How old is maths?

[Wapping]

I am a member of the British Museum.

This video is just one of a series, where the experts reveal the answers to mysteries, thousands of years old. I am not sure what we, the British (we didn’t exists as such) were up to more than two thousand years before Christ, but the Sumarians of Ancient Mesopotamia were not grovelling around in dank forests. Fascinating stuff:

 

[wessie]

lots of maths happening in Britain back then. Avebury & Stonehenge date from around 2500 BC

 

[Schtum]

lots of maths happening in Britain back then. Avebury & Stonehenge date from around 2500 BC

Pah...a recent entry. I give you Skara Brae.

 

[Wapping]

That’s true. What I did find interesting was that it was the earliest (known) architectural plan. The deciphering of the ruler was also interesting, as was the translation of the ‘message’ on the statue from its symbols…. “Bringing order, out of chaos”.

 

[rovert57]

Although mathematics has been around for several thousand years , I read somewhere that the concept of 0 zero was introduced a thousand years later .
Don’t know how they managed without it before though .

 

[Schtum]

“Bringing order, out of chaos”.

Indeed so. The antithesis of the correlate of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

 

[Wapping]

The ruler was interesting in that it’s the gaps between the lines, that are important. In other words, the division of a standard length into fractions. Tape measures and rulers, we take for granted today. It did though take someone to conceptualise, the division of something into parts and then move that concept into something solid. Once you have that, you can make measures uniform across the land easily. A lot better than saying a yard, is the length of the king’s arm, from the tip of his nose to his finger tips.

 

[Wapping]

Although mathematics has been around for several thousand years , I read somewhere that the concept of 0 zero was introduced a thousand years later .
Don’t know how they managed without it before though .

Who Invented the Zero? | HISTORY

A history of nothingness.

www.history.com

Minus numbers, are something to get your head around. First conceptualising them and then, writing them down. It took a long time:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/history-of-negative-numbers.html#:~:text=In%20the%20seventh%20century%2C%20an,subtraction%2C%20multiplication%2C%20and%20division.

 

[wessie]

I gave up learning more about maths not long after I discovered imaginary numbers during A level. I got my grade A and did the first year of maths at uni as part of computer science as it was mandatory. Too weird. Left to take a job and then had to take BTec maths for electrical engineering. It was a lower standard than O level but my A level didn't give me an exemption. Still, got me out of work for 1 day a week for 2 years.

 

[Schtum]

The ruler was interesting in that it’s the gaps between the lines, that are important. In other words, the division of a standard length into fractions. Tape measures and rulers, we take for granted today. It did though take someone to conceptualise, the division of something into parts and then move that concept into something solid. Once you have that, you can make measures uniform across the land easily. A lot better than saying a yard, is the length of the king’s arm, from the tip of his nose to his finger tips.

Knight and Lomas have the view that standing stones were Uriel's Machines which enabled the calculation of the Neolithic yard with great accuracy in locations from Orkney to Egypt some 5000 years ago.

 

[rovert57]

Some well read bastards on here

 

[Schtum]

Some well read bastards on here

Are you suggesting that Wapping was born out of wedlock....?

 

[Schtum]

This just in.... BREAKING: Stonehenge's six-tonne Altar Stone came from Scotland

 

[jonnie comet]

Some well read bastards on here

.......and some not so...(hello)....

Interesting stuff though.

 

[Posh Pete]

A colleague used to regale us with his cry of pain ... "It's the same Maths as built the fooking pyramids!"

 

[Posh Pete]

This just in.... BREAKING: Stonehenge's six-tonne Altar Stone came from Scotland

That was when they had ferries that worked!

 

[RedRick Esq.]

I was reading something a while ago that suggested that the city of Baghdad was the epicentre of maths and astronomy- Algebra etc and how most if not all the stars ( up until radio telescopes found more) had names based in arabic

 

[Schtum]

That was when they had ferries that worked!

That was when labour meant something useful.

 

[AustinW]

No surprises that maths has been around pretty much forever. How far back do we need to go before our ancestors were less intelligent* than we are now? Actually it might even be the other way round - how recently did we become less intelligent than our ancestors**?

* intelligence being different to education, ie IQ or something like that.

**. We could well be less intelligent than our ancestors as the Darwinian selection process doesn’t seem to be enhancing our species much in the modern era.