For the first time,
archaeologists excavating at the large, monumental Maya center of Xultún in
Guatemala have uncovered a structure featuring 9th century wall paintings with
numbers and calculations related to the Maya calendars,
including numerical records of lunar and possibly planetary cycles. The
finding predates by several hundred years the heretofore oldest known
record of calendars, which were found in the famous Maya bark-paper Codices.
Tucked away under the dense
vegetation of Guatemala's Peten region rain forest, the structure is theorized
to be the house of a scribe with connections to the Maya king or royal family
of Xultún.
"For the first time we get
to see what may be actual records kept by a scribe, whose job was to be
official record keeper of a Maya community," said archaeologist and
expedition leader William Saturno of Boston University. "It's like an
episode of TV's 'Big Bang Theory,' a geek math problem and they're painting it
on the wall. They seem to be using it like a blackboard."
The paintings were found in one
room of the house structure. They represent the first Maya art to be found on
the walls of a house. All other Maya paintings adorned such structures as
temples, royal tombs and other ritual structures.
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