Mathematical Treasure: De Puydt's Notes on Cuna and Chibcha Number Words

Lucien de Puydt was a French scholar who conducted explorations on the Panama Isthmus between 1861 and 1865, during which he made ethnological studies of the indigenous people of the region, including the Cunas. After he published a paper on the subject with the Royal Geographic Society of London in 1868, German-American collector and linguist Carl Hermann Berendt (1817–1878) took notes on the paper and reorganized de Puydt’s lists of vocabulary, including number words.

He also recorded similar information on the Chibcha language of the nearby Muisca peoples:

These images from MS 700, Item 168 are presented courtesy of the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania. The full volume may be read here.

Index to Mathematical Treasures