Domingo Yojcom Rocché

Professor Yojcom has studied Mayan Mathematics for several years now. He gave a talk today in our Mathematics Education Department, on Mayan Mathematical Epistemology.

He presented the thesis that the original people of Mesoamerica have not been taught mathematics so far, with full awareness of their world view or cosmovision. He spends part of his time in his native Guatemala, and the rest in Mexico City where he works at the Mathematics Education Department at CINVESTAV.

Among other things he explained that the concept of zero in the Mayan culture, comes from a view of giving back to the Earth, part of what the Earth gives us. The year is divided in thirteen groups of twenty days each. Five days are missing; those are the days when they give back to the Earth, and thus complete a whole year cycle. This small part is the zero, it is nothing, and it is all. Nothing because is smaller than the other "months", and all, because it completes the whole.

When he said that, I thought of the deep connection between the concepts of zero and infinity in modern mathematics. These complementing concepts are the core of differential calculus. European mathematicians did not invent these concepts in the old World, they came from India. A state of Nirvana, is a state of nothing and of eternity. The mind is empty, and therefore time disappears, one has reached enlightenment.

Professor Yojcom furthermore thinks that the European cosmovision does not consider this giving back to nature, and thinks that that is why they did not conceive of zero in Europe.

I believe that all human voices have to be heard before we can fully understand the World. I was pleased to hear that the recent war in Guatemala, gave the original people of this Continent, the right to use their own voice.