I am still constantly surprised when adults discuss history without logical reflection. When reading I paused on page 5 with writings referencing history “only begins” after encounter with Europeans. I know many people do no believe this however there are enough people that make conversations interesting when they neglect that history is deeper than what we had access to on our individual educational paths.
This is not a surprise in understand but a surprise in written words, history we have access to is “popularly known”. In my initial post secondary math courses it was discussed and taught that we are following what is popularly known. And, that for mathematicians that not gain enough popularity are ignored in their work. This had made sense at the time because everything in knowledge was knew to the student and therefore to gain acceptance into the overall educational group you accept what is popularly given and put little weight to divergent thinkers.
I am surprised that the writer of this document was quite inclusive of the multicultural work in the sharing of knowledge over the globe and the contributions recognized be the varied countries and cultural groups. Most authors would lend more toward what would accepted by a wide audience. And absolutely appreciated the statement “apparently have any device”, which acknowledges it is guess that the Maya did not have sophisticated devices that are unknown to this day.
TsáKtalay’pa
Thanks for sharing, TsáKtalay’pa. You made a good point about how our perspectives of math history (and really history in general) is based on what is popular. Hopefully, as more math educators advocate for culturally relevant pedagogy, we could introduce more non-European history of mathematics to our students and show them how brilliant human intelligence was back then in other areas of the world, too!
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