"These vessels represent the first moment in history when people chose to portray the botanical world as a subject worthy of artistic attention," the authors note. "It reflects a cognitive shift tied to village life and a growing awareness of symmetry and aesthetics."
“This research contributes to the growing field of #ethnomathematics, which explores how mathematical ideas are expressed through cultural practices and artistic traditions.”
sciencedaily.com/releases/2025…
This 8,000-year-old art shows math before numbers existed
Over 8,000 years ago, early farming communities in northern Mesopotamia were already thinking mathematically—long before numbers were written down.ScienceDaily
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Pottery by Osa
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •The Earliest Vegetal Motifs in Prehistoric Art: Painted Halafian Pottery of Mesopotamia and Prehistoric Mathematical Thinking - Journal of World Prehistory
SpringerLinkreshared this
History, Still Nmyownworld and Pollinators reshared this.
Noel Kelly
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •@DoomsdaysCW
I wonder if the portrayal of the botanical world was already there? Does this really show advances in pottery and pigments enabled by permanent settlement? That is, the creation of durable items that could survive in the archeological record.
Pottery by Osa
in reply to Noel Kelly • • •Colman Reilly
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •@gnoll110 @DoomsdaysCW I don't know why they feel the need to talk about what we know is almost certainly a tiny sample of output like that.
Is it that hard to say "These vessels are the earliest evidence we have of people choosing to portray …"?
Pottery by Osa
in reply to Colman Reilly • • •Colman Reilly
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •Noel Kelly
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •@DoomsdaysCW
The reason I say this, is that it looks like the enabling mutations in NF1 and FOXP2 genes occurred at least several hundred thousand years ago. And are shared with the Neanderthal and Denisovan at least.
Lots of why there point in space, why when point in time questions. 😀
InarticulateQuilter
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •This one is open access so we can see the pdf of the paper here.
link.springer.com/article/10.1…
The Earliest Vegetal Motifs in Prehistoric Art: Painted Halafian Pottery of Mesopotamia and Prehistoric Mathematical Thinking - Journal of World Prehistory
SpringerLinkmyrmepropagandist
in reply to Pottery by Osa • • •"... the Sumerians used the sexagesimal system ... It has been suggested that an earlier, pre-Sumerian decimal system used the number 10 as the base (Lewy, 1949). The Halafian use of the numbers 4, 8, 16 and 32 does not fit any of these systems, and may reflect an earlier and simpler level of mathematical thinking ..."
Sumerian sexagesimal has decimal embedded in it. Binary is kind of natural to geometry and repeatedly dividing regions.
sauropods.win/@futurebird/1107…
"... the Sumerians used the sexagesimal system ... It has been suggested that an earlier, pre-Sumerian decimal system used the number 10 as the base (Lewy, 1949). The Halafian use of the numbers 4, 8, 16 and 32 does not fit any of these systems, and may reflect an earlier and simpler level of mathematical thinking ..."
Sumerian sexagesimal has decimal embedded in it. Binary is kind of natural to geometry and repeatedly dividing regions.
sauropods.win/@futurebird/1107…
myrmepropagandist
2023-07-18 15:06:27