[Aztlan] Zero and the Long Count

[Jorge Pérez de Lara]

Dear Sue and Listeros,

Tres Zapotes Stela C has the earliest complete Long Count ever found 
(7.16.6.16.18 or September 3, 32 B.C.). Half of this very famous 
monument is in the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, while 
the other half is in the Tres Zapotes site museum (which is little more 
than a shed), in Veracruz. A stone at Chiapa de Corzo has an incomplete 
Long Count date that has been reconstructed as 7.16.3.2.13 (December 8, 
36 B.C.). Both dates are too late for the monuments to be Olmec, plus 
there is evidence that the scipt accompanying the Long Count on Stela C 
is Epi-Olmec/Isthmian: the same kind of script found on Cerro de las 
Mesas, Veracruz monuments and, most notably, on the La Mojarra stela and 
the so-called Tuxtla statuette, which also bear Long Count dates of 
their own.

Unless earlier Long Counts turn up in the Maya area (the earliest of 
these is Tikal Stela 29, bearing the date of 8.12.14.8.15), with the 
current evidence it is reasonable to think that the Long Count was not a 
Maya invention and, since the Long Count necessitates the invention of 
zero (indispensable for positional notation), the concept of zero was 
probably also developed elsewhere. I would not venture to say that these 
were earlier developments, since the "Maya horizon" keeps getting pushed 
farther in time, as witnessed by the very early dates (400 B.C.) yielded 
by the excavations at San Bartolo, Petén, which point to a 
well-developed Maya culture (including writing) two or three centuries 
before what was thought until now. However, the Maya seem to have taken 
the concept of the Long Count in more than other Mesoamerican cultures 
given the abundance of Long Count dates to be found inside the Maya 
area. Furthermore, outside the Maya area and the Epi-Olmec/Isthmian 
tradition, use of the Long Count is practically unknown.

My 2 cents.

Jorge