Quiz 4 · Timelines and Dates — Ancient America to the Singularity

Who made this?

1. Who made it?: The stela in the photograph is Stela C at Quiriguá, carved by Maya sculptors for the king K’ak’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat. The sculptors’ names are not recorded. The king’s is, because it is carved on the stone, which is one way a record decides whose name survives.
2. When, and where?: Set up in the year 775, in the plaza at Quiriguá, a Maya city near the Motagua River in what is now southeastern Guatemala. The river was a trade route for jade and obsidian, and the city’s stelae, the tallest in the Maya world, were cut from sandstone nearby.
3. Why, and for whom?: To record a date: 13.0.0.0.0 in the Maya count of days, the day their count begins, which falls on August 11, 3114 BCE in our calendar by the usual reckoning (some scholars say August 13). The text around the date tells the story of creation, when three stones were set in place. The stone was carved for the king, for the gods, and for everyone in the plaza who could read the signs.
4. Who has it now, and how did it get there?: Where it was set up, twelve and a half centuries later, under a thatched roof in the plaza. Quiriguá is a national park of Guatemala and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed in 1981. For much of the 1900s the land around it was a banana plantation of the United Fruit Company, which kept the plaza clear and let archaeologists dig. The stone has not moved; the country around it changed hands several times.
5. Whose voice is missing here, and where can we hear it?: The sculptors’, and the crowd in the plaza. The Maya did not vanish with their cities: several million people speak Mayan languages today in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras, and Maya families live in New York. The signs on this stone could not be read for centuries after the conquest; scholars learned to read them again in the 1900s, and the creation date on Stela C is now one of the best-understood texts in the Maya world.

For your notebook: this stone records the first day of a count that someone chose. What day does your own count start from, and who chose it?

Sources: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, “Living Maya Time: Quiriguá”; Penn Museum, Expedition magazine, “Time, Kingship, and the Maya Universe”; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Archaeological Park and Ruins of Quiriguá.”

First, the idea

The test will hand you a timeline and ask what came first, how long something lasted, how many years separate two events, or which events overlapped. The skill is half reading and half arithmetic, and the arithmetic has one trap in it.

Reading direction. On a timeline, earlier is to the left. The spacing matters: if one inch is a hundred years at the left end, it is a hundred years at the right end too, unless the timeline says otherwise. Always read the tick marks before the events.

BCE and CE. The calendar the test uses counts years from a point it calls the year 1. Years after that point are CE, “common era,” and count up. Years before it are BCE, “before the common era,” and count down as they go back: 100 BCE is later than 200 BCE. Older books say AD and BC; they mean the same years.

An odometer. A count of years is like the mileage counter in a car: the numbers grow in one direction from a starting point that somebody set. The Maya set theirs on August 11, 3114 BCE. The calendar on the test set its starting point at a year it calls 1. Neither choice changes the distance between two events. The start belongs to the maker; the distance belongs to the events.

The trap. There is no year zero. The year 1 BCE is followed by the year 1 CE. So to count the years between a BCE date and a CE date, add the two numbers and subtract one: from 1200 BCE to 450 CE is 1200 + 450 − 1, or 1,649 years. When the dates are marked “c.,” which means about, the one year is inside the rounding and you can say “about 1,650.” Between two CE dates, or two BCE dates, just subtract.

Centuries. The 1500s are the sixteenth century, because the first century was the years 1 to 100. Add one to the hundreds digit. The year 1519 is in the sixteenth century; the year 775 is in the eighth.

Worked example — thinking out loud

The question: Stela C was carved in 775 CE and records a date in 3114 BCE. How many years apart are the two?

My first pull is to subtract, because “how many years apart” usually means subtract: 3114 − 775 = 2,339. But the dates are on opposite sides of the year 1, so one counts down and the other counts up. The distance from 3114 BCE to the year 1 is 3,113 years, and from the year 1 to 775 CE is 774 more. The rule makes it one step: 3114 + 775 − 1 = 3,888 years.

Now the check. If I had added without subtracting the one, I would have 3,889, which is the answer the test will offer beside the right one. The missing year is the year zero that does not exist. So the sculptors at Quiriguá were carving a date 3,888 years before their own day, and counting it exactly, in days. The count from that date to ours is longer still: 3114 + 2026 − 1 = 5,139 years ago, as I write this.

Part A · The skill by itself

1. Put these in order from earliest to latest: Teotihuacan’s peak, about 450 CE; the pyramids at Caral, about 2600 BCE; the Olmec stone heads, about 1200 BCE; Tenochtitlan founded, 1325 CE.

