In Mexico, a form of calculation that made the ancient Mayans such a sophisticated civilization has been rediscovered by academics, and is now being taught to the descendants of the long-lost culture. Alasdair Baverstock went back to class to report this story.

Quickly, what's seven times nine. You may have needed a moment to answer. But these eight-year-old students from the jungled heart of the Yucatan don't. That is thanks to an ancient mathematical method used by the ancient Mayans, which is now being taught to their descendants.

SILVIA FEBLES, PRINCIPAL KANXOC PRIMARY SCHOOL "We've seen very good results, because the method is very simple, and class can be given in the Mayan language, which makes it easier than Spanish, which is a second language to the students."

Using beans, twigs and pasta shells on a simple grid, the Mayan method allows these children to solve equations far beyond what could be expected of them.

ALASDAIR BAVERSTOCK KANXOC, YUCATAN, MEXICO "So how does Mayan maths work Well, a dot makes a single unit and five dots combine to make a bar. Let's do a simple arithmetic problem, 16 plus 7. So we'll go down to the table, it's a metric table in 1s, 10s, and 100s. So here we have sixteen; one ten, and a six. And here we have seven. So this seven migrates across, and two bars combine to cancel each other out and make a ten, so a dot goes into the next row. So we're left with twenty-three. Now this method is not used for just simple arithmetic. Top academics in Mexico have employed it to do calculus. And it's this same two-thousand-year-old method that made the Mayans such advanced astronomers. Far ahead of their Roman contemporaries in western Europe."

The method is now taught in hundreds of classrooms across the Yucatan peninsula, yet it remains an unofficial addition to the national syllabus. Dr. Luis Fernando Maga was the academic who rediscovered the method, and has personally trained the teachers who propound it today.

PROFESSOR LUIS FERNANDO MAGANA MEXICO AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY "It's a methodology that is brilliant, intelligent, practical, but so simple that it can be done on a dirt floor with next to no resources. It also develops a child's mind with analytical, logical and social faculties, which can be useful away from the classroom."

Dr. Magana says achieving official changes to the national public education syllabus is too great a challenge, but that the mathematical method is growing fast by word-of-mouth through the Yucatan.

And as Mayan math spreads through the communities descended from this ancient culture, the teachers say that local pride in their heritage travels with it. Alasdair Baverstock, CGTN, Yucatan.