How much math did the South American Natives know?

Question

Their architectural feats rivaled those of the ancient Greeks, Romans, or Egyptians, and they did it all on their own. Does anyone know how much math and engineering they knew? Were they as far as Calculus?

Answer 1

Long before Columbus and other Europeans came to the Americas, the ancient Aztecs and Maya developed advanced number systems. They used base-20 for their systems. The number system most used throughout the world today is a base-10 system.
The Maya used the zero many years before the Europeans learned about it from Arab mathematicians in the thirteenth century. Having the zero as a place holder allowed the Maya to keep complex records of long sequences of numbers; not having a zero limited the mathematical abilities of Europeans and the
ancient Greeks.
The Maya recorded numbers with a series of dots and bars.
A dot ( • ) equals 1.
A bar ( — ) equals 5.
The Maya made many otherimportant contributions to
mathematics. For example, theywere among the first people touse place value. In the systemwe use, place values representmultiples of 10. For example, in the number 25, the 5 represents five ones. The 2 represents two tens, or twenty. In the Mayan system, place values represent multiples of 20, not 10. Another difference is that value in the Mayan number system increases from bottom to top, instead of from right to left as in the system we use. Since the Mayan system uses base-20, a number placed above, but not
touching another number repre-sents a multiple of 20.
One of its characteristics is a set of geometric drawings, of mathematical and mystical meaning.
The operations of calculus in the Maya system are manual. It results very difficult to describe them with words and diagrams because it requires an effort of imagination to assimilate them mentally. However, if they are executed with the help of graphical interfaces such as the one I am proposing in this Web site these operations are understood quickly. However, the reader can learn them with a paper sheet, beans and half toothpicks.
The Incas, experts at organization and engineering, did not have wheels, arches, or writing. At the height of their power, before the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Incas ruled the entire area in South America from Quito, Ecuador, to the Rio Maule, Chile.
Each Maya city exhibits a unique style, although regions and epochs lent them certain common features. When one visit the ruins of the cities that seem to suddenly appear from the dense jungle, he or she cannot but admire the engineering workmanship which guaranteed the supply of provisions and water to the inhabitants; the fine stucco decorations; the stone estelas, dumb witnesses to the most advanced calendar system of those days; the ample and complex network of roads that criss-crossed all the land, keeping communications, commerce and interchange open to all Maya centres.

Answer 2

There are many natives of the south americas. The Aztec and Mayan are mesoamerica, or central america. The Inca's were the top dog of South America before dying off. They developed a system of math and architecture. There is much to be learned. However, here is a brief summary.


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Answer 3

Not as much as we like to think.
When the spanyards came from spain to rob and plunder them, they could not "add up" what was going to happen to them when they welcomed the strangers "with open arms."