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.
Oooh Cool. Math Bragging by "White Chested Fox" (Sak Tahn Waax), ca 800AD:
The formula shows how one 2,920-day cycle could be divided up into the calendar units used by the Maya people. This 2,920-day cycle was important because it tied together key astronomical cycles, corresponding to both five Venus cycles (584 days each) and eight solar years (365 days each). However, the Text 19 calculations also relate the 2,920 days to Uinal (months with 20 days), Tzolkin (the 260-day sacred calendar), Tun (a year with 360 days) and Mars years of 780 days.
I think that in effect this text is just a guy bragging about finding divisors of 2920 that happened to have cultural significance.
It's like finding that 42 (meaning of everything), 67 (six seven) and 69 (nice) all divide 1991 (they probably don't), and then writing it down because it seems cool.
> We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.
> -- Yucatan Before and After the Conquest (1562) written by Bishop Diego de Landa who hosted mass book burnings
Ironically though, de Landa's curiosity about the Maya language ultimately led to its translation in modern times. Without the written 'alphabet' that he had a Maya scribe write down for him at the time, it's likely that Maya script would still be a mystery cipher.
While overly confident, your response is not factually correct. Are you familiar with Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador who burnt innumerable Mayan historical documents etc?
The Spaniards can have been as nothing compared to the Mayans themselves. The composition of these codices was at its peak hundreds of years earlier and zero survived the reciprocal annihilation that had not a trace of influence from the Spaniards who were under direct Arab colonial domination that was to last longer than any in the post columbian period.
Exactly zero of what must have been countless thousands of codices, whole limitless libraries, survived the reciprocal destruction of the Mayan polities.
No cultural destruction visited by the Spaniards on the Mayan peoples can hold a candle to the destruction visited, centuries earlier, by the Mayans upon themselves, and from which their spectactular civilization never recovered.
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 the kind of repression of both the language and culture under colonialism would encourage it.
I still can't reconcile how they didn't use the wheel for transportation. The explanations of lack of draft animals and unsuitable terrain aren't great. Not even a wheelbarrow?
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 dogs), not a wagon with wheels - that would have been totally impractical. And the terrain where I grew up is way easier, by several orders of magnitude, than what I could see when I visited Yucatan some years ago.
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.
It mostly boils down to us overestimating the utility of wheelbarrows from the perspective of our modern, cushy lives. Ancient humans are not dumb and have as much desire to avoid labor as we do.
This was interesting; thank you. He admits that he can't really answer this question. His point about technology seeming obvious in retrospect is similar to the Egg of Columbus idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus
The video hints at the notion that they may just have not figured it out. Certainly working iron and steel would have been extremely useful, but they never developed that ability either, even after thousands of years of civilization. The interplay of a wheel and an axle may not be as intuitive as it seems to us in modern times.
One of the more esoteric explanations that I have heard is that there was a religious taboo around easing manual labor. And that the wheeled (and axled) figurines that we have found were not children's toys, but religious objects.
Someone linked to the paper but basically it was pointing out a number was a multiple of X venus years and also Y solar years, but also it was a sum of different multiples of important astronomical values as well.
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.
Their writing system is so cool. Glyphs are like graffiti.
Oooh Cool. Math Bragging by "White Chested Fox" (Sak Tahn Waax), ca 800AD:
What do Tun and Mars have to do with each other?
You just need to read White Chested Fox's math brag to understand it!
I think that in effect this text is just a guy bragging about finding divisors of 2920 that happened to have cultural significance.
It's like finding that 42 (meaning of everything), 67 (six seven) and 69 (nice) all divide 1991 (they probably don't), and then writing it down because it seems cool.
It's a shame how much was lost from some of these civilizations after colonialism. So much cool stuff gone forever.
> We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.
> -- Yucatan Before and After the Conquest (1562) written by Bishop Diego de Landa who hosted mass book burnings
Ironically though, de Landa's curiosity about the Maya language ultimately led to its translation in modern times. Without the written 'alphabet' that he had a Maya scribe write down for him at the time, it's likely that Maya script would still be a mystery cipher.
[flagged]
While overly confident, your response is not factually correct. Are you familiar with Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador who burnt innumerable Mayan historical documents etc?
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Montejo
The Spaniards can have been as nothing compared to the Mayans themselves. The composition of these codices was at its peak hundreds of years earlier and zero survived the reciprocal annihilation that had not a trace of influence from the Spaniards who were under direct Arab colonial domination that was to last longer than any in the post columbian period.
So I guess that answers my question.
Only four Maya codices survived destruction by the Spanish…
Exactly zero of what must have been countless thousands of codices, whole limitless libraries, survived the reciprocal destruction of the Mayan polities.
No cultural destruction visited by the Spaniards on the Mayan peoples can hold a candle to the destruction visited, centuries earlier, by the Mayans upon themselves, and from which their spectactular civilization never recovered.
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 the kind of repression of both the language and culture under colonialism would encourage it.
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
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.
I still can't reconcile how they didn't use the wheel for transportation. The explanations of lack of draft animals and unsuitable terrain aren't great. Not even a wheelbarrow?
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 dogs), not a wagon with wheels - that would have been totally impractical. And the terrain where I grew up is way easier, by several orders of magnitude, than what I could see when I visited Yucatan some years ago.
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.
[dead]
Premodernist has a good video on why certain societies didn't develop wheelbarrows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRnwg3dpboc
It mostly boils down to us overestimating the utility of wheelbarrows from the perspective of our modern, cushy lives. Ancient humans are not dumb and have as much desire to avoid labor as we do.
This was interesting; thank you. He admits that he can't really answer this question. His point about technology seeming obvious in retrospect is similar to the Egg of Columbus idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus
The video hints at the notion that they may just have not figured it out. Certainly working iron and steel would have been extremely useful, but they never developed that ability either, even after thousands of years of civilization. The interplay of a wheel and an axle may not be as intuitive as it seems to us in modern times.
One of the more esoteric explanations that I have heard is that there was a religious taboo around easing manual labor. And that the wheeled (and axled) figurines that we have found were not children's toys, but religious objects.
What's the formula tho?
Someone linked to the paper but basically it was pointing out a number was a multiple of X venus years and also Y solar years, but also it was a sum of different multiples of important astronomical values as well.