Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 64: The Computer of The Gods!

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Episode 64: The Computer of The Gods! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to yet another episode of Tales from Ostlantis.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa and Ruben Ariano Tlacatekat.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: What is up, Dr.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tlacatecat?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing just fine.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I am uh gearing up for the beginning of the semester, the fall semester of 2024.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's that's about it, really.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just uh continuing to enjoy Chicano Heritage Month.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hell yeah.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, speaking of Chicano Heritage Month, did you uh did you catch any of the Olympic Games?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I tried, but I I was really busy with uh, you know, teaching and a bunch of other stuff that I was working on, so I didn't really I mean I caught a few things here and there, but I wasn't too deeply, you know, focused on the Olympics.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You were?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, not really, but I did catch a little bit of the news regarding the uh the breakdancing.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you had that Australian woman breakdancer who everybody seems to be talking about because she got zero points.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, in light of it being Chicano Heritage Month, there was a Chicano who took home a medal.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think he won the silver medal in breakdancing in the Olympics.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of people don't know this about Dallas.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: There was um there was a documentary that came out back, I think, in 2013 that focused on the breakdancing scene here in Dallas, which really took off.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, going back to the 80s, you know, when I was a kid, I remember breakdancing and all that good stuff.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: But like in the 90s, like the scene had shifted outside of uh New York City to other places, and Dallas was a hub for breakdancing, and a lot of the moves that are now associated with contemporary breakdancing were innovated by Dallas uh B-boys and B girls.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's really awesome.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of them were were Gano kids from Oak Cliff from my hood.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right on.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it turns out he won the bronze.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the bronze.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um Mexican American wins bronze in breaking.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know how on um on news websites they just give you like part of the headline, you have to click on it to open up the rest of the headline.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I swear to God, for part of me I was like, man, don't say and entering after it says breaking, because we should have won the gold in that.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Holy smokes.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But we're slipping if we only won a bronze in breaking and entering.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, but uh his name is uh Victor Montalvo, and he took home the bronze the bronze in the first ever men's breaking event at the Olympics.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there we go.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who took who took the the silver and the gold?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it doesn't say.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter because they're not Chicano.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean they're not part of Chicano Heritage Month.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh and uh also, you know, in keeping with Chicano Heritage Month, we had a uh a little incident where some Chicano knowledge was stolen at a conference that I went to.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so I was recently at an an unnamed archaeological conference.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a camping conference that happened in Arizona, so anybody who's in the know knows which one I'm talking about.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a talk that piqued my interest that had to do with the the Apaches and their connection to Astlan.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, huh.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's Apache?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Apachaslan.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well Apachaslantes.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Apachaslantes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, this sounds interesting.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a poster from a uh uh quote unquote independent researcher.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, an older white lady, she was nice enough.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I walk up to her poster and I'm looking at it, and smack dab in the middle is the map that Magnus designed and that we used in our co-published paper.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she used this map uh without crediting or citing.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Without attribution, as we say?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no attribution for uh for the use of our world.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Plagiarism.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The P word.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, maybe don't do that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe um give credit where credit is due.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I've found over the years is that oftentimes people will either have conversations with me or they'll look at my work or I'll tip them off to something that I found in my research that perhaps I wasn't using at the time, and and uh I share with them, and then later come to find out they use that bit of information without any attribution as to where they found it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you just hate that?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, it's happened.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: It just bugs me.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's happened a few times.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh such and such person shared this uh bit of information with me, which I followed up and I found the source or what have you, but at least, you know, be a little considerate to your fellow uh archaeologists, historians, your colleagues, and give them some credit where the credit's due.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just uh a little PSA out there.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of giving credit where credit is due, today we're gonna talk about a subject that we've been looking at for a long time.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've been wanting to do this for a while, and um, you finally had the time to sit down and uh finish up the research on it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this has always fascinated me because I remember the first time I heard about this particular topic, and it was in a pretty I mean it was in a book that I thought was pretty legitimate, you know, it gave it legitimacy, and so I just took it at face value.