Crest of Peacock Response

While I was reading this article, the first thing that surprised me was how mathematical activities have mostly been ignored and devalued outside of Europe. The article stated how Europeans have neglected the contributions from Arabia, India and China while they viewed Western society as the universal model for power. I was particularly shocked because when I was growing up, I was always taught the importance of Arabic numbers and how they influenced modern math. On top of that, the article mentioned that there have been recent studies showing early Indian mathematics already existed around 800 to 500 BC, which was around the same period as the earliest known Greek mathematic. Without giving enough credit to its origins, it is illogical to claim mathematic itself as an exclusively Western product. It is important for us to understand the true history, background and origin of math.

To add on to what I wrote in the first paragraph, I find the contributions from India and Arabia to math history very intriguing. I was surprised to see how much the Arab world contributed to bringing in different techniques of equations to the modern world, which included the adoption and development of algebra, as well as concepts including the "Algebraic number" that we know of today. On the other hand, India's involvement with the origin of math also caught my eye. It was stated in the article that numerical concepts and methods, such as Arabic numerals, actually originated from India and not Arabia. This took me by surprise, because I have always thought Arabic numbers originated from Arabia. I also searched up the geographical location of India and surprisingly, as mentioned in the article, it was an important meeting place between different regions, which made the influence of transmission easier. 

This brings me to the last thing that caught my attention: the amount of transmission of knowledge between different nations. While we all now understand that India and Arabia made significant contributions to the Western society, I was surprised when the article also mentioned the transmission between Egypt and Mesopotamia because I was barely taught about the history between the two nations. Although there wasn't any direct evidence of mathematical exchange between the two, the spread of Mesopotamian algebra and geometry to Egypt indicated it was possible that they had made connections with each other. In Figure 1.4 of the article, it was clear that there was transmission between Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia as well. To add on to that, the figure also revealed the cross-cultural interaction between China and India, including Chinese translations of Indian work on math. Given how much interactions there were between nations, I am now not surprised to see math developing and spreading through the world. The transmission of knowledge between each nation in the early days created an interesting period in mathematical history that has impacted our lives to this day.