Africa Counts

Number and Pattern in African Cultures

Claudia Zaslavsky

• Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9781556523502
• eBook ISBN: 9781613741153
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This fascinating study of mathematical thinking among sub-Saharan African peoples covers counting in words and in gestures; measuring time, distance, weight, and other quantities; manipulating money and keeping accounts; number systems; patterns in music, poetry, art, and architecture; and number magic and taboos. African games such as mankala and elaborate versions of tic-tac-toe show how complex this thinking can be. An invaluable resource for students, teachers, and others interested in African cultures and multiculturalism, this third edition is updated with an introduction covering two decades of new research in the ethnomathematics of Africa.

SECTION 1
THE BACKGROUND

Was there mathematics in Africa? On the basis of the references to Africa in books about the history of mathematics and the history of number, one would conclude that Africans barely knew how to count. In the opening section we shall summarize the content of this book as contrasted with the treatment of African numeration by American and European authors. A brief history of Africa, home of man’s most remote ancestors, includes an account of ancient Egyptian mathematics as well as a look at several centuries-old African societies.

Figure 1-1 Extract from the Rhind papyrus, written by the Egyptian scribe Ahmes about 1650 B.C. This document and the Moscow papyrus are our chief sources of knowledge of ancient Egyptian mathematics. This text contains 85 problems of a practical nature. British Museum.

Figure 1-2 Africa Today

Figure 1-3 Peoples Discussed in the Text.

Peoples referred to in the text.

11. Akan (includes Asante)

36. Arusha Maasai

11. Asante (see Akan)

1. Balante

4. Cambara

16. Bini(Edo)

49 Bushmen (San)

24. Bushongo (Shongo, Kuba)

39. Chagga

5. Dogon

16. Edo(Bini)

21. Efik

20. Ekoi

12. Ewe

6. Fulani

28. Ganda

13. Hausa

42. Hehe

46. Herero

29. Hima (Nkole)

26. Huku

17. Igbo

18. Ijo

45. jokwe

33. Kalenjin (includes Kipsigis and Nandi)

37. Kamba

14. Kanuri

27. Karimojong

34. Kikuyu

33. Kipsigis (see Kalenjin)

10. Kpelle

24. Kuba (Shongo, Bushongo)

23. Kwele

32. Luo

35. Maasai

43. Makonde

7. Malinke (Mandingo)

44. Mbundu

25. Mbuti (Pygmy)

8. Mende

33. Nandi (see Kalenjin)

29. Nkole(Hima)

25. Pygmy (Mbuti)

30. Rwandese (includes Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa)

49. San (Bushmen)

40. Shambaa

47. Shona

24. Shongo (Bushongo, Kuba)

3. Songhai

2. Soninke

50. Sotho

41. Swahili

38. Taita

19. Tiv

30. Tutsi (included in Rwandese)

9. Vai

48. Venda

22. Yaounde (Beti)

15. Yoruba

31. Ziba

51. Zulu

CHAPTER 2

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Africa in the Prehistoric World

Man apparently first emerged on the African continent. The scientific world was astounded when Drs. Mary and Louis Leakey announced the discovery in 1959 of the remains of Homo habilis, a tool-making hominid estimated by the potassium-argon dating technique to be 1,750,000years old. The scene of the discovery, Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, has since yielded much information about the development of man.

Later, two human skulls and stone tools were excavated in Kenya, east of Lake Rudolf; their age is estimated to be 2.6 million years. In February, 1971 came the announcement that a human type of jawbone from the same area was five and a half million years old! No part of the world has proved as fertile a field for the discovery of skeletal remains and stone tools. The most impressive to date is the finding at Fort Ternan, Kenya, of a man-like creature and animals estimated to be fourteen million years of age.

A spectacular discovery, reported early in 1970, was that of an ancient mine in an iron-ore mountain in Swaziland, in southeast Africa. Stone age mining tools were foun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication01
• Copyright
• Dedication02
• Contents
• Foreword to the 1999 Edition
• Foreword to the 1973 Edition
• Preface to the 1973 Edition
• Section 1 The Background
• Section 2 Numbers—Words, Gestures, Significance
• Section 3 Numbers in Daily Life
• Section 4 Mathematical Recreations
• Section 5 Pattern and Shape
• Section 6 Regional Study: Southwest Nigeria
• Section 7 Regional Study: East Africa
• Section 8 Past and Future
• Appendix
• Index
• Maps            Africa Today
• Africa: Geographic Features and Ancient Cities
• Distribution of Numeration Systems in Africa
• Sixteenth-Century States of the Nigerian Region
• Eastern Africa: Countries and Peoples