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it turns out that there's a lot more to the story than uh the mainstream retelling of it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more to the calculation, if I may.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, dear listener, today we are going to explore the Nepowalzin.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're diving deep into the fascinating world of ancient Mesoamerica.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: You might be wondering what could possibly connect math, astronomy, and a wooden frame with beads?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is the Nepomaltzin, of course, a super cool ancient tool that the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations used to produce complex mathematical equations.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine a time before calculators, before computers or your smartphone.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: How did people keep track of numbers, measure time, and make complex calculations?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Nepowalcin was the go-to gadget for millennia among many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: It essentially was an ancient abacus, and in this episode, we're going to unpack the mysteries of this artifact.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: We'll explore how it worked and discuss its potential impact on these ancient societies.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, wait, nope.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's not it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's not it at all.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: At least that's probably how proponents of the Mesoamerican Abacus narrative start off their talks.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been to one, but I can imagine it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: But is that really true?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is this really how it happened?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Was the Nipo Waltzinine just the Mesoamerican version of the Abacus?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Was it used for complex math?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And was it as important as it has been made out to be in recent years?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: The Nipo Waltzinine is often hailed as a marvel of ancient Mesoamerican engineering, and over the last 20 years or so it has captured the imagination of scholars and enthusiasts alike.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: This supposed Mesoamerican counting device has been elevated as a symbol of the intellectual sophistication of pre-Quatemuk cultures.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: However, a closer examination of the available evidence raises questions about the extent to which the Nepalcinsine was truly utilized.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: While there is no doubt that Mesoamerican peoples possessed advanced mathematical knowledge, the specific function and widespread use of the Nepal Cincin as an instrument of computation is subject to debate.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: If such a numerical computing device existed and was as widespread as and as important as it is made out to be, why is there no mention of it in the Florentine Codex?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: The Florentine Codex originally consisted of twelve books and was later rebound into three volumes for easier handling.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: The Codex is a 16th century encyclopedia of Aztic life and culture created by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sagun with help of Nahua Informants.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a remarkable document containing detailed descriptions, illustrations, and Nahuatl text about Mexica history, religion, society, and provides invaluable insights into the daily lives of the Aztecs.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You would think that it would include at least a passing note on the existence of the Nipohualcinsin, but there isn't any.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know, because I checked.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: However, there were authors during the Spanish colonial era who did note the existence of an artifact called the Nipo Waltzinsin.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the earliest mentions comes from the writings of Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Boturini, as he is simply known, was a Spanish antiquarian who lived in the 18th century in the early 1700s and spent eight years in Mexico collecting information, artifacts, codices, and anything relating to Mesoamerican civilizations.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: He also served as an historian and ethnographer of Spain's dominions in North America, in his 1746 book entitled Idea de una nueva historia general de la America Septentrional, or Idea of a New General History of North America, in chapter 15, entitled De los nudos y cantares así históricos como poeticos, or of knots and songs, both historical and poetic, on page 85 through 87, he writes A strange way of telling stories was also born in the age, and it was with long cords, in which other thin ones were interwoven, which hung from the main cord with knots of different colors.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: These funicular stories were called kipu in the kingdoms of Peru, and Nepowalcinsin in those of New Spain, deriving their name from the adverb nepoali, which means 80, or as if we were saying bead cord and number, in which they referred to and numbered things worthy of memory, both divine and human.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: In both kingdoms of Peru and in New Spain, I observed that the Indians used cords, figures, characters, and hieroglyphs for their stories, but with the difference that the paintings among the Peruvians were initially crude, of little erudition, and their use was soon abrogated.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, the Kipu reached the highest level of excellence, and with such sublimity of artifice and ingenuity they lasted until the conquest, that they served the Inca emperors to register their innumerable vassals, to give an account of what had become of their armies, since the Gnots provided a strange arithmetic of columns of tens, hundreds, thousands, etc., to recount the battles and exploits of their monarchs, and to explain all that which we understand with writing and with the help of these kipu, which were the oldest memorials of that empire and were found in the archives of the imperial city of Cusco, and among the Inca blood relatives of the emperors, the most noble historian, Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, was able to establish the history that he wrote of his illustrious homeland.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And because even after the conquest, the Peruvian Indians could not so easily adopt the European alphabet and forget the ancient custom of their kipu, they continued to use them for some time in all their trade and for the needs of life.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Father Acosta relates that he saw a woman arrive at the church with a bunch of cords and knots, with which she opened the doors of her conscience to the confessor.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the kingdoms of New Spain, the opposite happened, because cords were scarce and barely reached the end of the second age.