Many of you might wonder how Mathematics actually started. Well,
Mathematics started with concepts like number, magnitude and form. The number
concept started out by the existence of language which makes us understand
difference of 'one', 'two' and 'many'. However, numbers larger than two did not
exist yet.
How do we know
this is true? Well, the oldest mathematical object was found in Lebombo
Mountains of Swaziland which dated to about 35 000 BC. It is known as Lebombo
bone. This bone consist of 29 distinct notches cut into a baboon's fabula.
Besides that, other
artifacts like the Ishango bone also proves that Mathematics started as early
as 20,000 years ago. This bone consists of a series of tally marks carved into
three columns. This demonstrates the early concepts of prime numbers or a six month lunar calendar.
The Predynastic
Egyptians on the other hand represented the geometric designs pictorially. Some of the
geometric ideas are circles, ellipses and Phythagorean
triples. This is the main source on how geometric shapes started.
Babylonian
Mathematics is mathematics of the people of
Mesopotamis. It is known as Babylonian as Babylon used to be a centre place for
studies. Later on, under the Arab Empire, Mesopotamia especially Baghdad once
again became an important place of the study of Islamic Mathematics.
Babylonian
Mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets. They were written in
Cuneiform scripts, where some appears like graded
homework. Wow! homeworks did existed in the early early days. The
Sumerians wrote Multiplication tables, geometrical exercises and division
problems.
So, that is how
our famous Mathematics started in the early days. Have a look at the picture
below. It is an example of a Babylonian tablets found as a prove Mathematics
did exist in the early days.
The
Greatest Mathematicians of All Time
 Isaac Newton |  Archimedes |  Carl Gauss |  Leonhard Euler |  Bernhard Riemann |  Euclid |
 Henri Poincaré |  J.-L. Lagrange |  David Hilbert |  G.W. Leibniz |  Alex. Grothendieck |  Pierre de Fermat |
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