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Archaeologists May Have Identified the Earliest Known Scientist in the Americas

A wall at the Maya city of Xultun appears to preserve the name of Sak Tahn Waax alongside astronomical and calendar calculations.

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When we think about the most famous scientists of all time, the names start to peter out once we get to Galileo, who was born in 1564. But Galileo didn’t invent science. Cultures around the world had their own versions of scientists centuries earlier who observed nature, tracked the stars, and puzzled over mathematical mysteries. Now, according to research published in Antiquity, archaeologists have uncovered the name of one of them: Sak Tahn Waax, a Maya mathematician-astronomer who may be the earliest known scientist ever identified in the Americas.

The discovery comes from the ancient Maya city of Xultun in what we now know as Guatemala, where........

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