Civilizations could last for a long time to not a very long at all. Three advanced civilizations developed in Central and South America between the 300-1500’s. The Mayas existed during 250 to 900’s. They leave behind many astonishing buildings and historical documents that are still here today. Such as the Mayan ruins that are located in today’s Mexico and Central America. Later the Aztecs were conquering most of Mexico and built a very withstanding civilization in the 1400’s. Meanwhile all at the same time, the Incas were building their expanding empire in Peru. Even though they did not last as long as they would possibly want to, the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations were very advanced because they had a way of communicating, they used calendars, and they all had a great understanding of mathematics.
The Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas, all were advanced due to the fact that they all had accomplished a way to communicate with one another. The Mayas created their own version of a written language. The written language of the Maya was made up of about 800 glyphs. For example, the Mayans could have only two different glyphs and it could tell what day it was, the month, the year, and what it was like, each glyph was very detailed and required a very great understanding of how to interpret each (Document 2). Each one represented a word or a syllable, and could be combined with the others in an almost infinite number of ways. As a result, there were three or four different ways to write almost every word in the Mayan language. Meanwhile the Aztec's spoke Nahuatl. In 600AD, languages known as Nahuan were spoken by some of the people in Central Mexico. Classical Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family. The Aztec have their letters for the alphabet represented by pictures, and different symbols represent every letter in the alphabet. The Incas did not have a true written language so they had special a special job for people that wanted to deliver messages to others, or otherwise known as their mailmen. These people were called a chasqui, which is another way of saying roadrunner. This system was so effective that runners could carry messages about 250 miles a day. Without these Incan mailmen, controlling the very large and expanding Inca Empire would have been next to impossible. This was only one of the major ways they had began their advancement until each of their declines.
Additionally, these civilizations had to have a way of telling the date with a calendar which they could apply and eventually lead to another scientific achievement. The ancient Maya were very skilled in observing the sky and understanding how it related to both day and night time. Applying and using their strong knowledge of astronomy, they were able to create the most accurate calendar system in human history. The Aztecs had two calendars, one being the xiuhpohualli meaning, the counting of years. This was a 365 day year calendar, and of course it was very helpful for planning your farming and predicting the weather. There were 18 months, each 20 days long. Then to bring the year up to 365 days there were 5 "unlucky" days added. Each year would also be divided into 4 seasons. The second calendar they had was called the tonalpohualli which also is considered the sacred calendar. There were 20 signs, and 13 numbers is this calendar. The 13 day period is a kind of Aztec week. Not only was every day ruled by a god, each of the weeks were also ruled by a god, the one associated with the first day. Since the Incas really had no official way of writing, no one could be sure if they had a true official calendar or not. In one article it is explained that further research has made it clear that at least at Cuzco, the capital city of the Incas, had an official calendar of the lunar type, based on the month of 27 1/3 days. One of the leading aspects to creating these calendars was knowing how to use mathematics.
Lastly, the final reason why these civilizations are very advanced was the fact that they had a great understanding of mathematics. The pre-classic Maya and their neighbors had independently developed the concept of zero by at least as early as 36 BCE. In the calendars the number zero would be represented as an egg-like shape whereas numbers 1 and above are represented by a line and/or a dot. The Aztecs also used almost the same exact number system as the Maya did, with a dot and a line, so there were no major differences when it came to trading with money. The Incas again, did not has a formal form of writing so they had developed a method of recording numerical information which did not require writing, it involved knots in strings called quipu. A number was then represented by knots in the string, using a positional base 10 representation.