> Doug Ewell wrote:
>
> I haven't been following this discussion too closely (for various
> reasons), so I apologize if someone has already mentioned this, but:
>
> Is it possible that the use of Mayan numerals on houses in southern
> Mexico is comparable to the use of Roman numerals for chapter numbers,
> copyright dates in movies, page numbers in book prefaces, etc. in North
> America and Europe?
>
> We use Roman numerals in these contexts partly for their charm, for our
> own amusement more than that of outsiders, and partly as a matter of
> tradition. (I do have Ifrah's book, and probably should have consulted
> it before going off on this rant, but oh well...) We *never* try to
> perform arithmetic with them; to do so would be missing the point. It's
> not hard for me to imagine that the Mayan numerals carry a similar
> appeal for southern Mexican homeowners.
>

Well, the situations are comparable in that neither system is the
primary one used either for daily numerical representation or for
computation. Moreover, one of the reasons that both systems are used today
is because they evoke a sense of the past. But in many other respects they
are not. I think the comparison is worthwhile (even if the dissimilarities
ultimately outweigh the similarities), because it reveals many things about
the use of written numerals in general, and some of these ideas also apply
to the use of traditional scripts. Please keep in mind throughout
everything I have to say here that our evidence is pretty limited for the
specifics of the present use of Maya numerals.

1) Maya numerals were quite extinct for a long period of time, and appear to
have been revived only very recently. Roman numerals have a 2500-year-long
tradition of uninterrupted use in Western Europe, and their present
distribution represents a slow replacement of functions over many centuries.
The contemporary use of Maya numerals is in a context far different from
their use in earlier times (unless we hypothesize - without any evidence -
that ancient Maya houses also had house numbers). There is no evidence of a
tradition, and they appear to be a recent revival used only by a limited
group of people.

2) The use of Roman numerals is far more widespread than the Maya numerals
are:
i) numbering of kings, popes, movie titles, world wars, Olympiads, Super
Bowls, etc.
ii) Roman numeral clocks and watches
iii) copyright dates on filmed productions
iv) pagination (usu. prefatory)
v) enumeration in ordinal lists, usu. for sub-sections (like this one)

3) A related point: Roman numerals are used in dozens of countries by
millions of individuals, and primarily by members of educated (middle and
upper) classes. They not only represent tradition; they connote prestige.
Maya numerals appear to be used by a limited group of people who are
relatively impoverished and under-educated and who are not part of the
Mexican elite, by any plausible reckoning. They may be used to connote a
link to the past, but the context in which they are used is hardly one
associated with prestige.

4) We continue to use Roman numerals for one major pragmatic reason, which
is to distinguish one set of enumerated things from another. For instance,
prefatory material in a book is usually paginated in Roman numerals to
distinguish it from the Hindu-Arabic paginated body of the text. This is
also done in sub-sections of things (for instance, acts and scenes of plays,
sub-sections of some legal documents, other ordinal lists) and in some
dating systems (e.g. 26.iv.2002) to clearly distinguish which is the month
and which is the day.

5) The role of the use of Maya numerals as an expression of ethnic identity
is quite possibly far more politically charged than the use of Roman
numerals. More information on why this is done would be desirable. I would
not be surprised if in addition to being a charming thing to do for the
tourists, there were elements of resistance against Hispanic influences to
the practice.


Stephen Chrisomalis
Department of Anthropology, McGill University
schris1@...