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is proven by the prodigious accumulation of paintings that remain in my archives, without me having been able to obtain even one of these historical cords, because the one I discovered in the province of Tlashkalan, in the possession of a leading Indian, was so worn away by age that he could only instruct me that there were cords, although scarce as we see, that carried all the beauty in the paintings.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, from the said word Nepowaltsin was derived the word Nepowalko, which means counter house, and that was the name given to the place where Shol observed his people, ordering everyone to throw a small stone into the pile in his presence, which came to form an excessive body of small stones and can still be seen today and demonstrates the multitude of people with which he populated New Spain.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in the same way the word Nepowaltlachtoli, which means eighty day tribunal, was established in Texcoco, perhaps in an imitation of the LXXX eighty-five in Roman numerals, fundamental laws of the most accredited subjects of all the provinces subject to the empire, so that within the preemptory term of said eighty days it would hear on appeal all the causes that had been dealt with in the first instance by the ordinary judges and would evacuate the feudal and more serious matters that it oversaw.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's interesting about what he noted there about Nepowalco?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: He got that information from Torquemada's 1723 book Monarchia, is it the Monarchia Indiana?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think perennial.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Monarchia Indiana.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: So in in this book, in in that 17, because this is this is uh 1746, that's uh Boturini when he's writing this.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: In 1723, um Torquemada had written about this, and I looked for it, and he Torquemada talks about Nepovalcoa, about how it's a place and how it might means something about the count, um, but he mentions nothing of a Nepovalcin scene whatsoever.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is interesting.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so, as far as I could tell, the very first instance, and everyone that comes after, and this is gonna uh come up uh later here in a little bit, everyone that that talks about the Nepovalcinsine, this is the original source.
• 18:13
  unknown: Really?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Boturini.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Boturini continues his discussion of how Garcilaso de la Vega and others wrote the history of their people, how they used the cords, the knotted rope, and how they were instrumental in recovering the histories.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: As I read Boturini's account, something sounded remarkably familiar, and for this we turn to Roberto Rodriguez, aka Dr.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sintli, in his book Our Sacred Mais is Our Mother from 2014.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: In his endnotes on page 216, note 35, he offers a brief description of the Nepual Cinsin via Remy Simeon's 1885 dictionary, Diccionario de la Lengua Nahua.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: In regard to notions of what constitutes writing, the study of the kipu among the Inca is revealing that it was not simply an abacus or an accounting system, but that it was also a repository of memory and history.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The kipu is a color-coded knot system that has been compared to a modern computer for its complexity.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Spaniards ordered the kipus burned, as they saw them as idolatrous objects.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Gartner argues that they also serve as maps.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: On this topic, most often overlooked is that ancient Mexicans, pre-Aztec Mexica, had an equivalent system called the Nepowalcinsine.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is its entry in the Simeon Nahuatl dictionary.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, strings of different colors that when knotted, similar to the kipu from Peru, recalled major events.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: This custom seems not to have been part of ancient Mexico except in its most remote history.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: A speculation can be made that the Iroquoian tradition of wampum belts may be related, at least in concept.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to note, because I just so happen to have Simeon's Diccionario de la Lengua Nahuat, or Mexicana, in my grubby little hands, his definition, and it comes from page 333, kids, if you're following at home, uh, under the definition of Nepovaltzin, he references uh Claviero as the uh the origin of his definition.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And do we know uh that did Claviero write before Boturini?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or w were they contemporaries?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well that would be interesting to to compare that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that did come up in in my research, but I didn't follow that thread with Claviero.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do want to note that the description that is given, and which I'm assuming he got from Claviero, Sintli, Dr.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sintley, is also similar to a description that I found in a nineteen twenty-three publication by Alfred M.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Tosser from um Harvard University, Cambridge.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Entitled The Value of Ancient Mexican Manuscripts in the Study of the General Development of Writing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he also talks about the different colors and how the colors had significance and how if you strung them up a certain way, they represented something or meant something.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there seems to be like as time goes on, uh beginning with Glavijero and be and Bottorini, and as you move forward, there seems to be this progression in terms of adding details to to the uh Nippo Wild scene scene that weren't there in the original descriptions.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's something that to also keep in mind, which is kind of like the snowball effect, right?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like playing telephone.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: You start with one thing on one end, and by the time you get to the end, it's something else with a bunch of extra details in it that weren't in the original.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of what's happening here.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I I did look up uh Francisco Javier Claviero, he was alive from 1731 to 1787, and Lorenzo Bottorini was alive from 1702 to 1755.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, they were they were they were roughly alive at the same time.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well Bottorini was writing at the time that Claviero was young.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So then so then Boturini again is the original source of this.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever Claviero wrote, he must have gotten it from Boturini and then maybe added some details to it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what it appears to be.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, in light of all this, it's my opinion that it's very likely that the Kipu, the Nepo, and the Wampum belts have a common origin in our shared remote human past.