Tai Gomez

Hun Chi and the Zero Stone

Gather around young ones this is a story of when I was young. A time before I became the
Ajaw before I read from the stars. As I ran for my life I could hear the priests yelling she has
stolen the lunar codex.
Don't let her get away! It was too late to turn back now I was so close to finding the secret of
the stars. I had taken the lunar codex from Xukpi, the city to the south, and was now on my way
to Tikal, the city to the north, to find the solar codex. At a very early age I grasped the
meanings of astrological tables. My specialty, however, was seeing into the future and see it I
did. This was to be a secret kept by the guardians of the night: the stars.
Only when I found the Lunar (negative) codex and the Solar (positive) codex could I then find
the place where the stars can show me the secret. While I was in Tikal I had cloaked myself to
look like one of the elderly sun priestesses in order to sneak into the temple of the sun to find the
codex.
Once found I had very little time to find the sacred land where I could hear the stars. When I
found a safe place to read the codex I was confused. The Solar codex plotted points like a map
moving due north west but the lunar codex plotted a trail going in the opposite direction due
north east from my location I had no Idea what to do and I was running out of time. You see, if I
was not at the sacred land before the sun went down and the stars came out the secret would
be lost forever.
There was only one thing I could do. I looked into the seeds. By casting a cluster of seeds into
the air and catching them I could read their symbols. I could read a prediction. So I did, and
thought there must have been a mistake at first, but after three tries they remained in the same
places on the codexes. The seeds moved over one another, then created a loose X on the map
between the two roads.
Thats where I had to go to the top of the elders mountain. I climbed and I climbed and eventually
got to a flat platform on the side of the mountain. Then, shining down from the star sky, came a
small stone. It looked very similar to a bright shining shell.
The secret from the stars had been this: a bridge between the Xukpi (negative) and the Tikal
positive) the two number cities would know peace all thanks to the zero stone.

In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya used a base 20 (vigesimal) and
base 5 numbering system (see Maya numerals). Also, the preclassic Maya and their neighbors
had independently developed the concept of zero by 36 BC. Inscriptions show them on occasion
working with sums up to the hundreds of millions and dates so large it would take several lines
just to represent it. There were three symbols that formed the numerals: a shell glyph (zero), a
dot (one) and a bar (five). - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

http://books.google.com/books?id=ybONAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT145&dq=Hun+Chi+Chi+ruler+may
an&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RS2BVIClAcT0igL3mIHICA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Hun%
20Chi%20Chi%20ruler%20mayan&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=mlA9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA6559&lpg=PA6559&dq=mayan+rul
er+36+bc+chichi+hun&source=bl&ots=L4mlxqpDvY&sig=begeCtMxjKUkaOfBN6sjZ92LIDA&hl
=en&sa=X&ei=8SyBVMWmFsj_igLi5YGwBw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mayan%2
0ruler%2036%20bc%20chichi%20hun&f=false