Ancient and Indigenous Mathematics - Research Paper Example

However, a massive and countervailing pressure was the culmination of European supremacy in the shape of political control in large areas of Asia and Africa. Out of this supremacy, the ideology of European pre-eminence emerged and permeated a wide range of economic and social activities and also enhanced the unique role of Europe in providing the spirit for science discovery (Peat, 2006). This paper is going to discuss how mathematics has developed through ancient times and some of the factors that have led to the development of modern mathematics and also address the role of mathematics in other disciplines.

Many social needs require numbers and calculations. Therefore, mathematics automatically came into play with the evolution of social systems. A well organized operational system is required to handle numbers and calculations. Nonetheless, as fascinating as the basic theories of counting may be, the origins of mathematics include more than just counting, enumeration and arithmetic. The human needs that instigated mankind’s initial efforts at mathematics were: calculations, counting and measurement (Kline, 2012).

For example, an inheritance could not be distributed certain basics of division are known or a temple cannot be built if certain facts about squares and volumes are known. Mathematics was born from practical needs such as the ones above. Others argue that the central part of indigenous mathematics is based upon two simple questions: How much and how many? It is a convincing argument that long before our early ancestors had need to count their cattle or sheep, their unsophisticatedly organized social systems had simple rituals based on priority and rank.

Also, according to Breasted (1988), it is evident that some socialized animals of diverse groups such as the red deer and baboon have some elementary sense of order of precedence, referred to