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: But just for reference, here's a quick note on the wampum belts.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wampum belts were intricately crafted strings of beads made from shells.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: They were mainly used by indigenous peoples in Eastern North America for record keeping and communication.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: As a rhetorical device, these belts served as visual aids for oral histories, treaties, and diplomatic negotiations.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Their patterns and colors carried symbolic meaning, allowing complex ideas to be conveyed and remembered across generations.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: If we're keeping track, that's the main description of both the Kipu and the Nepo.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is how Botturini described it, and Simeon also, who likely got his description from Claviero through Botturini, repeats the same idea.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: While the artifact Is also described as being used for keeping count of large quantities, none of these early scribes describe it as an abacus style instrument.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: The abacus has been known to Europeans since at least the Roman era, but it became more well known by the Middle Ages.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Boturini and Simeon, if they had any impression at all that the Nepovalt scene scene resembled an abacus, they would have most certainly described it as such.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that they don't is a good indicator that they didn't think it was a calculator or computing instrument of any sort.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Plain and simple.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: While it might be reminiscent of file storage in a modern-day computer, it's not quite the same now, is it?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: This begs the question: where does the fanciful idea that Mesoamerican peoples had an abacus style instrument that was called the Nippowal Cincinn?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where does that come from?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: To answer the question, we must go back to 1975 and turn to a book written by David Esparza Hidalgo entitled Cónputo Azteca or Aztec Computer.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: This was the first of two books he authored on the subject.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: The second one came out two years later in 77 and it was aptly named Nepovaltinsin, Computador Prehispanico in Vigencia, or Nepovaltyncin, pre Hispanic Computer in Use.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: While there had been a few authors who had mentioned the Nepos in Zboturini, they all had basically repeated what he said and made comparisons to other Abacus style devices, adding a few descriptive details along the way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Until Esparza came along in 1975, no one had ever described the Nepovaltzin as an abacus, a calculator, or even a computer.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: All the available sources point to him as the originator of that idea, of which he was proud.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, take this passage from Computo Azteca.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: El dibujo numero 46 representa la versión que pude darle al Nepowal Cinsin para el manejo actual, pues me vi precisado a inventar una tecla y aún un modelo para cada necesidad.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Existen modelos para escritorio y también los hay portátiles y de pulsera, etc.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Son producto de mi imaginación.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Los distintos modelos de Nepo Waltzin en cuanto a la versión actual, but no el sistema, ya que este pertenece por completo a la ciencia mexica, la cual me dediqué a investigar, ando investigación, pude obtener un computador que se conoce como Computador Manual de Sparsa.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: In English, drawing number forty six represents the version that I was able to give to the Nepowalcin scene for current use.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Since I was forced to invent a key and even a model for each need.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are desktop models and also portable ones and wrist models, etc.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: The different models of Nepowalzin are a product of my imagination.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is in regard to the current version, but not the system itself, since it belongs entirely to Mexica Science, which I dedicated myself to research.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks to the results of that research, I was able to obtain a computer that is known as Manual Computer Despart, page 106.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's telling.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean he says it right there.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is it's it's in black and white.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a product of my imagination.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So at least he was being honest.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's not only taking credit for inventing various calculating devices as Nepo Welsin scenes, but he names them after himself.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Manual Computador de Esparza.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how arrogant is that?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Computador Manuel de Esparza does have a certain ring to it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: In his second book, Nepo Welsinsin, Esparza has bought into his own fable and doubles down on his idea about abacus-like objects in ancient Mesoamerica.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: While his mathematical diagrams and explanations are interesting, he is a civil engineer by trade after all, and his invented Nepo devices are imaginative, being loosely based on a blend of traditional abacuses and kipus found in murals and codices, there is no solid evidence that they existed as he describes them in the pre-Quatemo era.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: What is also confusing is the notion that the user must call on quote unquote reason to operate the Nepal.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: The following is the introduction to chapter one.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: El estudiante debe razonar esta materia, pues solo con el razonamiento captará lo sustancial de una ciencia.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: De lo contrario, será como si en los programas de enseñanza se le anticipara el resultado de aquello que se quiere aprender, ofreciéndole a un razonamiento prefabricado del tema.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Es por esto que aquí señalaré, la evolución de la técnica es buena siempre y cuando el individuo esté plenamente consciente de que esos cambios les son favorables para no obstruir el ejercicio del razonamiento.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Si no razona, está perdiendo la gran ventaja que el hombre todavía conserva sobre la máquina.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Además, esta fue creada para coadyuvar el esfuerzo físico del hombre.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Adelante entonces con el progreso and the evolution in all the orders del desenvolvimiento of nuevas technicas para la creación.