J&P Voelkel demonstrate Maya math – addition & subtraction.
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msamba 
That’s interesting. In Scandinavia they also used to calculate in units of 20, they call it a “snes”. They still use the word in Sweden, when they talk about “a number of” something. In some of the Danish numbers it is still visible. Don’t you think the French quatrevingt might be a last remnant of such a system?
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I hadn’t thought of that but yes, maybe an echo of switching to base 10 (after all seventy is soixante-dix)!
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The Danish number system is interesting!
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Up to forty the Danes calculate the “normal” way. Fifty is “halvtreds” old version “halvtredsindstyve”, meaning 2.5 times twenty. It is the same for 70 and 90, 3.5 times twenty and 4.5 times twenty.
That’s why I thought maybe quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix and so on, might come from a similar background.
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That kind of makes sense (though unfamiliar). Turns out we have an echo as well (“fourscore and ten” instead of seventy – largely in disuse nowadays), and a few rural areas where it survives.
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