SUMER

Greece presented us with the first physical evidence of how the ancients did math, and Rome advanced it to a hand held calculator, but if we track the concept back through Greece, we discover that the technologies Greece and Rome used, began in the Middle East as much as 9,000 years ago.

Approximately 8000 BCE, Sumerians migrated from the East into the fertile regions of the Tigris-Euphrates river valleys and founded the civilization we call "Sumer." This seems to be the place where they first developed writing and attached it to the tools the Greeks and Romans used (Egyptian disclaimer).

It is possible that in the prehistoric past, the Sumerians used pebbles but moved from to clay tokens. In these tokens, a stick shape equaled 1; a clay pebble equaled 10; a cone equaled 60, etc. Markings added to the clay tokens indicated the object being counted.

A later system made it possible for them to archive the numbers. They put the tokens in a clay sphere and baked them. Markings on the surface of the sphere indicated what was inside (i.e., the nature of the transaction). The next natural evolution was to convert the sphere into a tablet that described the transaction with no tokens actually involved.

This was not writing in the sense that it transcribed language, but could be considered proto-writing that described transactions. In any case, it represents the origin of numerical notation. NEXT

ASSIGNMENT

Using objects at hand, invent a calculator that you can use to do simple math up to 1 billion. Then test it.

Now, write a complete description so someone else can replicate your discovery. Test your description on five subjects.

Write up a report on your experiment and submit it to the teacher if you have such a person.

For a very interesting and comprehensive discussion of Sumerian history and the origins of language check out John Halloran's work on the subject.

Replicas of counting tokens from Sumer. The different shapes count as generic numbers. The odd embossings stand for specific objects The cone shaped object in the foreground is a jar.

According to some historians, the disks indicated the number of the items being counted. The shapes inscribed in the disks name the items. Not quite a complete, written language, but a noun with an adjective.