Published by Australian Academy of Science
Ethnomathematics – a rich cultural diversity Box 1 | The Dresden Codex

The Dresden Codex ('codex' simply means 'ancient manuscript') is thought to have been produced about 800 years ago, probably based on a document written 500 years before that. It was written on a sheet of what is called Amatl paper, which is made of flattened bark covered with lime-paste.

The codex is about 3.5 metres long (folded to make double-sided pages) and painted in colour with hieroglyphics, illustrations and mathematical symbols.

Mayan astronomy

The deciphering of the Mayan number and hieroglyphics systems found in the Dresden Codex and other similar documents (as well as those etched in stone in the temples and palaces found in the ruins of ancient Mayan cities) has taken scholars well over a hundred years; in the case of the hieroglyphics system, the deciphering is still not complete.

The information contained in the codex demonstrates the mathematical sophistication of the Mayans. It includes, for example, a table predicting the dates of eclipses and the astronomical fortunes – such as the dates of conjunctions with Mars and Saturn – of the planet Venus.

These predictions were surprisingly accurate for more than a century into the future. But because the Mayans had such crude instruments for measuring time, the errors become noticeable thereafter. Even so, the level of accuracy they achieved required a good basis in mathematics, because only by understanding the patterns of planetary, lunar and solar events could such robust predictions of future events be made. The ancient Mayans also developed a 'calculator' (something like the modern-day times tables) to assist in tasks of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Related sites

• The Dresden Codex (Dresden University of Technology, Germany)

• Calendars – keeping track of time (Nova: Science in the news, Australian Academy of Science)