![]() Several ancient African cultures birthed discoveries in astronomy. Scholars have lauded this system, as it required much abstract reasoning (4). The Yoruba system was based on units of 20 (instead of 10) and required an impressive amount of subtraction to identify different numbers. The ancient Egyptians considered a circle to have 360 degrees and estimated Π at 3.16 (3).Įight thousand years ago, people in present-day Zaire developed their own numeration system, as did Yoruba people in what is now Nigeria. ![]() Distances and angles were calculated, algebraic equations were solved and mathematically based predictions were made of the size of floods of the Nile. More than 35,000 years ago, Egyptians scripted textbooks about math that included division and multiplication of fractions and geometric formulas to calculate the area and volume of shapes (3). Surely only a few of us know that many modern high-school-level concepts in mathematics first were developed in Africa, as was the first method of counting. Despite this, it still should be evident that the ancient people of Africa, like so many other ancients of the world, definitely had their genius. I can only fly by this vast plane of achievements. Here, I attempt to send an electrical impulse to this long-deadened nerve. He once poignantly wrote that “the nerve of the world has been deadened for centuries to the vibrations of African genius” (2). The most prolific is the late Ivan Van Sertima, an associate professor at Rutgers University. There are just a handful of scholars in this area. While the remarkable black civilization in Egypt remains alluring, there was sophistication and impressive inventions throughout ancient sub-Saharan Africa as well. ![]() But in fact most of their discoveries came thousands of years after African developments. ![]() Sadly, the vast majority of discussions on the origins of science include only the Greeks, Romans and other whites. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of these accomplishments, as the history of Africa, beyond ancient Egypt, is seldom publicized. Despite suffering through the horrific system of slavery, sharecropping and the Jim Crow era, early African-Americans made countless contributions to science and technology (1). This lineage and culture of achievement, though, emerged at least 40,000 years ago in Africa. ![]()
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