Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of
Chactun, deep in the Mexican jungle in the Campche region, archaeologists have
uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the
government record keepers. Chactun, which means “Red Stone”, spans close
to 54 acres and appears to have been the seat of government for the Mayan empire
between 400 BC and 250 AD. Its walls are adorned with unique paintings
and myriad symbols - one painting depicts a line-up of men in black uniforms,
and hundreds of scrawled numbers - many calculations relating to the Mayan
calendar -- stretching up to 7,000 years into the future. Another
reportedly shows the summation of a census and tax revenues.
The find would have been significant enough if that is all they
found, but more astonishingly, they uncovered an amazingly sophisticated, but crude,
computing device. The archaeologists that found the
device, senior anthropologist Habier Lopez, invited experts
from the Universidad Autonoma de
Mexico City and CaltechBerkley to study it.
The scientists studying the device state that calculations seen on the walls
clearly required automated calculation--humans could not have done this
manually.
“We now finally understand how the Mayan’s were able to manage
their incredibly complex calendar system and align it so precisely to
astronomical events so tightly”, said Professor Raul Sanchez from Universidad
Autonoma. He continued, “For example, they had holidays that required
them to know precisely when Venus would rise and set on particular days. They
were way ahead of medieval Islam and Chinese in this respect, and until now, it was
a mystery how they pulled it off.” He and the other scientist were as giddy as
scientists can get while reporting their findings at the press
conference. The conference was symbolically held near the El Tajin, one
of the largest and most important cities of the Mayan empire, during the start
of the annual indigenous cultural festival, Cumbre Tajin.
According to the
scientists, based on carbon dating it appears this device was constructed around
350 BC, and most likely predates the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek
calculator by at least 130 years. The Antikythera device was a much less
sophisticated device that could show the orientation of the Sun, Moon, and
known planets. “This finding is much more significant than the
Antikythera mechanism. The Mayan device is closer to the complexity of the
computing device Charles Babbage was working on in the 19th century, the
Analytic Engine. While the Mayan device is much cruder, we can see
aspects of computing architecture that are not unlike what Babbage
designed. This was of course a mechanical, analog device, so in its
essence, nothing like the digital computers we use today. However, it
crudely resembles a more modern computing device. It had a means to take input,
both data and instructions, perform basic data manipulation, and then to give
output by way of a crude means of printing. It did lack the ability to do
branching, which Babbage's Analytical Engine could do. Of course one big
difference is that Babbage never finished his device, while clearly the Mayans
did.
At the press conference, the scientists shared many details on
the operation of the device. For example, ears of colored maze were found
nearby sealed in air tight clay pottery. Astoundingly, the researchers
learned that these were used as the input for the program. Unlike today’s
computers, this was not a stored program device, instead, the program was
loaded one instruction at a time by feeding the ears into a tube at the front
of the device. A large crank was then turned to execute the
instruction. There was a crude sort of register set within the
system where kernels of maze were counted off by the rotating gears and stored
in interim bins that saved the results of one calculation, which could then be
used as input to a later instruction. “The ingenuity is quite surprising
at first glance”, said Professor Sanchez, “but, when you stop and consider the
complexity of their calendar and the breadth of empire being managed from this
central location, you can see that such a device would have been
necessary. In fact, we speculate that similar devices were required
throughout the provincial capitals of the empire to successfully count
population and ensure taxes were properly paid by each province.”
Close analysis by the computer scientist show that this
computing device was based on a vigesimal numeral
system (base
20), this was not a surprise, as the Mayan’s were already known to use a base
20 numeral system. Using a base 20 system limited the ultimate power and
flexibility of the computing system, but it made for easier construction given
the crude technology available. Dr. Marcia Hernandez of Universidad
de Autonoma said, “it turns out that many properties of the written form of the
Mayan numeral system lends itself to easier automation than say Roman numerals.
Some of my colleagues are conjecturing that the writing system for their
numerals may have been shaped by the need to automate the processing of numeric
date values.”
Output was achieved by way of a set of crude paint brush like
instruments. The proper brush, indicated by the program would first
rotate through a trough filled with the paint, and then either rotate across
the paper vertically or horizontally, again, as prescribed by the program.
The paint which appears to have been in four colors, a black and hues of
red, green, and blue. The colors were apparently made by mixing different
proportions of hematite and azul maya (a
mixture of indigo and palygorskite, a type of clay).
For printing, the paper, formed into long strips, had to be
manually cranked past the area where the brushes moved. “It was tedious
and crude, but from what we have learned, it worked. As can be seen on
the walls of the buildings, the Mayan figures that it outputted were anyway
typically printed roughly when written by hand--nothing like the precise fonts
we expect today”, said Dr. Susan Anderson from Caltech. There was typically
four columns of symbols across the width of the paper. The paper was
about 9 inches (23 cm) wide and folded itself accordion style after
passing through the device. Each page was about 4 inches (10 cm)
tall. Of course, due to the extremely humid climate of Mesoamerica, none
of the paper survived intact. Scientists were only left with piles of
composted material to work backwards from. At first it was thought that
the paper was made from maguey fiber, but further chemical analysis showed that
it was actually made from the inner bark of the fig tree that was abundant in
that region (Ficus
cotinifolia).
The computing device itself has fared much better than the paper. It was made out of an alloy of copper, silver,
and a little gold, called Tumbaga. Tumbaga was originally developed by the
Indians of Michoacan for its ability to resist tarnishing in the damp
environment they inhabited. It has stood the test of time quite well. In
fact, to a Spanish Conquistador, it would have appeared to have been pure
gold--they were often fooled by Tumbaga. Had the Conquistador’s
discovered this device, it would have been melted down into Doubloons and
shipped back to Spain. Only under close inspection by a royal metallurgist
would the mistake have been uncovered. “We are so lucky no one from
Europe happened upon this site before the dawn of the information age. They
would not have appreciated what they found. In fact, the Spanish would
have purposefully destroyed this device as part of their destruction of the so
called “works of the devil”, with their aim to wipe out all of the culture and
history of the Mesoamericans.”
The computer scientists involved in the research learned much,
not only from the device itself, but also from the symbols on the walls of the
ruins that sheltered it. “It appears that a portion of the walls were
used by the government workers much like a white board used by modern computer
programmers”, said John Turner of Caltech. He went on to add, “Based on
the analysis of layers of coatings on the walls, it appeared the operators,
dare I call them programmers, may have met daily in the room to discuss the
various problems associated with the operation of the device and to consider
how to enhance it. Then nightly that portion of the wall was whitewashed
in preparation for the next day’s meeting.”
The last writings on the wall appear to relate to struggles to
solve what appeared to be a sort of “Y2K issue”, referring to the issue faced
more recently by computing systems with the change over to the new millennia in
the year 2000. “It is way too early to speculate, but it may be that date
processing issues in the device played a role in the collapse of the Preclassic Maya in the 2nd century AD.”,
said Habier Lopez, the leader of the expedition that found the ruins.
For the sake of protecting and preserving the device, it has
been relocated to the Museo Nacional de Antropología in
Mexico City, where the scientists will continue to study the device and perhaps
even get it to function again, more than two millennia after it was
devised. Meanwhile, the National Geographic Society is working on an
in-depth television documentary that should be airing sometime in the Fall of
2014.
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