DEVELOPMENT OF
SCIENCE IN AFRICA
SCIENCE IN AFRICA
Africa is blessed with natural and
mineral resources. Science also
emerged in this part of the planet
long before the Europeans colonized
it.
The history of science and
mathematics show that similar to
other ancient civilizations, the early
civilizations in Africa are knowledge
producers, too (Serafica et al., 2017).
The early Egyptians settled along the fertile Nile valley as early as about 6000
BCE, and they began to record the patterns of lunar phases and the seasons,
both for agricultural and religious reasons.
Geometry
Mathematics is a deductive
science, and therefore originated
with the Greeks, beginning with
Thales and Pythagoras about
500 B.C.
From them came many of our
terms, even the term mathematics
itself.
Mathematics:from Greek
mathēmatikē (epistēmē), from
the base of manthanein ‘learn’.
The ancient Egyptians invented geometry and used it in building their great
temples and pyramids.
In addition, they used it to make layouts
and estimate the areas of the planted
lands.
The ancient Greece received their
education in Egypt including geometry. At
that time, they transferred the science
including geometry from Egypt to Europe.
Pyramids
The artifacts and monuments left
behind by the ancient Egyptians
have so intrigued scholars,
adventurers, and archaeologists
that almost every facet of their life
has been studies, dissected, and
recorded.
Of particular interest are the
methods employed to build the
great monuments dotting the land
and the reason for their being.
Although made of large blocks of
stone, many pyramids have been sited
with a precision that would challenge
the architectural and engineering
talents of today.
Yet while Egyptians seem to have left
a chronicle of almost everything else,
nothing exists on the procedures to
orient, level, and build the
pyramids-much less on why a
structure of this unusual size and
shape was chosen for royal tombs
(Isler, 2001).
Alchemy
Egypt was known to be the center of
alchemy which is known as the
mother of chemistry (Holmyard,
1990, Serafica et al., 2017).
The development of alchemy was
largely bound up with attempts to
solve the problem of the occurrence
of gold in the earth’s crust and to
produce it artificially.
The name alchemy points to
Egyptian and Arab sources since
Khem was the ancient name of
Egypt and al is the Arabic definite
article.
For this reason, Egypt, or Khem,
the country of dark soil, has often
been held to have given birth to
alchemy, the ‘art of the dark
country’.
It is certain that the ancient
Egyptians were skilled in a great
variety of arts, such as dyeing,
glass-tinting, enameling and
metallurgy which gave them some
rudimentary knowledge of
chemistry.
Alchemy was the art of
transmuting base metals, such as
tin and lead, into the noble ones,
silver and gold (Read, 1995).
The great Egyptian adept king, named
by the Greeks “Hermes Trismegistus”
is thought to have been the founder of
the art. Reputed to have lived about
1900 B.C., he was highly celebrated for
his wisdom and skill in the operation of
nature
Astronomy
Three types of calendars can be
found in Africa: lunar, solar, and
stellar.
Most African calendars are a
combination of the three (Peek &
Yankah, 2004).
A stone circle located in the
Nabta Playa basin may be one
of the world's oldest known
archaeoastronomical devices.
Built by the ancient Nubians
about 4800 BCE, the device
may have approximately
marked the summer solstice
(Haynie, 2014).
Egyptians were the first to
develop a 365-day, 12 month
calendar.
It was a stellar calendar,
created by observing the stars
(Parker, 1974).
Lebombo Bone
The earliest known mathematical artifact
is the Lebombo bone, estimated to
have originated from around 37,000
years ago.
It is a small piece of a baboon fibula,
marked with a 29 clearly defined
notches, found in the border cave
between Swaziland and South Africa.
This bone has been interpreted as a tally
stick used for counting and may thus be
the first hint of the emergence of
calculation in human history.
Lebombo Bone
Generally, the notches are thought to
represent counting by the principle of
one-to-one correspondence by pairing;
each notch could represent one object,
one person, or one day.
Since the Lebombo bone resembles
the calendar stick still in use during
the twentieth century by Bushman
clans in Namibia, it is also believed
that it may have been used as a lunar
counter.
With the 29 notches, in this
interpretation, humans would be able
to predict when the moon will be full
(Pejlare & Bråting, 2019).
