Posted on 08/30/2006 10:41:19 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The earliest treatise on algebra is the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus (c.1700 BC). But in c.3000 BC Egyptians called it "aha Calculus" because "Aha," "Ahe," or "Ahau" was the name of the second pharaoh of the first dynasty. Meaning mass, quantity, or heap (a pile of many things), it was used as an abstract term for the unknown in an equation. Originally, the word "algebra"-("al" "from Egypt"--"al-Kemit")--meant the reuniting of broken parts and was later defined by the Arabs as "restoration", including "bone setting". Note that Yin and Yang are also about the union of separate parts... Africans found a place for arithmetic and algebra during their on-going activities on such vast construction projects-- as in building temples, pyramids, irrigation works, and obelisks.
(Excerpt) Read more at blackvoicenews.com ...
I just love these "We invented X-Y-Z before you eeevil Whites did" stories. They're usually about cultures that did absolutely nothing with the knowledge. The Chinese may have landed in North America before the Europeans did; but so what? They never exploited that knowledge. The Africans may indeed have had knowledge of advanced mathematics. But what came of it? Nothing; they are barely Iron Age societies. What technology they have came from the outside. The Arabs go one and on about inventing the zero; but their level of technology (a tangible expression of their alleged math skills) is a zero. They invent nothing.
Having a bit of knowledge isn't quite so important as using that knowledge.
LOL
One of the major problems with any such claims is analogous to the discovery of *the planet* Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh found it in his systematic search, and had been hired to search by Lowell Observatory. Lowell O was founded by Percival Lowell, who had been dead for a number of years by the time Tombaugh started working there. In order to increase the baseline of observations to calculate the orbit of the newfound planet, prediscovery observations were searched for, and one was found on a plate exposed by -- ta dah! -- Percival Lowell, who had at the time been looking for his Planet X.
Another major problem is that discoveries are made by individuals or small groups working together (or working in competition). Credit doesn't go to whatever ethnic group produced the discoverer(s); and as you said, cultures which don't put any value on discoveries don't get any benefit.
Or at least, don't get any benefit until they're conquered by one that does. ;')
That was a case of serendipity -- someone had FReepMailed that to me earlier in the day.
Heh... thanks for the link. Not so loud though, his fans are everywhere... ;')
I don't keep count but if you'd like, I'll point them out as they are posted, in future.
I haven't run across many people who argue that African colonialism was a Good Thing, on the whole. Killing or enslaving innocent people and confiscating their property through the use of overwhelming force -- as you put it, dragging them kicking and screaming for their very lives -- is nothing to be proud of.
The Republican Party may think it has an image problem, that the allegations that it's the party of upper-class white men is just bad PR -- but I see thread after thread that, were I a person of color, I would find offensive, if not repulsive.
I don't keep count but if you'd like, I'll point them out as they are posted, in future.Oh, come now. You must keep some kind of count, or you wouldn't have made such an accusation. it was directed at me, correct?
Not directed to you, personally. And not saying that the stories aren't interesting. They fascinate me, even the chauvinistic "rah rah for our team, we rule, they drool!" ones.
Nothing human is alien to me.
For example, I finally caught the PBS Nova on challenges to the Clovis First school. Nobody (on that show) was positing anything more than that, if Europeans came here, they were explorers who left little or no genetic trace.
Why the fascination with the "Europeans came to America first!" theory? Especially since, even if they did come here, they didn't prevail, or even survive?
As you might recall, while most of my own ancestry is European, there's zero doubt that they didn't come here before, say, Jamestown, while my Native American ancestors came here maybe 15,000 years ago, survived, prevailed, and prospered.
Being told that "really, the White Man came here first" is something that irritates me.
Oh well. My view is that humans came to the Americas over and over, from various places, in various-sized waves, probably ripples timed with climate warmings, and left traces, and that the isolation of the continents is phony -- just as it is phony everywhere else in the world. Isolationism is political in origin, and is nothing more or less than yet another master race theory.
Personally I am going with the "Out of Africa" theory that the genetic research is demonstrating and it's getting better all the time.
According to the genes, my maternal ancestors went East to America across Berengia, and my paternal ancestors went West to England and France, and then got in a boat, continued West, and eventually met up in the middle of the North American continent.
If people from the European side of Eurasia did walk west or boat west before the Vikings, chances are that they're more closely related to me than you, since there were definitely Inuit in Greenland, and my own mitochondrial DNA is A, which is very common among the Inuit.
If you take a look at the faces of Native Americans from the earliest days, they look Asian. Not European.
I'm not saying Europeans couldn't have come here, but they didn't make any significant contributions before 1492. Even the Vikings didn't leave much of a trace.
There isn't genetic research showing validity for "Out of Africa", although there certainly are plenty of claims to that effect.
There's no way to determine geographical origin of genes without ancient samples, and even those would only show a limited picture of someone who happened to die at a location, without showing the reason for death, or who else was living around there at the time, not to mention that it would be a snapshot of a different time, rather than a continuum.
Also, given the fact that during the past 2 million years -- when humans emerged -- much of the time much of what we call the continental shelf (worldwide) was dry land, and the interiors were often covered with ice and largely lifeless, most of the picture hasn't even been considered yet.
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