[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/urn_cambridge.org_id_binary_20260629111307215-0777_S0003598X26103780_S0003598X26103780_fig1.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tArchaeologists excavating Xultun, a large Mayan site in northeast Guatemala, have identified the name of an 8th-century Mayan astronomer-mathematician who wrote a calendrical formula on an interior wall of a small masonry building.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe individual\u2019s name, Sak Tahn Waax, translates to \u201cWhite-chested Fox,\u201d and the formula (either written by him, or by someone else and attributed to him) calculates the orbital cycles of Mars and Venus. According to a paper published by Antiquity<\/em>, this is the first and only known example of a Maya mathematician being directly credited for his or her intellectual work.<\/p>\n \n\tThe structure where the formula and signature were found was first excavated in 2010. In addition to hieroglyph texts, the interior walls feature murals depicting portraits of seated and kneeling figures, and archaeological evidence of papermaking tools. Researchers believe that the chamber was used for mentorship and training, and to teach calendrical calculations during the 8th century CE, before being filled in around the end of the century, eventually becoming the foundation for a new building.<\/p>\n \n\tIn order to decipher the formula, a team of archaeologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Skidmore College, and the University of Texas at Austin, studied high-resolution scans and multispectral images of the thousand-year-old texts, which they then compared to accepted translations of Classic period Maya glyphic texts.<\/p>\n \n\tFranco Rossi, the project\u2019s lead researcher, expressed surprise that there aren\u2019t existing records of signed mathematical calculation. \u201cThis kind of specialised work, he told the Art Newspaper<\/em> \u201cwas both important and widespread within ancestral Maya society, particularly during the eighth century.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/hieroglyphs-inscribed-ancient-maya-building-reveal-name-astronomer-first-time-1234792074\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/urn_cambridge.org_id_binary_20260629111307215-0777_S0003598X26103780_S0003598X26103780_fig1.png?w=1024″] Archaeologists excavating Xultun, a large Mayan site in northeast Guatemala, have identified the name of an 8th-century Mayan astronomer-mathematician who wrote a calendrical formula on an interior wall of a small masonry building. The individual\u2019s name, Sak Tahn Waax, translates to \u201cWhite-chested Fox,\u201d and the formula (either written by him, or by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2043376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2043376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2043376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2043376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2043376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}