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Introducction:

Ancient Maya discovered two fundamental ideas in mathematics: positional value and the concept of zero. These two elements, positional value and zero, might be considered simple and basic concepts nowadays, but when mayans used this concepts, the Greeks and Romans, did not manage to find these principles (they lived at the same time, 2 millenium before us more or less). If you want to write a simple number like 1984 in roman numerals you will get MCMLXXXIV.

The Maya system is based on the number 20, and not 10, as our own. This means that the Maya counted from zero to nineteen before they had to move to the next order, instead of using 10 digits, from zero to nine, as we do. In a decimal system the positional value is met as soon as we reach beyond number nine. A one followed by a zero is a ten. In the Maya system, a one followed by a zero equals twenty.

Almost certainly the reason for base 20 arose from ancient people who counted on both their fingers and their toes. Although it was a base 20 system, called a vigesimal system, one can see how five plays a major role, again clearly relating to five fingers and toes.

Our numeric system employs ten symbols to represent each one of the digits. Maya numerals were written with only three symbols: a dot for one; a line, which is a five, and the glyph of a sea shell (or a flower) to represent zero. The position of numbers must be always from bottom to top.

Okay, let's explain a little more how to place the numbers....

When we use our number system, the last number is how many units we have, the second how many tens, the third how many hundreds, and the fourth how many thousands. In vigesimal system, the first place is for 1-19, the second for numbers between 20 to 399, the third between 400 to 7,999, the fourth for 8000-159,999, the fifth for 160,000.......

You can see it in this table:

_______________

160,000 |
_______________
8,000 |
_______________
400 |
_______________
20 |
_______________
1 |
_______________

If you want to write 1984 we need to see where it fits. It is smaller than 8,000, so we only need to use the third row and below. How many 400's are in 1984? 4 times (4x400=1800) and we still have 184. So we place a in the 400's row. Next we need to know how many 20's are in 184: Just 9 (9x20=180), so we need to place a in the 20's row. We still need to place the 4 units we have, they go on the last row and we have 1984 in mayan numbers.
_______________

160,000 |
_______________
8,000 |
_______________
400 |
_______________
20 |
_______________
1 |
_______________

rofl

domokun