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30,000 BCE
Earliest Known Counting
Tally marks have been discovered in the form of notches carved into the Ishango bones in Africa. This is the earliest known record of counting by man. -
Period: 30,000 BCE to
Number Sense
Number sense is the ability to know how many there are and if one is missing without counting or knowing how to count. For example, an animal knows if one in a litter is missing without counting. -
6000 BCE
Egyptians measured land
Egyptians needed a system to measure land. They came up with a palm, which is the width of a hand, and a cubit, which is the distance from the elbow to the fingertips. -
Period: 4000 BCE to 3501 BCE
4000 BC - 3501 BC
Egyptians and Sumerians were using copper alloys. People knew how to smelt gold and silver. People enjoyed playing flutes and harps. -
Period: 3500 BCE to 3001 BCE
3500 BC - 3001 BC
Sumeria had wheeled vehicles. Their economy was based on agriculture. Egyptians began plowing and raking. Egypt becomes united by King Menes. -
Period: 2000 BCE to 1600 BCE
Sumerian/ Babylonian - Cuneiform
People were using multiple methods of counting and measuring for farming, government and trade. Cuneiform became their first system of writing numbers that they used in calculations. It had two symbols that were marked into soft clay tablets. The two symbols represented 1 and 10. They used a base 60 system. However, they did not have a way to write down when a place contained nothing. A reader had to use the context of the writing to understand what number was being used. -
Period: 600 BCE to 501 BCE
600 BC - 501 BC
Athens, Greece opens public libraries. The Fables of Aesop are written. The sun dial is used in Greece and China.Greece gets introduced to papyrus. -
530 BCE
Pythagoras
Pythagoras (570 BC-495 BC) Pythagoras is credited with the theorem a² + b² = c² explaining the relationship of the sides of a right triangle. Watch this video to learn more
He also discovered the ratio between harmonious musical notes.
Pythagoras and the Blacksmith
Anvil Music -
500 BCE
Hippasus of Metapontum
Hippasus proved that irrational numbers exist using Pythagorean Theorum and a right triangle with two sides that are each a length of 1. This made the hypotenuse the square root of 2. It is a real distance that is an irrational length. Learn what happened -
425 BCE
Theodorus of Cyrene
Theodorus of Cyrene (465 BC - 398 BC) Theodorus was taught by and later taught philosophers. One of his students was Plato. Theodorus is known for using the Pythagorean Theorem to show that the square root of 2 is an irrational number. He found the irrational square roots of numbers through 17 and created a spiral using the hypotenuse of each triangle as a leg in the next. See this video to learn how it works. Theodorus Spiral -
400 BCE
Mayan Numbers
Mayan Numbers – The Mayan people developed a number system that had 2 symbols for the numbers and one symbol they used when a place value was skipped because it contained nothing. One of the symbols represented 1 and the other represented 5. Their system was written vertically with the smallest place value on the bottom. The Mayan people were not yet in contact with the Europeans so their advanced system did not influence the system of today. -
Period: 350 BCE to 301 BCE
350 BC - 301 BC
Romans mint their first coins. India begins to measure rainfall. China begins to use iron. -
300 BCE
Euclid's Elements
Euclid published his famous book Elements. Two of the proofs he includes in this book are on prime numbers and integers. He shows that there are infinitely many prime numbers and that integers can all be written as a product of prime numbers. -
600
Dot represents empty place in numbers
Before 600 AD the Arabs were using a dot as a place holder to show when a space in a number had nothing as its value. They were using a circle for the number 5. -
600
Year 600
China began publishing books.Italy switches from a system of bartering to money. -
664
Year 664
England suffered a plague. -
725
Venerable Bede
Venerable Bede needed a way to track time passing for his monastery. He created a system of finger counting that could be used all the way up to a million. -
900
Nothing recognized as a quantity
By the 9th century, Indians recognized that nothing is a quantity and they were able to calculate using this quantity. -
1202
Fibonacci Sequence of Numbers
Leonardo of Pisa wrote the book Liber Abaci which contained his discovery of the sequence of numbers known today as the Fibonacci Sequence. He discovered it by trying to answer a question about how many rabbits there would be over multiple generations of breeding. That sequence was later discovered to have many amazing properties and it is found in many things in nature. -
Descartes publishes book Discourse on Methods
Descartes published this book with an appendix titled Geometrie. In this appendix he proposed a point on a 2D paper 1 horizontal location and 1 vertical location. This began analytical geometry. -
Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality
John Graunt wrote the book Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality. He compiled trends about births and deaths into a table called London Life Table. It was early use of statistics to analyze trends. -
Emmy Noether (1882-1935)
Emmy was a woman mathematician during times when women were not accepted in the profession. She made many contributions to algebra and physics. In 1919 she was finally allowed to teach algebra but she had to do it by pretending to be the assistant instead of the teacher. She used a method we use today of allowing students to discover solutions themselves. She was fired during Hitler's time because she was Jewish. She moved to America and continued teaching.