Caral, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan Olmec, Caral, Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, Olmec, Caral Caral, Teotihuacan, Olmec, Tenochtitlan

2. The Spaniards reached Tenochtitlan in 1519. That year is in the

fourteenth century fifteenth century sixteenth century nineteenth century

3. Cahokia was at its height around 1100. The Mexica founded Tenochtitlan in 1325. About how many years separate the two?

about 125 years about 225 years about 325 years about 2,425 years

Part B · The skill in the wild

Two panels of one timeline: the Americas above the line, the rest of the world below. Read the tick marks first; the two panels are not drawn to the same scale.

Two panels. Each has its own scale: in Panel 1, one tick is 500 years; in Panel 2, one tick is 200 years, so the same distance on the page means fewer years. Events above the line happened in the Americas; events below happened elsewhere. “c.” means about. Rome’s founding date is the traditional one; the Wari and Cahokia bars show spans, not single years.

Dates from: Smithsonian, “Living Maya Time”; UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Caral, Chavín, Teotihuacan, Cahokia, Machu Picchu); Encyclopaedia Britannica for the dates outside the Americas. Dates marked “c.” are rounded.

4. According to the timeline, which two events happened at about the same time?

Caral’s pyramids and the Great Pyramid at Giza the Olmec stone heads and the founding of Rome Teotihuacan’s peak and Magna Carta Cahokia’s peak and Columbus’s voyage

5. About how many years passed between the founding of Tenochtitlan and its fall?

about 100 years about 200 years about 300 years about 500 years

6. About how many years separate the Olmec stone heads (c. 1200 BCE) from Teotihuacan’s peak (c. 450 CE)?

about 750 years about 1,650 years about 1,750 years about 2,400 years

7. Which statement does the timeline support?

Cahokia was at its height when Columbus sailed. The Wari were making quipu before Charlemagne was crowned. Machu Picchu was built after Columbus sailed. The Olmec stone heads are older than the Great Pyramid.

8. Complete the sentence so that it matches the lesson and the timeline.

On a timeline, “c.” before a date means [exactly / about / after], and the year 1 CE comes right after 1 BCE because there is [a year zero between them / no year zero / a gap of ten years].

The key — and why the tempting answers tempt

1. A. BCE years count down as they go back, so 2600 BCE is earlier than 1200 BCE; then the CE dates count up. B reads the BCE numbers as if they counted up, the most common slip. C runs the whole thing backward. D puts Teotihuacan before the Olmec, mixing a CE date in among the BCE ones.

2. C. Add one to the hundreds: the 1500s are the sixteenth century. B is the hundreds digit read as the century. A and D are there to catch a guess.

3. B. Both dates are CE, so subtract: 1325 − 1100 = 225. A and C are off by a hundred, the sort of error that comes from doing it in your head under a clock. D adds instead of subtracting, the move that is right only across the BCE and CE line.

4. A. Caral, c. 2600 BCE, and Giza, c. 2560 BCE, sit almost on top of each other in Panel 1: a city rising on the coast of Peru while the Great Pyramid rose in Egypt. B is about 450 years apart, C about 750, D about 400. On Panel 1 a quarter inch is a long time; on Panel 2 the same quarter inch is shorter. Read each panel’s ticks.

5. B. 1521 − 1325 = 196, about 200. The city lasted about as long as the United States has so far. A, C, and D come from misreading Panel 2’s ticks, which are 200 years apart, not 100 or 500.

6. B. Across the line: 1200 + 450 − 1 = 1,649, about 1,650. A subtracts, the worked example’s first pull. C adds a century somewhere, usually by misreading the 450. D treats 450 as if it were BCE too. Because both dates are marked “c.,” the missing year is inside the rounding, which is why the answer says about.

7. B. The Wari bar starts at 600; Charlemagne is at 800. The bar was two hundred years old when he was crowned. A: Cahokia’s bar ends at 1150, three and a half centuries before 1492. C: Machu Picchu, c. 1450, comes before 1492, not after. D: the Olmec heads are later than Giza by about 1,360 years; “older” and “earlier” are the same direction on a timeline, and both run left.

8. about; no year zero. Both are in the lesson, and the second one is the whole trap of this quiz in five words. “Exactly” is the opposite of what c. marks. “A year zero between them” is what everyone assumes until the arithmetic comes out one year wrong.

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