KNOW THYSELF .........my book on African Culture and History is on the way from Miami to Guyana in a few weeks. It will inspire as well as educate . This is a great CHRISTMAS gift for kids but is also for all ages. ORDER NOW..........give a young person the gift of self-knowledge It has 26 stories A-Z ....A for Aesop to Z for Zulu. B is for Baboon bone but it has an interesting twist that shows Africans were the first to create mathematics. B BABOON BONES “THE BEGINNING OF MATHEMATICS” Africa is famous for its baboons which are terrestrial mammals found in open savannah, open woodland and hills across Africa. It is from the fibula of a baboon that the World is now aware that Africa is where mathematics began. This should have been obvious since the oldest skeleton found in the World dating back 3.2 million years ago is Lucy or Dinkenesh (“you are beautiful”). The LEBOMBO and ISHANGO bones are two pieces of evidence which prove Africa is the birthplace of mathematics. The LEBOMBO bone has been dated to approximately 35,000 B.C and resembles calendar sticks still in use today by Bushmen clans in Namibia. It ranks as the oldest mathematical artifact ever. The LEBOMBO bone is a baboon’s fibula with 29 distinct notches and is just 7.7 cm long. The ISHANGO bones, found on the borders of Uganda and Zaire on the shores of Lake Edward, a source of the Nile, is the second oldest mathematical object in the World and many say the ISHANGO bone is the oldest table of prime numbers. Marshack, a researcher, concluded on the basis of his microscopic examination, that the ISHANGO bone represented a six-month lunar calendar, prime numbers or menstral calendar. The ISHANGO bone is now located on the 19th floor of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences of Belgium in Brussels, and can only be seen on special demand. At one end of the Ishango Bone is a piece of quartz for writing, and the bone has a series of notches carved in groups. It was first thought these notches were some kind of tally marks as found to record counts all over the world. However, the ISHANGO bone appears to be much more than a simple tally. The markings on rows (a) and (b) each add to 60. Row (b) contains the prime numbers between 10 and 20. Row (a) is quite consistent with a numeration system based on 10, since the notches are grouped as 20 + 1, 20 - 1, 10 + 1, and 10 - 1. Finally, row (c) seems to illustrate for the method of duplication (multiplication by 2) used more recently in Egyptian multiplication. There have been many claims about the origin of mathematics. The study of mathematics as a subject in its own right began in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, who coined the term mathematics from the ancient Greek μάθημα (mathema), meaning subject of instruction. In India, the history of Hindu mathematics may be resolved into two periods: First, the Súlvasutra period which terminated not later than 200 A.D., and the astronomical and mathematical period, extending from 400 A.D. to 1200 A.D. China, the first authentic mathematics text, the Chóu-peï, dates from about 1105 B.C. The LEBOMBE and ISHANGO bones put a rest to these voices of false claims. THE MATHEMATICAL HERITAGE OF THE PYRAMIDS The construction of the great Pyramids also illustrates the sophistication of mathematics in Africa before other Desmond Alli Continental Artistnts. Pyramids are monuments to mathematical knowledge. Pi which equals 3.14 was used in the pyramids. The Great Pyramid at Giza, constructed c.2589–2566 B.C was built with a perimeter of 1760 cubits and a height of 280 cubits giving the ratio 1760/280 ≈ 2π. Pythagoras (560-475 B.C) is called the father of mathematics, yet the pyramids were constructed approximately 2000 years before. At some point in their history, probably during the 4th dynasty, the ancient Egyptians came to a stunning realization the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter is a constant. FATHER OF THE INTERNET Today, the genes of the Africans who created LEBOMBO and ISHANGO bones live on in Philip EMEAGWALI, who can be called the “FATHER OF THE INTERNET”. Philip EMEAGWALI was named by the BBC named him as a “Digital Giant.” CNN called him “a Father of the Internet.” President Bill Clinton referred to him as “One of the greatest minds of the Information Age. He has been placed in the same rank as Einstein. He was later honoured with Gordon Bell Prize, which is the highest award for technological innovation. He remains one of the few living persons to have received this particular title; the Gordon Bell Prize is only awarded to organizations or groups. It’s true that the origin of the internet can be traced back to the 1960s when the United States, facing one of the greatest challenges relating to resources and information sharing and connectivity, funded research projects in its military agencies to build robust computer networks. Until the 1980s, wide area networking was still an insurmountable challenge to the extent that technology giants, including IBM couldn’t create a solution. But young Philip EMEAGWALI, a Nigerian-born scientist, single-handedly designed, developed, programmed and implemented the first wide area information sharing network system using 65,000 processors, 24 million equations and 3.1 billion calculations. This technological breakthrough of this one man project gave birth to what has expanded to become the internet that the whole wide world is enjoying today.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 23:30:28 +0000
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