Crest of the Peacock. September, 23, 2018.

The Crest of the Peacock opened my eyes to the way of Eurocentric thinking. Not only did I not share the same beliefs as European cultural views towards math and its history, but I'm also extremely surprised at the lack of respect thrown towards the great mathematicians in history. First, I was surprised to learn that the Eurocentric view ignored contributions from various great nations in regards to mathematics. This was hard to take in because nowadays,we have a heap of evidence of advanced mathematics being used as early as 2000 B.C.E!

The second thing to surprise me was the influence of mathematics on different countries. It seemed as though a multitude of nations interacted with one another and math was very much discussed and passed around here. Whether it was an Indian to Arab mathematics interaction, or a Greek to Egyptian interaction, mathematics were almost always passed around. People were very much interested in the structural and economic developments created possible by math. I was surprised with the amount of international relationships and how often nations interacted with one another.

The third and perhaps biggest thing I learned was the fact the the Babylonians were familiar with the idea of the Pythagorean Theorem. Even though Pythagoras had proved and made it popular, it was amazing to know that a civilization thousands of years old had the skills the understand more advanced mathematics. It just seems so unfair that most of the time, we hear about Pythagoras' contribution to mathematics and we always mention his name next to this theorem, but he wasn't actually the first to make this finding.

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