Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer • Hacker News Board

Re: Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer

#31

Post by Tor3 » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 12:01 PM UTC

winterbourne wrote: post #23

Tor3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They knew about the wheel (as some of their children toys had them), so the explanation is easy: They did not find it effective. Completely understandable. I spent my youth walking (and carrying a lot) in nature, and not once would I have tried to use a wheeled wagon and definitely not a wheelbarrow during those excursions. If I had a draft animal I would have used it to carry stuff (as people do, with horses and dog…

I use my wheelbarrow to do work around my mountain property all the time. We have a 4-wheel utility cart that sees a lot of service too. Their utility lies in doing work over short distances.

So then we can conclude that for the type of work they did, in the area they did, they did not find it practical to use anything wheeled to help out. They knew about wheels, as already mentioned, so they obviously would have utilized wheels if that would have been effective. And they didn't, so it wasn't.

Re: Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer

#32

Post by adrian_b » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

ks2048 wrote: post #5

The article being discussed (with reconstructed glyph drawings and description): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/id... (PDF button not working for me, but looks like entire contents are here in HTML).

> PDF button not working for me

That probably is caused by some setting of your browser, like disabling scripts or disabling pop-ups.

Works for me (Firefox on Linux).

Re: Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer

#33

Post by zeristor » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:00 PM UTC

I see a link like this on HNews which sounds amazing, read through it, it is amazing.

Then my first thought is to post it to HackerNews, my second thought being that’s where I found it.

Re: Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer

#34

Post by lioeters » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #32

ks2048 wrote: post #5

The article being discussed (with reconstructed glyph drawings and description): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/id... (PDF button not working for me, but looks like entire contents are here in HTML).

> PDF button not working for me That probably is caused by some setting of your browser, like disabling scripts or disabling pop-ups. Works for me (Firefox on Linux).

I think it got fixed since the parent comment was posted, because I was not able to download at the time either, and now it works.

In the meantime I tried to find the file with archive.org, seeing what other URLs were archived under the Cambridge University Press website and found many other interesting articles.

Re: Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an ancient astronomer

#35

Post by vector_spaces » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #29

vector_spaces wrote: post #9

I wonder how intelligible classical Maya is with modern Maya languages/points on the Maya continuum. For instance, does the classical word for fox share any resemblance to any Maya word for it today? I can imagine it going either way really but would probably guess there was vastly more drift in the case of Maya. I would naively guess that the printing press would have a dampening effect on language drift, and that t…

There is an entire scholarly article focusing on a logograph for wax "grey fox" that also briefly discusses descendants in modern languages: https://classicmayan.org/portal/editor/uploads/1055_prager_2...

Love this, thank you for sharing it