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Phoenix666 writes:

India's contributions to mathematics:

It should come as no surprise that the first recorded use of the number zero, recently discovered to be made as early as the 3rd or 4th century, happened in India. Mathematics on the Indian subcontinent has a rich history going back over 3,000 years and thrived for centuries before similar advances were made in Europe, with its influence meanwhile spreading to China and the Middle East.

As well as giving us the concept of zero, Indian mathematicians made seminal contributions to the study of trigonometry, algebra, arithmetic and negative numbers among other areas. Perhaps most significantly, the decimal system that we still employ worldwide today was first seen in India.

With such a significant technical lead, how did they fall behind?

Original Submission

1. "Phoenix666" - https://soylentnews.org/~Phoenix666/
2. "India's contributions to mathematics" - https://phys.org/news/2017-09-ways-ancient-india-world-maths.html
3. "recently discovered" - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/14/much-ado-about-nothing-ancient-indian-text-contains-earliest-zero-symbol
4. "going back over 3,000 years" - http://www.tifr.res.in/~archaeo/FOP/FoP%20papers/ancmathsources_Dani.pdf
5. "trigonometry, algebra, arithmetic and negative numbers among other areas" - http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Indian_mathematics.html
6. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=22392

printed from SoylentNews, Five Ways Ancient India Changed the World – With Maths on 2026-04-10 17:10:25