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: De lo contrario, hay que tener mucho cuidado, pues el avance technológico puede resultar adverso, lo cual sería lamentable por razones de una regresion in el processamiento orquia humanos.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's a mouthful.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: English translation.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: The student must rationalize the subject, because only with reason will they grasp the substance of a science.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, it would be as if the teaching programs anticipated the result of the learning, offering a prefabricated reasoning of the subject.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will point out here the evolution of technology is good if the individual is fully aware that these changes are favorable to them so not as to obstruct the exercise of reasoning.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: If they do not reason, they are losing the great advantage that humankind still has over the machine.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, machines were created to assist mankind's physical effort, which is great if it is the person who operates the machine, if it is humanity who controls it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: If so, move forward with progress and evolution in all processes of the development of new techniques for creation.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we must be very careful, because technological progress can be adverse, and that would be regrettable regression in human intelligi and processing.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know right.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: This frame of thought is hard to follow.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ironically, the term being abused for the sake of sounding deep is reason.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Reason itself.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, his book garnered attention around the world, and Esparasa used it to focus on convincing people that he had discovered something extraordinary.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: However, not everyone bought it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Take this report in the December 1977 issue of Computer Weekly from the United Kingdom entitled Computer of the Gods.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Computer Weekly, December 1st, 1977.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Computer of the Gods.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: The speculations of Eric von Danekin on one hand, goddamn, what a way to start off.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And our own liveware saga, on the other, may have led our readers to wonder whether ancient civilizations knew more about computing than we do.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: A Mexican civil engineer claims to have uncovered evidence that the Aztecs did have such knowledge.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: David Esparsa Hidalgo says that his search entailed a long period of associating with the local Indians, gaining their confidence, shades of Carlos Castaneda.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, an old Indian told him of a computing instrument called a kipot.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: The design of which had been passed down from the Aztecs.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: The kipot is evidently a smaller, simpler version of a full-size computer called a Nepowalzin.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't laugh, it's shorter than 37158.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get that joke.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, we have no details of what a Nepowalzin scene looked like.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our informant has, however, given us a brief description of a kippot, which from which it sounds not greatly different from an abacus of the Chinese pattern.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Its biggest advantage, says Mr.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Esparsa, is that the person operating it has to reason.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know some programmers who would regard this as something of a disadvantage.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I began to be suspicious of Castaneda's Indian guide when he started sewing up lizards' eyelids to help Castaneda on his mystical drug experiences.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can't help feeling that the most ancient tradition of the South American Indians is called pulling the leg of the foreigner.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Damn.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, the Mexican Foreign Trade Institute has taken the computers, in quotation marks, at face value and plans to export them.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Watch out, IBM.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Watch out, IBM.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that's incredible.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good burn.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: So ouch, right?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: While biting and piercing, the cheeky commentary is right on point.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Esparza set himself up for that one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Being placed on the same level as von Daniken and Castañeda is an honor not many claim nor should want.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: But witty criticism was the least of Esparza's concerns.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: He had already sacrificed a lot, having spent half his life researching the Nipo Walcinsine.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: A report entitled Ancient Aztic Computer Beats Electronic Brains, man, again with these titles, found in the October 1977 issue of the Lompak Record from California, gave a much fuller and detailed description of Esparza's trials and tribulations in his search for the Aztic computer.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mexican civil engineer David Esparza Hidalgo says it cost him a divorce and 18 years of tramping through mountains, deserts, and jungles.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: But in the end, it paid off with the discovery.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, babe.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: With the discovery of the Aztec computer, Nepo Walcin scene.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some operations can be done faster on the Aztec computer, but its biggest advantage is that the person operating it has to reason.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: God damn, what what is it with that?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Electronic computers do the reasoning, he said.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Esparsa, 52, began his quest when he was a college student studying architecture.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: It took him to Indian villages and university libraries across the country.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had to dress as a peasant to gain the Indians' confidence.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: What an asshole.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I went to their bars.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I made friends with them and lived with them for months.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere I went, I asked the Indians about their system of counting.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Slowly, the bits of information began to fit together.