SerpApi.Org
The Maya were gifted mathematicians, famously using sophisticated calculations to chart the heavens and create various calendars. Yet, the individuals behind these complex numerical feats were unknown to modern researchers—until now.
Archaeologists for the first time deciphered the name of a Maya mathematician and astronomer from the Maya Classic Period: Sak Tahn Waax, which means “White-chested fox,” they report in a new paper published in the journal Antiquity.
Researchers discovered the individual’s name at a more than six-square-mile site in Guatemala called Xultun, which was once a bustling city within the Maya’s Yucatán Peninsula empire. First discovered in 1915, Xultun (pronounced “shool-toon”) is believed to date to roughly 250 to 900 C.E.
When they started excavating the site more than a decade ago, scientists stumbled upon a small chamber with walls that were covered in well-preserved murals, hieroglyphs and mathematical texts. They think the room might have functioned as a mathematics and astronomy workshop of sorts, where experts worked out calculations for Maya texts called “codex” books. Only a handful of codices survive today, as most were destroyed during Spanish conquests.
“In a real way, we’re looking at an old ‘whiteboard’ in someone’s abandoned office,” study co-author David Stuart, an archaeologist and epigrapher at the University of Texas at Austin, tells National Geographic’s Taylor Mitchell Brown.
Researchers recently took a closer look at one faint inscription in the chamber. Their investigations, which involved color scans and multispectral imaging, revealed it to be a complicated equation linking the cycles of Mars and Venus to units of time in the Maya calendar.
“We think it is meant to concisely and meaningfully show the relationship between these two planets and human counts of time in ways that could then be applied to political ceremony, predictive astronomy and understandings of seasonality,” lead author Franco Rossi, an archaeologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells NewScientist’s James Woodford.
At the end of the text, researchers found two symbols they deciphered to mean “so says Sak Tahn Waax.” It’s a male name, according to the researchers. The formula, which dates to 781 C.E., features “really elegant, complex math,” study co-author Heather Hurst, an archaeologist at Skidmore College, tells Science’s Laura Martín Agudelo. “That’s why he’s signing it.”
For now, it’s unclear whether Sak Tahn Waax painted the formula on the wall himself, or whether some other person was attributing the calculation to him. Writing in the paper, however, the researchers note that they suspect the symbols “might be the author’s signature.”
It’s also a mystery as to why Sak Tahn Waax chose to sign this specific piece of intellectual work, but not to any of the other texts scrawled throughout the room. Hurst suspects the formula might have been Sak Tahn Waax’s “mic-drop moment,” she tells Scientific American’s Joseph Howlett. “He was like, ‘Here’s my crazy math—boom!’”
Regardless, the discovery adds to the growing body of evidence that the Maya were “very clever, creative, intellectually curious people,” Eric Heller, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California Dornsife who was also not involved with the study, tells Nature’s Chris Simms. The author of the equation, for example, came up with it “without the aid of telescopes, without the aid of computers, without the aid of technology,” Anthony Aveni, an archaeoastronomer at Colgate University who was not involved with the research, tells National Geographic.
The name “Sak Tahn Waax” is relatively simple, especially compared to those given to Maya royalty. So, beyond revealing the identity of an ancient astronomer, the discovery also deepens researchers’ understanding of Maya naming conventions, per National Geographic.
Though researchers are thrilled to have identified Sak Tahn Waax, they don’t know anything but his name. They hope future excavations at Xultun might reveal even more “about this astronomer-sage,” Gabrielle Vail, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who was not involved with the research, tells Scientific American.
“I have goosebumps just thinking about it,” she adds.
This article was originally published on Smithsonian Magazine. Read the full story here: Meet Sak Tahn Waax, a Maya Math Whiz Who Lived More Than 1,000 Years Ago and Left Behind a ‘Really Elegant, Complex’ Formula © 2026 Smithsonian Institution.
