Re: orthographic borrowings

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Jonathan Chang wrote:
> > as _hommage_ to the Hindu mathematicians who came up > >with the
>earliest, workable theory of zero/null/void]
>
>Earliest in the West, but the Maya had zero long before >they did, even
>incorporating it into their calendar - >the days of their months were
>numbered 0-19 (there were >18 20-day months plus 5 additional days), as
>well as using it in the Long Count, which was the >number of days, in the
>form of a modified base-20 >number [the second digit from the right was
>only 0-17] since August 13 [or 11, scholars disagree], >3114 BC.  There's
>evidence that they were using the >Long Count as far back as 355 BC.  I
>don't know how >accurate that evidence is, but it was definitely in use
> >during the Maya Classical Period, around AD 200-900.
>
The Maya got their calendar from the Olmecs, August 11
is probably the correct date (otherwise everyone still
using the calendar round is off by 2 days), and the
Olmec apparently came from the Pacific coast near the
Mexican-Guatemala border (Soconusco) around 1500 BCE
and spoke a Mixe-Zoquean tongue.

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com