玛雅数学初探

A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON MAYAN MATHEMATICS

玛雅文明是古代美洲的伟大文明之一，它发祥甚早。玛雅人曾用象形文字留下了反映其在农业、数学、天文、历法和艺术上的成就的大量历史文献。这些成就显示了玛雅人高超的创造力和辉煌灿烂的文化。研究玛雅文化，对认识人类社会和科学技术的发展都具有重要意义。本文介绍了玛雅文化的概况，并着重对玛雅数学进行全面的探讨。其内容涉及记数法、进位制、分数概念、计算工具、算术和几何等内容。主要观点有：玛雅的20进制内包含一个10进制的层次；玛雅的“零”，应该叫作“空（位）”；玛雅人有最简单的几个分数概念；玛雅人的计算工具是自然环境中常见的一些实物；玛雅人有进行乘除法运算的能力和证据，玛雅有一些简单的几何图形等。

Maya is one of the great ancient civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. The Mayan peoples, with their long history, had left a great amount of materials reflecting their achievements in agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, calender-making, architecture and arts.These achievements show their great creativity and splendid culture. Studying the Mayan civilization will be very important for understanding the evolution of human society. This paper,which begins with a brief description of the Mayan civilization, does a comprehensive research on Mayan mathematics. Its main contents include: numeration, conception of fraction, calculating utensils, arithmetic and geometry. The author's chief points are: There is a decimal system in the Mayan vigesimal numeration; The so-called 'zero' should be translated as 'empty place' in Chinese; Mayans had the simplest fractions; Mayan calculating utensils are obtained from the natural environment; There are evidences for Mayan multiplication and division;Mayans understood some simple geometric symbols.