Learning To Count In Maya

Today Is:

12.19.19.4.0 Long Count

10 Ahaw 8 Kumk'u Calendar Round

279 Days To The Day To Baktun 13

Learning to count in Maya is a snap, unlike learning the hieroglyphs.  Learning the numbers is also essential to any count down to the "end of the world." Before I say anything about the counting, there is one thing that really needs addressing in regards to math in general and Mayan mathematics in particular, the matter of one pesky little number that we don't think about all that often:  Zero.  As a school kid, I was always taught that it was Arabic math during the times of the caliphates that gave the entire world zero.  I was that keen on math classes at the time, but even then I thought that seemed way too modern...well it was.  Turns out that multiple groups of people ranging all over the planet had zero's of various sorts, including places in the Mediterranean and Near East before Islam.  In the New World, the Maya had a complete mathematical concept of zero, inherited, it seems, from the Olmec's suggestion of zero in the important role of the long count calendar.  And, after all, this whole long count thing is what people are on about now that the year is 2012.  For more see Wikipedia.  

Counting to 20 in Maya is quite simple, for numbers 1 through 4 all you do is count the number of dots.  Then when in reach 5, the symbol becomes on straight line, ____, so if you have an 8, that's one line topped with 3 dots.  A ten in two lines on top of each other and so forth.  Easy!