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Damn, something.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: The breakthrough came when Esparza talked to an old Indian in the Puebla Sierra in central Mexico, who told him about the kipot.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: That word again.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: A simplified version of the Nepo Walcinsine.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Aztec computer is a board divided into two sections of keys separated by a divider which has dots representing values of 1, 10, 100, and 1,000, etc.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: In the top section, there are 13 rows of three keys each.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the bottom section, 13 rows of four keys.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: How is this supposed to be easier?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Holy shit.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: The keys in the top section have a value of five, and the keys in the bottom section a value of one.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: The computer is operated by moving keys from right to left in order of their decimal value.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Aside from being able to make any calculation based on the decimal system, Esparsa says, computation can be made based on the Aztec and Mayan duodecimal system, which was based on 20.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: The computer also can be used for astronomical calculations, for which it was used by the Aztecs and Mayans, he said.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is the only accurate thing I've heard come out of this dude's mouth.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it has nothing to do with the Nepo Alcine scene.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: It appears that the Carlos Castañeda comparison was not too far off with this guy.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: In a news clip that I found from a Mexican uh publication, he says that he dressed up as an indio, so it depends on who he's talking to.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: He changes the words around.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: To gain the confidence of the people he was trying to extract information from.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, aside from the cringe factor of it all, this just doesn't ring true.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, are we to believe that the people he was talking to couldn't tell the difference, that they couldn't tell that he wasn't from the countryside, that he wasn't part of the community?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on, man.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Get real.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's the issue with the name of the device described by the old Indian, the quote unquote old Indian.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's always a magical old Indian somewhere, right?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or whatever.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: In the Puebla Sierra, which is that even a place Puebla?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds weird.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Puebla Sierra, which he called a kipot.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not Nepahualcin, but a kipot.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that sounds very similar to the term kipu.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost as if someone nawafied kipu by adding the TL at the end.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where the other part of the story comes in.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Esparza, we know, was affiliated with the MCRCA, the Movimento Confederado Restaurador de la Cultura de Anahuac or the Confederated Restoration Movement of Anahuac culture.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm shocked by that.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Shocking, right?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: A group, a group, as we've noted before, over and over again on this podcast, and we never tire of saying it.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: A group known for making up Mesoamerican history and engaging in pseudo archaeology, just to name a few problematic things with that group.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: In his first book, Computo Azteca, Esparza cites and gives thanks to Estanislao Ramirez, again Estanislao, we just talked about him recently.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: The person who gave the Consigna de Cuatemoc to Rodolfo Nieva Lopez, who was the longtime leader of the MCRCA until his untimely death in 1968.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Ramides is believed to be the author of the so-called consigna or mandate, which he claimed had been given to him by a secret council of elders and instructed to make public again with the secret council.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Given his associations and his own admission of inventing the Nepal devices, the preponderance of the evidence strongly suggests that Esparza hijacked an older artifact and used it to promote his imagined abacus-like Mesoamerican instrument.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, this imaginary artifact has gained popularity in the last 20 to 30 years.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do a Google book search for the term Nepawal Cincin and you will get numerous results, mostly from within the last 10 to 15 years, promoting or citing the nipple.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Authors with connections to the Dansa community have also made whole careers advancing their own interpretations of the so-called Aztec computer, which some claim can be used to describe the mathematical principles of Dansa.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: What's really concerning is its entrenchment in ethnic studies curriculum where the Neppo is taught as an authentic ancient mathematical device.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course I don't have right?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any problems or anything against teaching young kids how to succeed in their scholastics.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: But as an historian, I find this troubling.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going to use the Nepo for teaching, then be honest about its origin.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But perhaps people don't know its origin, right?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're here to do.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to dig into this.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: So now that you know the facts, you ignore them at your own peril.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: The Nepal Sinseen's primary purpose was not as a math calculator, it was a mnemonic device, like the Kipu and the Wampum belts, used to recall important contemporaneous information and to recount past events.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, to remember history and to report events occurring at that time.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: How wonderful it would be if we used this device to teach young people how to recall that type of information instead.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sign me up for that workshop at your next ethnic studies conference.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Boom.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the end of the script.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I would like to make a quick note also that all the translations are mine.