H ISTORY OF M ATH E M ATICS

Mathematics
in the Ancient
Orient
SUMERIAN /
BABYLONIAN
MATHEMATICS
 SUMER

The birthplace of writing,

It is a region of It is often referred
the wheel, agriculture, the arch,
Mesopotamia, the plow, irrigation and many to as the Cradle of
modern-day Iraq. other innovations. Civilization.
 The Sumerians developed the
earliest known writing system - a
pictographic writing system
known as cuneiform script.
STARTING AS EARLY AS THE 4TH
MILLENIUM BCE

They began using a small clay cone to

represent one, a clay ball for ten, and a large
cone for sixty.
 SEXAGESIMAL

Sumerian and
Babylonian mathematics
was based on a sexagesimal,
or base 60
 Babylonian numbers
used a true place-value
system.
To represent the numbers 1-59
within each place value, two
distinct symbols were used, a unit
and a ten symbol which were
combined in a similar way to the
familiar system of Roman
Numerals.
 It has been conjectured that
Babylonian advances in
Mathematics were probably
facilitated by the fact that 60 has
many divisors. In fact, 60 is the
smallest integer divisible by all
integers from 1 to 6.
The Babylonians also developed
another revolutionary
mathematical concept, a circle
character for zero, although its symbol
was really still more of a
placeholder than a number in its
own right,
 BABYLONIAN CLAY TABLETS

This tablet dating from One Babylonian tablet USNSW Sydney This possibly used by
about 1800 to 1600 BCE gives an approximation scientists have anciet mathematical
cover topics as varied as of square root of 2 discovered the purpose scribes to calculate how
fractions, algebra, accurate to an of a famous 3700-year to consruct palaces and
methods for solving astonishing five decimal old clay tablet, revealing temples and build
linear, quadratic and places. it is the world's oldest canals.
even some cubic and most accurate
equations. trigonometric table.
 PLIMPTON 322
The small tablet was discovered in the early 1900s, in what is now
Southern Iraq by archaeologist, academic, diplomat and antiquities
dealer, Edgar Banks.

It has four columns and 15 rows of numbers written on it in the

cuneiform script of the time using a base 60 system. It contains a
special pattern of numbers called Pythagorean triples. It also
described the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of
trigonometry.
PLIMPTON 322
https://youtu.be/i9-ZPGp1AJE
EGYPTIAN
MATHEMATICS
 EGYPTIAN

The early Egyptian

settled along the fertileThe Pharaoh's Moscow Papyrus
Nile Valley as early as surveyors used
about 6000 BCE, and measurements based
they began to record the on body parts.
patterns of lunar phases
and the seasons.
 ANCIENT
EGYPTIAN
NUMBER SYSTEM

It is thought that the Egyptians

introduced the earliest fully-
developed base 10 numeration
system at least as early as 2700
BCE.
 RHIND PAPYRUS

Dating from around 1650 BCE, it

is a kind of instruction manual in
arithmetic and geometry, and it
gives us explicit demonstrations
of how multiplication and
division was carried out at that
time.
 BERLIN PAPYRUS

Dating from around 1300 BCE,

shows that ancient Egyptians
could solve second-order
algebraic (quadratic)
equations.
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Indian Mathematics
Chinese Mathematics
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