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American Indians Mathematics

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Abstract: Mathematics is a great subject that has developed greatly throughout the years. It has been present for a long time and throughout different societies. The American Indians are a group of people with an incredible culture full of amazing facts. Evidence of their work proofs their knowledge and understanding of different mathematical concepts that only makes us admire their culture even more. Such evidence allows us to explore how the American Indians counted and how they displayed mathematical understanding in their earthwork and art. Introduction In the website Indians.org, it is stated that, “The first evidence showing indigenous people to inhabit North America indicated that they migrated there from Siberia over 11,000 years …show more content…

Some of the work they left behind are the mounds that have been found in Ohio that were used by the Native Americans as temples, for residence or for burials. The mounds created by them are very interesting because, besides their amazing size, the accuracy found in them is astonishing. Many of these Native American mounds have bases which are in the shapes of squares, circles and octagons. These bases display angles that are just within a degree of difference from a right triangle. In Mathematics Used by American Indians North of Mexico a fascinating fact is made when it is stated, “It is an interesting exercise to explain how a people, living in the wilderness, with no tradition of geometry and little tradition of construction could have made not just one but four nearly right angles on so gigantic a scale.” Like stated in the article, it’s amazing how American Indians could display such accurate constructions when they had no exposure to mathematical concepts that could allow them to be so …show more content…

Each had their different culture, traditions and beliefs, but it is interesting to see how most of them seemed to have a notion or idea of different mathematical concepts that are now very advanced. Native Americans left us many evidence to understand how they lived and how they thought. Stories brought down from generations allow us to understand their counting system and how it was used in their culture. Their earthwork serves as evidence that they were able to construct fairly accurate structures with a small idea of geometry. And finally, their beautiful art work lets us see their love for patterns and how they used them throughout their

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