The Parents of Mathematics
By: Andrei Tapalaga
Tags: Technology, Ancient History, History, WIB History, Mathematics

The Parents of Mathematics

Egypt 1900BC

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

We all think that mathematics is quite a new language however, many are not aware that this is one of the oldest technical tools to exist. Mathematics can be also used to explain how the pyramids were built, it did take an impressive amount of work as well as slaves, however, none of it would have been possible with the help of geometry.

Geometry can be seen as a more simplistic form of mathematics from a second perspective, you need to have a good grasp of how much of something or how big something has to be in order to create or generate something else. Rather than assuming how many bottles of water you will need to fill up a pool you can measure the diameter of the pool to get an exact measure of how many liters of water you will need to fill up a pool.

The first form of Algebra and Geometry represented in hieroglyphs

At the period of time that maths was still being created we would find ourselves in Ancient Egypt wich was a very harsh period. As time would pass the Egyptians would grasp a better understanding of mathematics which they would use to even create strategies in wars as well as the creation of better weapons.

They have actually managed to get quite far to a quite complex level of algebra, geometry, and arithmetics which is crossing the border from high school level to higher education. They have actually gotten as far as creating quadratic equations.

First hieroglyphs to be used as numerical signs

It is very difficult to tell where the first sings were created or by whom as there are no hard pieces of evidence proving it. We do believe that ancient Egyptian scholars are the ones that have come up with the concept of using numerical signs and from the simplicity of these hieroglyphs, we can assume that they were used as the first form of numerical signs, at least the lines that are self-explanatory representing a line for one and could be used to count up to 9 as 10 would be seen as an upside-down U.

Examples of numbers using the first numerical sings

As time has gone by the scholars have gotten a sense of simplicity and that they need to expand and rethink their numerical sings in order to start using maths to a larger potential. It may sound strange but they knew that this was going to be a tool that will shape the future of the earth and I believe it is because not only they were more innovative thinkers but also the fact that they were aiming at a different scale.

A more evolved set of numerical sings in the form of hieroglyphs

The only numerical sings that have been kept from the original scripture were the first 4 numbers (1 to 4) in rest everything has been altered. If you take a look at this table of numerical signs we can see that many of those are represented in the first old scripture represented in this article. With more sings, there was an ability to shorten the length of an equation and also make it more complex at the same time. At the same time, this offered them the ability to be more accurate in their calculations in order to offer them better architectural plans.

As time has passed they have evolved their mathematical hieroglyphs even more and even to this day historians in cooperation with archeologists are trying to decipher what they presume to be lost or unknown parts of maths.