Ancient dice dating back 12,000 years suggest early humans understood chance and probability long before mathematics emerged.

THE history of mathematics has an image problem. It is often presented as a meeting of minds among ancient Greeks who became masters of logic. Pythagoras, Euclid and their pals honed the tools for ...

On a set of broken clay bowls from northern Mesopotamia, delicate flower patterns have turned out to be something far more radical than decoration. New analysis of this ancient art suggests that early ...

From Aryabhata’s concept of zero and Euclid’s geometryto the principles that later powered modern computer science, mathematics has been shaped by thinkers across eras. This particular list focuses on ...

Plantlike designs on pottery made almost 8,000 years ago may be the earliest evidence yet of mathematical thinking. Many of the flower decorations painted on pottery by an ancient culture in northern ...