Mathematics in India 4246

guenther vonKnakspot

can't figure this out, "Indians" refers to Native Americans, not people from India.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-14871

Excerpts:

"The Mayas attained the highest civilization known in ancient America, and one of the highest known anyplace in the early world. They developed a genuine written language..." "The calendar systems were corrected by startlingly accurate observations of the sun, moon, and Venus. They were noted down in a numbers system based on 20, and using positional numbers and zero, two concepts unknown in Europe for another 1000 years."

"At least 1300 years before Pope Gregory XIII (in 1582) gave the Old World today's calendar, Maya philosophers and mathematicians were using a more accurate system. A thousand years before the Hindus, they conceived of the zero, and Maya astronomers worked out the revolution of the moon, the length of the Venus year, and recurrences of solar eclipses".

Based on these quotes, if anyone in India invented zero, they would have to be non-Hindus who had the concept of zero over 1000 years before any Hindu.

Countless American "prehistoric" cultures built structures that were perfectly in line with north-south-east-west, with each other, predicting eclipses, etc. The Mississippians built structures that predicted eclipses. The Inca were expert goldsmiths. All these American cultures did these centuries before anyone in India, and over a thousand years before the Europeans even realized the Earth wasn't flat.

Don't get me wrong, there were some smart people in India centuries ago, but they weren't Hindu. They were Muslim.

The actual number that represents zero I consider Arabic, created by the Arabs.

Many American cultures had a base 20 system, perhaps inspired by fingers and toes.