Early Mesoamerican and South American Science

Vocabulary flashcards covering the scientific, astronomical, mathematical, and engineering systems of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inka civilizations.

Codices

Mayan books made of folded-up bark cloth, of which only four survive today due to destruction by Spanish imperialists after CE $1500$.

Olmecs

An early Mesoamerican civilization that inhabited southern Mexico from $1500$ to $400\text{ BCE}$, known for carving colossal heads from volcanic stone and inventing an early writing system, mathematics with zero, and a calendar system.

El Caracol

The observatory at Chichén Itzá, built to align with the extremes of the rising and setting of the planet Venus in the year CE $1000$.

Vigesimal system

A base-$20$ mathematical system utilized by the Maya that incorporated the number zero but lacked fractions.

Tzolkin

A sacred $260$-day Mayan calendar cycle developed by CE $200$, composed of two smaller cycles: a $13$-day numbered cycle and a $20$-day named cycle.

Vague Year

A Mayan solar calendar consisting of eighteen $20$-day months and a final corrective period of five unlucky days, totaling $365$ days.

Calendar Round

A Mesoamerican timekeeping cycle formed by the intermeshing of the $260$-day tzolkin and the $365$-day Vague Year, which repeated every $52$ years.

Long Count

A Mayan calendar system consisting of units ranging from one single day up to $63{,}000$ years, used to reckon time over millions of years.

Day Keepers

Mayan priests in Guatemala who continue to preserve and maintain the sacred calendar in the modern day.

Mayapán

The historical Mayan site that housed an academy dedicated to training the priest–scribe caste.

LiDAR

Light detection and ranging technology used at the metropolis of Tikal to discover that the ancient Maya civilization was approximately three times more populous than previously estimated.

Tenochtitlán

The capital city of the Aztecs, planned in $1325$ on Lake Texcoco, which utilized sophisticated hydraulic engineering including canals, floodgates, aqueducts, and dikes to support a population of roughly $300{,}000$.

Equinoctial lines

The lines along which the plane of Earth’s equator intersects the center of the Sun’s disk during the spring and fall, used by the Aztecs to align specific buildings.

Machu Picchu

An Inkan city of polished, carefully fitted stone constructed around $1450$ atop a mountain in modern-day Peru.

Khipu

A sophisticated Inkan system of knotted strings based on a decimal structure, utilized to record and convey data concerning taxes, censuses, the calendar, and military organization in the absence of a written script.