Re: maize in ancient India: transpacific links (cont.)

Milo Gardner (gardnerm@gaia.ecs.csus.edu)
Tue, 31 Dec 1996 05:46:27 -0800

Yuri -

Thank you for re-citing David Kelley, a non-mathematician. I am
aware of David Kelley's work and am very displeased with Mayanists
like him not looking into the basis for Mesoamericans NOT needing
fractions.

Linguists like David Kelley have trouble grasping the fact that
Mayans used remainders, modular arithmetic, rather than fractions.
Michael Closs is the most noted of the Mayanist mathematicians
and even he does not sereiously look into the fractions issue.
Closs cite the ethnomath aspects rather than the rich number theory
that Mayans used to create calendars (and who knows what else was
burnt by Bishop Landa and Conquistadores).

On 30 Dec 1996, Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:

> Milo Gardner (gardnerm@gaia.ecs.csus.edu) wrote:
> : Yuri speaks of maize as the best leading indictor that he can
> : imagine. Well, I can offer zero being given to India ,as the
> : Vedic texts list Maya.
>
> : If the Maya reference in India is well known in other situations,
> : I'd like to particularly cite a Historia Mathematica journal
> : 'reviews of papers' submitted by Dr. Gupta, on or about Feb. 1994.
> : In that article a Ph.D. candidate was researching the history of
> : the symbol zero - not the concept that clearly goes back
> : to 1800 BC (Egypt, the RMP and Babylon, Plimpton Tablet).
>
> Milo,
>
> It would be helpful if you provided the exact citation, and more details
> about this article.
>
When I get back to the library, sometime next year, I can do that - but so
can anyone else on the USENET.

> I have already mentioned that the work of David H. Kelley (DECIPHERING THE
> MAYAN SCRIPT, 1976) was very important in establishing the connections
> between the Mayan and the Indian zodiacs/calendars/day names. Another big
> name is Paul Kirchhoff.
>

Deciphering script is not deciphering ancient mathematics such as the
basis from which Mayans handled numbers less than one (1)!

That is to say, thank you for the citation; however, could you next time
cite a mathematician rather than a linguist when a mathematical thread
is raised?

Happy New Year,

Milo Gardner
Sacramento, Calif.