Continuity concepts and applications

Ancient Accomplishments and Later Appearances

One of the many accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians that was passed on to medieval Islam and onto the rest of the world was the base ten numerical system we use today. Though Arabic numerals that look like our numbers were a later achievement, ancient Egyptians had a system of hieroglyphs that had numerical value. First, the symbols stood for pure numbers based on the powers of ten -- so 134 would need one "hundred" symbol, three "ten" symbols, and four "one" symbols. Later the system of places that we use today was developed, and ancient Islam carried this one (O'Connor & Robertson).

Just as important was the passing of pictographic writing from the ancient Shang dynasty in China to the later Tang and Song dynasties. Inscriptions on bronze survive to this day, and the more extensive bamboo records likely led to the later evolution of writing in historic China. This written form of language evolved into the ideographic form of writing known today. Bronze working itself was a major achievement that did not occur in China until the Shang dynasty, one thousand years after it developed in Mesopotamia, and basic metal working allowed later Chinese dynasties rapid progress and superiority, especially militarily (Hooker).