The Minds of the Americas

As I found it intriguing how the mind of Neolithic peoples evolved to discover that great invention of agriculture I find it almost equally as impressive the creation of place notation and the concept of zero. The Mayas did this between 250 and 900. These concepts are huge parts of our mathematical lives today. I know that everything had its day off creation and all were slowly developed but when you think back to the lack of communication and resources they had to develop something so monumental it is that much more impressive a intellectual task. The Mayas did not just come up with these ideas and leave it at that, rather they also then combined these mathematical ideas with their observations of the night sky in order to plot the cycles of the planets, predict eclipses of the sun and moon, to come up with calendars and to the n come p with the length of the calendar year.  All of these things are greatly used today and are usually a part of or daily lives. Amazing to me.

The Maya people thogh were not jst mathematicians and scientists, thogh they also created the most elaborate writing system in the Americas their langage inclded both pictographs and phonetic elements. They kept written records of religious ceremonies and astronomical data. These people were described as a peaceful society that was led by a star gazing priest that was devoted to temple building and intellectal pursuits. It is a shame that more countries are not led by people like this. It is amazing that such a pt together society loaded with so many great minds could not maintain strength and quite rapidly came to its demise.

Along the lines of being impressed, I am pretty impressed by the city lay out and set p of TEOTIHACAN in Mexico. It is said to have had relete boad avenes, spacious plazas, enormous markets, temples, palaces, apartments, ghettos and slums, drain systems and even art along the way. Their even was an elitist part of town and a couple of pyramids. These people and their city mysteriously collapsed around 650CE. Thus making its time to be established and its time in development to get to being established that much more impressive. Cities like New York City are based on the grid system and have extravagant markets, slums, temples or churches and of course many grand aveneues. The people of Toetihacan, as were the Mayans were with their mathamatical concepts and writing skills