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Mathematics is an interesting field of study. It is as old as humanity itself. Its scope has considerably expanded to new areas of work and life. You all deal with maths in your everyday life whether you like it or not.
Be it keeping track of your monthly budget, buying groceries and stuff, or preparing a schedule, everything has maths involved in it. You cannot avoid numbers. Where there are numbers, there is mathematics.
Mathematics is a fascinating discipline. It has many important and amazing real-life applications. The disciplines of science, engineering, geography and many more cannot be understood without learning the fundamentals of maths.
Some children find maths to be intimidating. They struggle to get good grades in the subject. However, if they know how mathematics originated, they will be able to understand it much better. They will also find it interesting.
Mathematics is an ancient subject. It has been constantly evolving. It started as simple counting and measurement and the study of shapes. It has established itself as a complex and abstract discipline today.
The history of mathematics is a vast one. It started with our ancestors. It evolved as settled agriculture became the way of life for civilisations such as Mesopotamian and Egyptian. Further, many major developments in this field took place in the era of ancient Greece and its Hellenistic empire.
In the later period, countries in the East, particularly, India, China and the medieval Islamic empire became the centre of mathematical advancements. Then, in the late Middle Ages, it became the leading force behind mathematical innovations. At that time Europe was experiencing Renaissance. A series of path-breaking mathematical developments took place in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Europe set the stage for several revolutionary discoveries in the coming times. These discoveries made mathematics the complex and thought-provoking subject we know today.
Many important discoveries and innovations were made in Greek, Roman, Mayan, Indian, Chinese, Islamic and European mathematics in later times. The mathematical principles developed by them are used till date.
The exact answer to this question is not known. But the existence of mathematics can be traced back to prehistoric times. The early man who belonged mainly to the hunter-gatherer tribes living in forests and caves had an idea of counting. Few of them even knew how to count to five.
They observed periodic phenomena such as the phases of the moon and the seasons to keep track of time. Thus, they indulged in counting and tallying. But mathematics in any other form was not known.
Archaeologists even found geometric designs on the artefacts of the Egyptian and Sumerian people dating back to the 5th millennium BCE. But this can be considered more to be a work of art rather than some form of mathematics.
There was evidence of basic arithmetic and geometric notations on burial mounds in Ireland. But all these findings do not prove the existence of mathematics as a field of study.
Our ancestors started leading a settled life because of early civilizations. They started practising agriculture. They indulged in trade with each other. This was when the need for a formal system of numbers was felt.
Mathematics was, thus, developed as a discipline to meet the bureaucratic needs of civilizations. These needs were the measurement of plots of land, taxation of individuals, etc.
The Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and Egypt are mainly credited for the emergence of ancient mathematics.
Sumer is a region of Mesopotamia. It is referred to as the Cradle of Civilization. This is because of the several innovations that occurred there. Initially, the Sumerian people started using clay cones and balls for counting. They even used a rudimentary form of the abacus as early as 2700 BCE.
A major discovery of their time was their number system. It was a sexagesimal or numeric system with base 60. Other than this, they developed many other mathematical concepts. They were popularly used by them at that time.
The Egyptian civilization was also among the first contributors to the principles of mathematics in its early phases. They started by using body parts to measure land and buildings and later went on to develop a decimal or Base 10 number system.
An instruction manual in arithmetic and geometry was found. It was known as the Rhind Papyrus. It contains evidence about multiplication, division, and other mathematical knowledge of that time.
As already stated, mathematics is not a recent discipline. It was present in our lives in some form or the other since ancient times. Therefore, if you’re interested in learning about the history of mathematics, there’s a lot to know. Maths might seem to be a complex subject at first. But if you devote some time to it and develop an understanding, you’ll find how amazing and interesting the subject can be.
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