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Any errors in interpretation and translation are my own.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: My own own.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Send all hate mail to send all hate mail to me.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we finally did it.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: We we finally got to the end of what it seems to it took a while.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: It took several years of digging and read and you know trying to find sources because you know, one source, like I've we've mentioned before in this podcast, like one source, uh you have a source that says a thing, but you need more than one to really say anything substantive about it.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it took a while, but we got here, and here we are.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is your takeaway?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I wanted to point out that I think, you know, because you'd mentioned that maybe people don't know the actual origins of this device, right?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just repeating what they've heard.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I have this book called The Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's by Emory Dean Koch.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: How old is it?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And K.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Marie Porterfield.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was published in 2002, it looks like.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so within the last 20 years or so?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think a lot of people are seeing maybe this book and its definition and just running with it.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're they're probably citing this book as like evidence of the existence of the Nepualtin scene because it lists indigenous inventions uh alphabetically, A to Z.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: So guess guess what the very first entry is?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Abacus.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Abacus.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Abacus.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then it has like a reference to Nepual Teen scene next to it?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let me read the let me read the little definition here.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: It says Abacus, AD.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is from the book.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: An abacus is a portable calculating device using a frame with rods that are strung with beads.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Aztec and Maya, who lived in Mesoamerica, performed mathematical calculations using an abacus made from maize kernels instead of beads.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this is even different, right?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, because everything else we read said uh knots.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: So maze kernels instead of beads threaded on strings.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: It provided a faster and more accurate way of adding and subtracting than relying on memory alone.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: This abacus, which was called a Nepo Waltzine scene, had three beads on the top deck and four beads on the bottom.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like that description, like it's like if they have it in their hand, that's very like I don't know.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: It says uh archaeologists have dated the presence of such counters at about 8900 to 1000.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know where they got that number from.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Aztec Abacus, which was devised without any knowledge of the Chinese abacus, invented about 500 BC, required the same level of critical thinking and knowledge of mathematics to develop.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then it it ends with the Inca, whose empire was established in what is now Peru in about 81,000, were also known to have a type of abacus.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: This consisted of a tray with compartments that were arranged in rows in which counters were moved in order to make calculations.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not even a description of the kipu, right?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right, that's not a kipu.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: The trays with rows and counters.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, this is um like a traditional abacus, not a kippu.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: So and this book, I mean, it looks legit.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's part of the facts on file library of American history.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um the facts.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are the facts.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have some sources for those facts?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be nice.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because there's no um citations associated with that.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's a nice book.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's very professionally done, it looks good, it has a lot.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it does have a lot of cool stuff in it, but as we've seen, it also has some questionable stuff in it, you know.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Man.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what what gets me is the way that this story evolved from him saying, Look, I invented this.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is from my imagination.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: I loosely based it on this other thing, but this is my thing because he wanted credit, right?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted credit for it, exactly.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden that's transmogrified through time through that game of telephone that you were talking about to this device was the ancient device used by our ancestors.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've even seen people with the the wrist ones.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen it?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: The wrist one, those are pretty cool.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I mean you have to cool, right?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm not gonna take that away from people who who come up with these things and who create them.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that takes a lot of ingenuity and uh artistic creativity.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine, but stop saying that it's an ancient Aztic abacus device because it's not, it's not.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then uh just adding on to that myth by saying, oh yeah, and it and it and it calculates the it represents the mathematics of dansa, and it was used to calculate, you know, the stars, and it was used to, you know, for engineering to develop the temples and all this, and it's like, come on, man, you're you're pulling it out of your ass, is basically what these people are doing.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's just no way.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's just no way.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at best the abacus was used to keep count of large numbers.