The Aztec Mathematics

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Aztec Mathematics
What is Aztec Mathematics you may be asking yourself well let’s start from the beginning of Aztec Mathematics.Well there were these people called Aztecs who ruled central mexico before the spanish arrived they left the most extensive mathematical writing. They ruled until the spanish came and overthrew the empire. Aztecs used hand, heart and arrow symbols as fractional distances when they would calculate lands. The Aztecs existed around 1200 A.D.
The Aztecs used body parts to measure. For example if you stretched out your left arm that would be the measure from your heart to the tip of your finger. Puzzling is a system that they use to record areas. Their number system was base 20 so it went 1,20,400,8000. …show more content…

Aztec recorded only the total area. A dot represents 1, a bar represents 5 and so on. Barbara Williams at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County in Jamesville have analyzed the Codex Vergara that’s what they call the Aztec math. Aztecs used several types of algorithms to calculate areas. Some parcels involved simply multiplying length by width. The Aztec came up with different approaches such as multiplying the average of two opposite sides by an adjacent side. When a measurement did not match a precise number of land rods their standard unit of linear measurement which corresponded to about 2.5. If so the Aztec added a symbol such as a arrow, a heart, a hand, or a bone to indicate remaining length was less than one rod. The Aztec’s system mirrored that of the Egyptians the positioning of the symbols had no bearing they could have written in any order. But they were grouped together and written adjacent to each other. The Aztecs also used mathematics for astronomy. Kind of amazing right? Although most of their information in math astronomy was lost there is a pretty good synthesis of the remaining information in the book “Skywatchers” by Anthony Aveni. For example the Aztecs calculated that the cycle of Venus was 584 days. The aztecs even did the math to workout out the eclipse season although they didn’t know the shape of the earth or the size. Even though they figured out when

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