How did people count before Fibonacci published Liber Abbaci?
Upvote:2
Most likely they did not know how to count, except for the very basics, such as counting on their fingers and adding up small values. In the middle ages mathematics had a heavy foundation in arithmetic, and therefore the Ph.D. in Mathematics would be roughly equivalent to a third grader's homework today. Since academics and education did not have a emphasis in the middle ages, most people would not have explored number theory (even a most "primitive" case of coming up with zero). The monks, aristocracy and other educated people would have used the clumsy Roman Numeral system. Most common people were illiterate so they did not write down numbers, and did not understand numbers or number systems.
Upvote:2
The Liber Abaci is not about counting. Almost all of it are solutions to various algebra problems. The first chapter describes the Arabic numerals. The second shows how to multiply using Arabic numerals and it gets more complicated from there. So, it is not really a book about "counting".
Throughout the middle ages and going back to Roman times the standard method of doing advanced arithmetic was the counting table:
The woodcut above that dates to around 1500 shows a typical counting table. It functioned much like an abacus. The user would draw lines on the table and then arrange pebbles to do calculations. In Latin the word for a pebble is "calculus". This leads to our words such as "calculation" and "calculus".
After Fibonacci, some people started to do calculations using Arabic numerals and it became a competing system. In fact, believe it or not there were contests between "algorists" that used Arabic numerals and "calculators" that used the old Roman method using pebbles. This dual system continued well into the 1600s, more than 400 years after the Liber Abaci was written.
More post
- π What's the story behind Christmas?
- π Who titled the works of Aristotle?
- π Do Manchurian Nationalists want Independence?
- π How much of "Russia" was actually occupied by the Germans in World War II?
- π Financial ramifications of peerages created since the 19th century
- π Why was Truman considered a heavy underdog in the 1948 election?
- π How did Muhammad bin Qasim die?
- π What motivated Germanic tribes to accept Christianity?
- π What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship?
- π How old is the Classic Arabic language?
- π Why Oppress a Negligible Population (Stolen Generations)?
- π At the start of Barbarossa, what was the state of Germany's oil supply?
- π When was the potato introduced to Mexico?
- π Did Naddodd really discover Iceland?
- π Intersection Between Computer Science and History?
- π In this letter from the English Civil War, what does THO stand for?
- π Did Nicholas II of Russia send telegrams demanding evacuation of Serbs?
- π Why did Black and Asian immigrants from the Empire not come to Britain in substantial numbers until after WW2?
- π What are this uniform and these medals?
- π When did humans develop the ability to sail any direction regardless of wind direction?
- π Was there a "European Balance of Power Strategy" for Anglo-American interests in between 1925 and 1935?
- π Is there evidence of extensive Viking presence in North America?
- π What did Richelieu mean by his "six lines" quote?
- π How were dagger axes used in battle?
- π Was Rudolph Hess a moderating influence on Hitler?
- π Can anyone identify this tank?
- π What were the βpassportsβ that diplomats requested when declaring war?
- π What decides who goes in the front rank in a line infantry formation?
- π Source of quote attributed to KanΕ JigorΕ: "It is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday."
- π Are records on the meetings of the Japanese war council during 1945 publicly available?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- π How did people count before Fibonacci published Liber Abbaci?
- π How did people wash dishes before dish detergent?
- π How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?
- π How did people have access to ice in warm areas before the industrial revolution?
- π How did people say βI have to go to the bathroomβ before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- π How did people receive news before the advent of the newspaper?
- π How did people wake up early before clocks?
- π How did people boil water before metal pots?
- π How did people distinguish slaves from free people in Ancient Rome?
- π How did 300,000 people survive the 3 1/2 year siege of Sarajevo?
- π When and how did people begin to consider slavery immoral?
- π How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- π Did active frontiersmen really eat 20,000 calories a day? How does this compare to other highly-active people in recorded history?
- π How did people put down a drinking horn?
- π Did Native Americans ever fight the indigenous people living in Mexico before Europeans arrived?
- π How did people travel to remote islands like Easter Island?
- π How did people deal with ice on the roads during the horse-and-buggy era?
- π How did people react to Cavendish bananas when they first replaced the Gros Michel strain?
- π How did people cut "pieces of eight"?
- π How did archers judge distance before range finders?
- π Before television sets became commonplace, did people generally watch movies only once?
- π How did the British Navy pass orders to its fleet before radio?
- π How did bank transactions (or "data" transactions) work when it took people weeks to travel vast distances?
- π How did people realize that America was a different continent?
- π What numerals did the people of Ireland use before Roman Numerals? (aka, did Ogham include numbers?)
- π How did people in the desert stay cool in the past?
- π If salt was scarce and expensive, how did people "salt the earth" to ensure their enemies would stay defeated?
- π How did people dress at the Jesuit missions to the Hurons?
- π How did people and goods move between East Pakistan and West Pakistan?
- π How much salt did people in agricultural societies eat?