Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Interesting thing we've never heard of The Computational Geometry of Mayan Pyrite Mirrors

Among the artifacts found in the ancient Mayan ruins were many pyrite mirrors. The mirrors are composed of several pieces that were intelligently fit together to form a complicated geometrical structure. This structure can be represented as a planar embedding of vertices, edges, and faces that closely resembles a graph structure called a Voronoi diagram. Using several different methods, it can be approximated how close the mirror is to an actual Voronoi diagram, and how far the vertices would have to be moved to match the structure exactly. The concept of a Voronoi diagram gives insight into how the mirrors might have been constructed.

We'd never heard of these pyrite mirrors before, nor did we know what Voronai diagrams were. Seems an interesting concept though. We got this via email and the author is looking for insights as to how the Maya mirrors were designed.