Mathematics: Did you mean...?

A 1st century CE bronze portable abacus, part of a Roman scribe's kit. From St. Martin-de-Corléans Cemetery, Aosta, North Italy. (Archaeological Museum, Aosta)

These clay tokens represent the first form of counting, before the invention of writing. They date back to the Neolithic period, 8000-7000 BCE and were found in Tapa Raza, south-east of modern Sulaimaniya Governorate, Iraq...

Artist's impressions of a discussion of geometric concepts between citizens in ancient Greece. Created by Amplitude Studios for the video game Humankind.

Title page of Sir Henry Billingsley's first English version of Euclid's Elements, 1570.

A detail from Raphael's 'The School of Athens' (c. 1509 CE) showing Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer Hipparchus of Nicea (c. 190-120 BCE).

A c. 1780 statue by Augustin Pajou of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. Pascal is shown contemplating a mathematical problem involving the cycloid. (Louvre, Paris)

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning "between two rivers") was an ancient region located in the Near East (Middle East) bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau...

Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia, whose ruins lie in modern-day Hillah, Iraq, 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name is derived from bav-il or bav-ilim, which in Akkadian meant "Gate...

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia circa 3600/3500 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians...

Renaissance Humanism was an intellectual movement typified by a revived interest in the classical world and studies which focussed not on religion but on what it is to be human. Its origins went back to 14th-century Italy...