Caveman Mathematicians

[Montero]

Thought just occurred to me. We have no records of writing from the caveman period, though there are some very good cave paintings of hunting.
So, things involving building, astronomy etc could have been portrayed pictorially. May just be the records that were used in the period haven't survived. It is possible that there were records put on skins, to roll up and take with you to the buildings site. Just not provable.

I highly doubt the people who built Stonehenge as a way to determine the exact time of summer solstice were literate, but I could be wrong.

Medieval master builders of cathedrals probably couldn't read and write to any level we'd refer to as literate, possibly little more than a signature, but they would have been trained in the tools of their trade. Compasses, set squares, plumb lines etc. A lot easier than to learn and hand on a visible skill than a wholly invisible one like mathematics. I can just picture Medieval builders better than those of Stonehenge having seen various illustrations, documentaries and reconstructions.

[Xelebes]

Accountants use ancient mathematics - simple addition and multiplication with no negatives and no zeros. In this way of mathematics, you can easily do math without using numbers. All you have to do is credit something.

I have an apple. He has an orange. I trade the apple for the orange, so I'm down an apple and he is down an orange. If we do this over and over again, how much apples will I need to have exchanged with him to have the oranges I have now? What if I could only get fewer oranges for every apple that I gave?