Answer to Question #347679 in Algebra for Eddie

Question

Where in the world do we find some early evidence that people counted?

Answer 1

Egypt

The oldest Egyptian mathematical texts date back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Mathematics was then used in astronomy, navigation, land surveying, in the construction of houses, dams, canals and military fortifications.

Babylon

The Babylonian calculation technique was much more perfect than the Egyptian one, and the range of tasks to be solved was much wider. There are tasks for solving equations of the second degree, geometric progressions. When solving, proportions, arithmetic averages, and percentages were used. The methods of working with progressions were deeper than those of the Egyptians. Linear and quadratic equations were solved as early as the era of Hammurabi; in this case, geometric terminology was used (the product AB was called the area, ABC was called the volume, etc.).

China

The most meaningful mathematical work of ancient China is Mathematics in Nine Books. The Chinese knew a lot, including: all basic arithmetic, operations with fractions, proportions, negative numbers, the Pythagorean theorem and the algorithm for selecting Pythagorean triples, solving quadratic equations. A fan-cheng method was even developed for solving systems of an arbitrary number of linear equations - an analogue of the classical European Gauss method. Equations of any degree were solved numerically, using the tian-yuan method, reminiscent of the Ruffini-Horner method for finding the roots of a polynomial.