Lesson 1:
Prehistoric
Times, Egyptian
and Babylonian
Mathematics
Mathematics during Prehistoric
Times
• Notched Bones (Ishango Bones) – found in Africa between
20,000 and 25,000 years ago to give some of the first clues of
human thoughts about digits and used for counting and tallying
numbers. One of the oldest mathematical artifacts that Jean de
Heinzelin de Braucourt (1920-1988), a Belgian anthropologist
discovered in central Africa in 1960.
• It is notable during this period because they are evidence that
people recorded figures or numbers, qualities, and information.
• Mathematics proper initially developed largely as a
response to a bureaucratic need when civilization
settled and developed agriculture for the measurement
of plots of land, taxation of individuals, etc. and this first
occurred in the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations of
Mesopotamia (roughly, modern Iraq) and ancient Egypt.
• Stonehenge, a Neolithic ceremonial and astronomical
monument in England, which dates from around 2300
BCE, also arguably exhibits examples of the use of 60
and 360 in the circle measurements, a practice which
presumably developed quite independently of the
sexagesimal counting system of the Ancient Sumerian
and Babylonian.
Paleolithic Period
• longest part of the prehistoric times where stones, bones
and sticks were used to create weapons like daggers and
spears for hunting.
• Unstable places to live; caves as shelter and plants and
animal’s skin for building tents and making clothes.
• Primitives seeks for food to survive.
• Wildfires started establishing a language for
communication.
• At the beginning of the number system, man could only
distinguish between “one” and “two”
NEOLITHIC STONE (STONE AGE)
Primitives made the transition from food hunter to food producers.
Marked with progress from obscene ways of doing things to a move
civilized form.
People Learned to settle and make primitive farms and make dwellings
as well as establish village to live
Develop of Pottery making Carpentry , Weaving and Melting of Copper
and Bronze to transform metal
invention of the wheel wagon hammer tents hut etc.
Ancient Egyptian Number System
• In ancient Egypt, the decimal numerical system
was invented based on the ten fingers.
• Moscow Papyrus – earliest mathematical writing
discovered so far in ancient Egypt and dates from
the Egyptian Middle Kingdom between 2000 and
1800 BCE.
EGYPTIANS METHOD OF
MULTIPLICATION
• A type of Arithmetic and Geometry Teaching manual
from Circa 1650 BCE the Rind Papyrus
• Mathematical Skill Unit Fraction, Composite and
prime number, Arithmetic, and harmonic moans
• According to the Berlin Papyrus 1300 BCE. Ancient
Egyptian were capable to solve second-order
algebraic(quadratic)Equations
Egyptian Method of Division
• Egyptian Unit Fraction – developed to cater
to practical problems of trade and the
activities in the market. Unit fraction is a
fraction whose numerator or dividend is
always 1.
• They use the Eye of Horus within this time.
Eye of Horus
Example of Egyptian Division
Example:
Example in Numbers:
91÷7 1 7 91÷7=
13
2 14
4 28
8 56
FACTS ABOUT BABYLONIAN
The rich Valley located Between the Euphrates
and tigris and mesopotamia the home of
babylonian.
• The Summerian of the mesopotamia valley
build temple decorated with artistic pottery
and mosaicin geometric pattern
BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS
The Cuneiform pattern of writing that the sumerians
had developed during the FOURTH MILLENNIUM
• The use of cuneiform formed a strong bond
laws,tax account,stories,school lessons, personal
letter were impressed on soft clay tablet and then
were baked in the hot sun or in ovens
Sumerian and Babylonian Number
System
• Used sexagesimal or base 60 mathematical
system.
BABYLONIAN TABLETS
Around 2100 BCE Babylonian created clay tablet
They Used geometric shapes in their structure
pattern and dice for these Games
• They Use Geometry to Compute the volumes of
Common thins like brick and cylinder as well as
the triangles, trapezoid and rectangles.
THANK YOU!!!
