Related papers: Guaman Poma's Yupana and Inca Astronomy
The so-called Miccinelli documents are a set of documents which were written by Jesuit scholars in Peru within the first half of the 17th century. Among such documents, one contains the depiction of a Quipu, that is, a device made out of…
The Mayan calendar is proposed to derive from an arithmetical model of naked-eye astronomy. The Palenque and Copan lunar equations, used during the Maya Classic period (200 to 900 AD) are solution of the model and the results are expressed…
Understanding how ancient Mesoamerican societies integrated mathematical ideas into calendrical design and monumental architecture requires approaches that acknowledge their distinct epistemological frameworks. While explicit textual…
This paper presents a survey of the khipu-based enumeration system of the Incas. In this system, different knots are tied together and they are attached to a primary cord. The numerical basis of the khipu system is well understood but more…
The Maya were known for their astronomical proficiency. This is demonstrated in the Mayan codices where ritual practices were related to astronomical events/predictions. Whereas Mayan mathematics were based on a vigesimal system, they used…
Rota's Twelvefold Way gave formulas for the numbers of partitions which could be formed in twelve scenarios. This proposed AMM article expands Rota's 4 x 3 table. The resulting 6 x 5 table considers a broader collection of…
Yupana is an Inca device used for arithmetic operations. This article describes a new arithmetical system: Tawa Pukllay (TP), where arithmetic operations do not require mental calculations: no carries, no borrows, no memorization of…
The aim of this project is to review and expand upon the model proposed by Father Jose Domingo Duquesne de la Madrid (1745-1821) regarding the calendar of the ancient Muisca culture of the central Colombia. This model was dismissed by…
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was a fertile crescent for the development of number systems. A form of vigesimal system seems to have been present from the first Olmec civilization onwards, to which succeeding peoples made contributions. We…
Consider a periodical (in two independent directions) tiling of the plane with polygons (faces). In this article we shall only give examples using squares, regular hexagons, equilateral triangles and parallelograms ("unions" of two…
The Atacama Large (sub-)millimeter Array (ALMA) has been in scientific operations for almost 15 years. We celebrate this achievement by providing a summary of the ``Disks and planet formation'' scientific category, with an emphasis on the…
We define a new class of numbers based on the first occurrence of certain patterns of zeros and ones in the expansion of irracional numbers in a given basis and call them Sagan numbers, since they were first mentioned, in a special case, by…
Just fourteen years ago the Solar System represented the only known planetary system in the Galaxy, and conceptions of planet formation were shaped by this sample of one. Since then, 320 planets have been discovered orbiting 276 individual…
The apparent positions of planets are determined by means of the fundamental ephemerides, the precession-nutation models of the Earth, the gravitational effects and aberrations et al. Around 2000, many astrometrical conceptions, models and…
After presenting the main characteristics of the Sky of Salamanca, we analyse whether what is represented in it is motivated by astrological or astronomical considerations. We will see that the astrological explanation based on the system…
We argue that there was a link between Indus Valley India and the Mayans of Central America which is brought out by astronomical references. The former used a Jovian calendar while the latter had perfected a calendar based on Venus. This…
Architecture and parameters of two wide nearby hierarchical systems containing five solar-type stars each, $\kappa$ Tuc and $\xi$ Sco, are studied. Using Gaia astrometry and photometry, masses are determined from visual orbits and…
"El Cielo de Salamanca" ("The Sky of Salamanca") is a quarter-sphere-shaped vault 8.70 metres in diameter. It was painted sometime between 1480 and 1493 and shows five zodiacal constellations, three boreal and six austral. The Sun and…
Ancient mesoamerican cultures built a short ritual 260 day calendar and used it for daily routinary life. Using simple arithmetic calculations it is first shown that by forcing the introduction of the the fundamental number 13 to calculate…
The IAU-1976 System of astronomical constants includes three astronomical units (i.e. for time, mass and length). This paper reports on the status of the astronomical unit of length (ua) and mass (MSun) within the context of the recent IAU…