert astronomers and allowed them to create their calendar and calculate events into the very distant future. Their writing system is one of only five independently created writing systems in the history of humankind, and the only one created in the Americas.
For this fun activity, you will get practice using Maya numbers for a bit of math. You will then combine Maya numbers with an alphabet to create a coded message, thereby using their numbers to write.
Before you begin, there are just a couple of things you need to know about Maya numbers. First, they use a base-twenty system. As you can see above, our decimal system is a base-ten in which all place values are factors of ten. Shown at right, each place value in the Maya system is a factor of twenty.
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As you work on this activity, the second thing you need to be mindful of regarding Maya math is that the Maya wrote their numbers vertically, rather than horizontally. You can see the order of Maya numerical place values above and to the right.
Making the adjustment to base-twenty and to writing numbers vertically takes practice. Here is an example of how it works:
Making the adjustment to base-twenty and to writing numbers vertically takes practice. Here is an example of how it works:
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Before you begin your classroom activity, do some Maya math warm-ups by clicking on the links below.
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Now that you have had some practice using Maya math, we will mix things up a bit and use Maya numbers to write a coded message. Use the chart below to help you write your message. While composing your message, simply replace letters in the alphabet with the corresponding Maya numbers - a=1, b=2, c=3.... When you have completed your coded message, trade with a partner and race to see who can decode the other's message most quickly.
