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   Ben Rolfe 🌳 (ben@peoplemaking.games)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 17:18:41 JST Ben Rolfe 🌳

   Pythagoras, the greatest mathematician of Ancient Greece, learned Pythagoras' theorem from the locals while travelling in Egypt, where they had been using it for thousands of years.

   Fibonacci, the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages, learned the Fibonacci sequence from Indian texts, where it had first been described 1400 years earlier.

   Pascal's triangle originated in Persia more than half a millenium before Blaise Pascal was born - in related news, the first known combinatorics solution came even earlier from THE SAME INDIAN GUY who came up with the "Fibonacci" sequence - Pingala, who was also arguably the first person to specifically refer to zero as a number, along with all sorts of other amazing shit, and who I had never heard of until today because my entire education system deemed him too brown to valorise.

   It's hard to even imagine how better educated we'd all be without the pernicious brain rot of white supremacism.

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and Alexandre Oliva like this.
   • Embed this notice
     bartholin (bartholin@fops.cloud)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jul-2024 17:18:40 JST bartholin

     in reply to
     @ben How I imagine Pingala
     lainy likes this.
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     🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 (zdl@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 06-Jul-2024 03:24:37 JST 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

     in reply to

     • rakoo

     @rakoo @ben I live not too far from Dujiangyan¹, a hydro-engineering project that's over 2200 years old *AND STILL IN USE TODAY*. (How many of our "great" technological achievements made this century will be able to say the same thing?)

     Since the whole story of how it was conceived, how it was built, and how it was used is well-recorded it's really easy for me to remember that ancient peoples were no dumber than we are, and indeed possibly a bit smarter.

     ---

     ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujiangyan

   • Embed this notice
     rakoo (rakoo@blah.rako.space)'s status on Saturday, 06-Jul-2024 03:24:38 JST rakoo

     in reply to
     @ben
     
     reminds me of all these fictional plots of "how did this remote civilization know of this thousands of years before us ? Must be aliens"
     
     Never is it imagined that "we" just stole it and declared ourselves inventors, Musk-style
     HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 (histopol@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 06-Jul-2024 03:30:37 JST HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

     in reply to

     • 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦
     • rakoo

     @zdl

     #SolutionsForClimateChange

     Our ancestors were not. Just look at the ancient water management system coupled with raised-bed agriculture of the #Andean #Tiahuanaco culture, #WaruWaru / #camellones.

     In fact, they were more intelligent because they constructed what was necessary--in contrast to today's population, who on top of not doing nearly enough, even engages in one war after another.

     https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/109972629386382918

     @rakoo @ben

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     Polychrome :blabcat: (polychrome@poly.cybre.city)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Jul-2024 20:04:37 JST Polychrome :blabcat:

     in reply to
     @ben on the other hand that same education system acknowledges Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (namer of Algebra) and Pythagoras was not white, so this is a bit of a mixed bag.