About Yucatán
The Yucatán is Maya country, lowland with a humid climate, tropical rainforest country, resembling that of Florida or Cuba. It is one of México's most tranquil and safest states, and the Yucatecans are good, tranquil and hospitable people who have strong roots and traditions. The Yucatán Peninsula is home to North America's largest indigenous Indian population, the Mayans, who still speak their own language in addition to Spanish. The mixture of traditional Mexican and Spanish influences has created a culture unique to this part of the world. To this day, the people who live here consider themselves Yucatecans first, Mexicans second. If you look carefully, you will see T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming Orgulloso Yucateco, Yucatecan Pride.
History
The Spanish conquest of México actually began with a landing on the Yucatán peninsula, in present-day Quintana Roo. It is here where the Spanish picked up Dona Marina, a person who spoke both Spanish and Nahuatl and provided the vital service of translation in Cortes' conquest of the Aztec Empire. The Mayans resisted Spanish conquest until 1540's, and even after baptism the indigenous Mayans continued practicing their pre-Christian beliefs. For centuries, geography made it difficult for the Yucatecans to communicate with the rest of México. As a result, architectural and cultural influences from Europe, the Caribbean and New Orleans were strong in the growth of the city. After Mexican independence in 1821, the Yucatán rebelled against the new sovereign and declared itself an independent country from 1841 1848.
Mayans and Math
Math was a part of the Mayan culture with their numbers existing as far back as the Early Classic period (400AD). The Mayan's math was logical and ahead of its time. The Maya counted essentially on a scale of 20, using for their basal numerals two elements, a dot representing one and a horizontal dash representing five. The most important feature of their system was their zero which also had numerous variants. Their number system was advanced because in Europe, during the same time period that the Roman Numerals used many symbols to represent their numbers, the Mayans represented the same numbers with three symbols! The Mayan zero symbol was used to indicate the absence of any units of the various orders of the modified base-twenty system. This system was probably used much more for astronomy (recording calendar times) than for computational purposes.
Chicxulub Crater
The Yuctán is also home to the Chicxulub structure, formed 65 million years ago when a large celestial body, a comet or an asteroid, slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula with a force that produced fires, acid rain and tsunami-like destructive waves. The collision gouged a crater nearly eight miles deep and sent 12,000 cubic miles of rock, dirt and debris spinning into the earth's atmosphere. The material blocked the sun, causing extreme changes in the Earth's climate, which many scientists believe resulted in mass extinctions.