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's I mean, you can't really do geometry or calculus or or you know, advanced uh computing with it.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: These people try to make it out to be like this supercomputer that existed in the remote past in Mesoamerica when it it was as simple as just a bunch of knots to remember things.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this is I mean, going back to to what you just read, the description from from that entry in in that dictionary or the not encyclopedia, I mean, that that they say with no know prior knowledge of what the Chinese were doing, they came up with this on their own.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's because if you go far back enough to you know, as I said earlier, to to humanity's common origin, you will find that there's a lot of things that human groups shared that after they split apart and went their separate ways, they retained because there were useful things.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like for instance, if you come up with this idea of using rope and knots to recall information in a certain way, then you're gonna continue that tradition regardless of whether or not your group split up or you both went together in the same direction.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna and then it's gonna evolve and adapt on a you know separately, independently, but you're gonna have that same common origin, and that's what's I mean, that's what appears to be going on here.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: The Chinese abacus, the Kipu, the Wampum belts, the Nephu Walcene scene, they're all basically offshoots and and evolved versions of an original source that that was used for the for recalling information for or even for counting, too.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna discount the notion that it was also used for counting, but this but this idea that that it was a complex computer used for astronomical uh computation and all this other stuff that's attributed to it, I'm like, I don't think so.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're taking away when you make all these outlandish claims, you're taking away from just the the simplicity and the elegance of this Mesoamerican invention, right?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: That that this way that was developed in in also in Peru and in Mesoamerica, of having a device to help you record events.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, there's just something so cool about that, and it's way more fascinating to me that its actual use is way more fascinating and meaningful than having to make up shit about it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for example, it it kind of reminds me of here, speaking of August, um, the Pueblo Revolt, you know.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um also we started calling it Pueblo Independence Day uh here in New Mexico.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nice, and that was carried out by runners who were carrying knotted cords.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: And each knot represented a day, and as each day passed, you were told to unknot one of the knots, and then when there were no knots left, that was when you know that the revolt was going to happen.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how you were able to coordinate across a wide landscape.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like a timer, a countdown timer.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was a countdown that was taken to different communities, and so everybody was on the same count.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's brilliant, that's beautiful, yeah.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we don't have to make it up and be like, yeah, it was also like a fucking supercomputer, bro.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was basically a a Google alert.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was basically the uh the ones and zeros that we use today.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to to rob our own culture and replace it with fantastical nonsense, it just really uh it grinds my gears, as you like to say.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: It really gets under my skin.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like people very grinding of the gears.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what what's with people that they can't handle the truth, man?
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because it's like medicine.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is like medicine.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it doesn't always taste good?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it is always good for you.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right on.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh to our listeners, thank you for listening to this.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um be sure to check us out online, talesfromastlantis.com, or you can sign up for a premium membership and buy some merch and uh support the show.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: If uh you're already supporting the show like that, then please share the podcast with your friends and relatives.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start some arguments and uh uneasy uh holiday dinners.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we can you have any danzantas in your family?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Turn them on to the podcast and uh let's see where that goes.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: Algebra matricial, álgebra booleana, algebra lineal, enfin, the part superior de esta tabla is a value of cinco and the part inferior decent, always similar to the system Maya, in which these values represent con rayas y puntos.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_06: It's like one, this value, 1000, 1000, 1 million, and this has a value of 1 million million or 1 billion.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_06: And for the part superior, we have 5, 50, 500, 5000.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_04: The tablet to position initial for indicators.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's contact loss, olmecas, zapotecas and lasculas ascentadas al north of the state.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_06: Y arriba abajo solamente un.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_06: Entonces, pongo más cinco y dominan siete más diez, más diez, más quince, más quince, más 25, 25, más ochenta y siete, más ochenta y siete, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, ochenta y cinco, ochenta y seis, ochenta y siete.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_06: Y según este resultado de su suma, me da 110, 20, 30, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_06: Más rápido que la calculadora.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_06: Aquí la ventaja es que nuestros niños tocan maíz, tocan el número, anda información llega aquí a su cerebro de forma concreta.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_04: A decir de los especialistas, los mexicanos realmente no somos malos en las matemáticas.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_04: Muestra de ello es que in los últimos cinco años el país ha obtenido los primeros lugares in el área, y en su mayoría, gracias a este método.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_04: Así que el Nepo Waltzinsi, aunque pareciera rudimentario, podría terminar con el gran miedo que le tenemos a las ciencias exactas en México, y algunas escuelas ya empiezan a implementarlo.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_04: Con imágenes de Neri Lucero, Daniela Juárez, Puebla Noticias.