Maya numerals in the context of "1 (number)"

The Maya civilization (/ˈmaɪə/) was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.

The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors.

Maya astronomy is the study of the Moon, planets, Milky Way, Sun, and astronomical phenomena by the Precolumbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.The Classic Maya in particular developed some of the most accurate pre-telescope astronomy in the world, aided by their fully developed writing system and their positional numeral system, both of which are fully indigenous to Mesoamerica. The Classic Maya understood many astronomical phenomena: for example, their estimate of the length of the synodic month was more accurate than Ptolemy's, and their calculation of the length of the tropical solar year was more accurate than that of the Spanish when the latter first arrived. Many temples from the Maya architecture have features oriented to celestial events.

A vigesimal (/vɪˈdʒɛsɪməl/ vij-ESS-im-əl) or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). Vigesimal is derived from the Latin adjective vicesimus, meaning 'twentieth'.