The Maya civilisation thrived around 1,800 years ago in the Central America region.
The Maya developed a base twenty number system that used three symbols to write any whole number!

Try to solve this tricky Mayan number puzzle from our Moreton Life Summer Issue

Puzzle courtesy of the Mathema Gallery.

A distinctive feature of the Maya numeral system is that the numbers were written in vertical arrangement starting with the lowest at the bottom and working up. Because it was a base twenty system, each place value increased by 20: 

1, 20, 40 (20 × 20), 8,000 (20 × 20 × 20)

What is the value of the number shown here?