LEARNING UNIT 6:

What has History taught you?

Reading 1

The most surprising numbers in history

by Emma Marriott

Read the text and complete the blanks with the words given. Remember to choose
the one that suits better considering the context.

*trade *peninsula *battles * pictographic * crane

* conquer * astronomical *conundrum *mankind´s *worship

The world of numbers and statistics is an extraordinary one, and the stories behind the
figures offer incredible insights into the culture, 1. Battles, disasters and triumphs of the
past. In her new book, A History of the World in Numbers, Emma Marriott brings together a
wealth of fascinating, and sometimes shocking, facts, to tell 2. mankind´s story through
10,000 years of numbers. Here, she reveals 6 of the most intriguing…

 700 3. pictographic symbols: The earliest forms of written language

The first known system of writing was developed in Sumer, the earliest civilisation of
southern Mesopotamia. Each Sumerian city had its own temple precinct that acted both as
a place of 4. worship and as an administrative centre from which the trade of raw
materials, like tin from Afghanistan and copper from Cyprus, could be controlled.

To manage and record this system of 5. trade, the Sumerians developed a form of writing
made up of more than 700 pictographic symbols, which was probably in use well before
3,300 BC. Eventually it spread to Babylonia, Assyria and Persia, and gradually evolved into
the language known today as Cuneiform.

 2.5 million stone blocks of the Great Pyramid: nobody knows how they got
there

Of the three pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians at Giza, the Great Pyramid stands the
tallest at 146 metres. Having taken around 20 years to build, the 6. conundrum has
always been how these immensely heavy stone blocks were moved in a region where the
wheel, 7. crane and pulley were unknown.

Theories range from the transportation of rocks from hundreds of miles away using rafts, to
the forming of blocks using wooden moulds. Recent investigations of the Great Pyramid
have revealed that the blocks may have been hauled up ramps that spiralled up inside the
pyramid. It remains an incredibly large number that puzzles even today.

 AD 0, the date that never was

The AD years of the Christian calendar are counted from the year of Jesus Christ’s birth,
and, as the number zero was then unknown to the west, Dionysius began his new Christian
era as AD 1, not AD 0.

While it is now the consensus that Jesus was probably born between 7 and 3 BC,
Dionysius’s new calendar is now the most widely used in the world, while AD 0 is one of the
most interesting numbers never to have seen the light of day.

 29.5302 days: The incomprehensible skill of the Mayans

One of the greatest achievements of the Mayans – members of a 2,000-year civilisation

based in an area now made up of the Yucatan 8. peninsula, Guatemala and Belize – is
their amazingly complex calendar system. Using just the naked eye, Mayan astronomers
reckoned the length of the lunar cycle as 29.5302 days – just a few seconds short of the
27.53059 days calculated by modern astronomers.

Remains of many Mayan buildings reflect this passion for astronomy, and their round
temples, in El Caracol at Chichen Itza, are thought to have been built as an 9 astronomical
observatory.

 180 men conquer an empire of 5–10 million: How South America was won

In 1531, an obscure Spanish adventurer, Francisco Pizarro, landed on the coast of the Inca
empire with around 180 men and 37 horses. He had heard stories of a large and wealthy
empire in South America, which he now planned to 10 conquer for Spain, although few
believed he could actually succeed.

On marching to the Inca city of Cajamarca in 1532 with his band of ‘conquistadors’, Pizarro
seized the emperor, Atahualpa. The Inca army, facing guns, cannons and horses for the
first time, fled in panic. By 1537 most of the Inca empire and its population of between 5
and 10 million had been subdued by Spain.