Interesting facts about mathematics in the ancient world

Working with numbers happens in our life every day. Mathematical expressions are found in programming, accounting, design in production, buying, selling goods and services. Today solving a math problem from algebra and geometry can be done manually on a piece of paper using computing technology, specialized applications.

Mathematics was known for a very long time, the ancient peoples of Egypt, Greece, the Middle East used various methods for calculating area, distance traveled, number of days in a year. The first the accounts of transactions made in Babylon date back to 6000 BC. The most important discoveries of ancient people were:

  • Record the number and the individual digits that make up them.
  • Description of mathematical expressions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
  • Introduce the concept of a negative number.
  • Working with fractions.
  • Calculate the area of ​​a circle and the length of a straight line.

What mathematical discoveries were made in the ancient world?

Each nation recorded information differently. So, the Egyptians wrote down numbers in the form of hieroglyphs, the Romans they used letters for this. Zero was absent in Babylon, so their number system had a complex structure.

Negative numbers have been known to mathematicians for centuries, but their use was considered useless. The first who started working with them were European usurers and bankers. Through negative values, they recorded customer debts and losses in the production of goods, commission trade deals.

The modern spelling of numbers came to Europe from the east. Today the generally accepted numbers are called Arabic, however, they appeared in India in the 5th century AD. Further, ancient merchants spread information about this way of writing numbers far beyond where they appear.

Ancient Greece had its own specialists in the field of geometry, there were people who knew how to calculate algebra with unknown. Special contribution to the development of mathematics introduced by Euclid. His elementary geometry is based on a number of axioms, works were published in the 3rd century BC AD.

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