A Brief History of Mathematics
Published by A brief history of mathematics.
People seem compelled to organize. They also have a practical need to count certain things It might even be said that the symbolic approach precedes and leads to the invention of writing.
The Maya, the Chinese, the Civilization of the Indus Valley, the Egyptians, and the region of Mesopotamia , all had developed impressive bodies of mathematical knowledge by the dawn of their written histories.
Egypt
Mathematical documents from Ancient Egypt date back to 1900 B.C. A base-ten numeration system was able to handle positive whole numbers and some fractions. Algebra was developed to solve linear equations and calculate the volume of a pyramid. It is thought that special cases of The Pythagorean Theorem were known; ropes knotted in the ratio 3:4:5 may have been used to construct right angles.
Mesopotamia
What we know of the mathematics of Mesopotamia comes from writing on clay tablets of 2100 B.C. Sixty was the number system base — a system that we have preserved to this day in measuring of time and angles. other things are- multiplication tables, tables of reciprocals, squares and square roots, A general method for solving quadratic equations and a few equations of higher degree.
China
Chinese mathematics did contain general statements and proofs. A method similar to Gaussian Reduction with back-substitution for solving linear equations was known two thousand years earlier in China than in the West. The value of p was known to seven decimal places by 500 A.D., far in advance of the West.
india
In India mathematics was mainly practical. Methods of solving equations were largely centered around problems in astronomy. Negative and irrational numbers were used. Of course, India is noted for developing the concept of zero, that was passed into Western mathematics via the Arabic tradition, and is important as a place holder in our modern decimal number system.
Mayan
The Classic Maya civilization (250 BC to 900 AD) also developed the zero and used it as a place holder in a base-twenty numeration system .astronomy played a central role in their religion and motivated them to develop mathematics. It is noteworthy that the Maya calendar was more accurate than the European at the time the Spanish came on Yukatan Peninsula.
Greece
The axiomatic method came into full force in Greece . Geometry was center stage in ancient times- Idealizations of the real world, were built around points, lines, and planes and Numbers were represented as lengths of line segments Non-Euclidean geometry is the study of geometries which result from modifications of Euclid’s axioms.
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