Ancient Advances In Mathematics

Ancient Advances in Mathematics

Ancient knowledge of the sciences was often wrong and wholly unsatisfactory by modern standards. However not all of the knowledge of the more learned peoples of the past was false. In fact without people like Euclid or Plato we may not have been as advanced in this age as we are. Mathematics is an adventure in ideas. Within the history of mathematics, one finds the ideas and lives of some of the most brilliant people in the history of mankind's' populace upon Earth.

First man created a number system of base 10. Certainly, it is not just coincidence that man just so happens to have ten fingers or ten toes, for when our primitive ancestors first discovered the need to count they definitely would have used their fingers to help them along just like a child today. When primitive man learned to count up to ten he somehow differentiated himself from other animals. As an object of a higher thinking, man invented ten number- sounds. The needs and possessions of primitive man were not many. When the need to count over ten aroused, he simply combined the number-sounds related with his fingers. So, if he wished to define one more than ten, he simply said one-ten. Thus our word eleven is simply a modern form of the Teutonic ein-lifon.

Since those first sounds were created, man has only added five new basic number-sounds to the ten primary ones. They are “hundred,” “thousand,” “ million,” “billion” (a thousand millions in America, a million millions in

England), “trillion” (a million millions in America, a million-million millions in England). Because primitive man invented the same number of number-sounds as he had fingers, our number system is a decimal one, or a scale based on ten, consisting of limitless repetitions of the first ten number sounds.

Undoubtedly, if nature had given man thirteen fingers instead of ten, our number system would be much changed. For instance, with a base thirteen number system we would call fifteen, two-thirteen's. While some intelligent and well-schooled scholars might argue whether or not base ten is the most adequate number system, base ten is the irreversible favorite among all the nations.

Of course, primitive man most certainly did not realize the concept of the number system he had just created. Man simply used the number-sounds loosely as adjectives. So an amount of ten fish was ten fish, whereas ten is an adjective describing the noun fish.

Soon the need to keep tally on one's counting raised. The simple solution was to make a vertical mark. Thus, on many caves we see a number of