The binary system was used by the ancients more than 1,000 years before Leibnitz invented it

Sky Nguyen 10/12/22 01:02pm nguồn bình luận 999

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German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz is known as the first person to introduce the binary system, laying the foundation for the computer to be born. However, the binary system was used in ancient India and Polynesia long before Leibnitz invented it.

The binary system was used by the ancients more than 1,000 years before Leibnitz invented it — The binary system was used in ancient India and in Polynesia long before Leibnitz invented it. (Photo: Ancientpages.com)

In 1703, the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated the advantages of the binary system in computation and thus laid the foundation for the computer.

However, Leibniz was not the first to discover the binary system. His invention was just a re-invention based on ancient knowledge.

There is evidence that ancient Indians and Polynesians were familiar with binary codes thousands of years ago.

With these discoveries, scientists must now question the origin of the binary system and when it was actually invented.

Ancient Knowledge of Binary in Polynesia

After studying the languages of the small Pacific island of Mangareva, and the French Polynesian archipelago, Norwegian researchers discovered that one of the two number systems commonly used in Mangareva has three superimposed binary degrees. to a decimal structure.

(Photo: messagetoeagle.com)

“The seafaring Polynesians left Mangareva around 800 AD in search of better stones for important tools, and they found them on the Pitcairn Islands. Trade flourished between these islands and the settlers crafted giant stone Go‌ds, carved human, animal and geometric figures into rock drawings, and established burial sites. and left many artifacts. Some people came here in 1790 and found their temple foundations and stone tools, proving that Pitcairn was once inhabited by an ancient Polynesian community, probably from the island of Mangareva."

The invention of the binary coefficient by the people of Mangareva, centuries before it was formally described by Leibniz, demonstrates the advancement in computation even without the full range of mathematical symbols. This highlights the role of culture in the development and diversity of cognitive arithmetic.

Stone carvings of ancient Polynesians (Image: ancientpages.com)

Scientists discovered that the Polynesians who arrived in Mangareva more than 1,000 years ago used a decimal numbering system similar to the Polynesians elsewhere. However, in 1450, the people of Mangareva used a system of combining base 10 and 2. In the language of Mangareva, there are words that represent the numbers 1 to 9 like coefficients. decimal.

For numbers from 20 to 80 they use the binary coefficient, the same separate characters for the numbers 20, 40 and 80.

The music reveals the knowledge of the ancient Indians

There is an interesting piece of music written by Pingala and a key scholar and author of Chhandah shastra. The texture of this piece shows the knowledge of binary coefficients. The music is estimated to date from the 2nd century AD, which is 1,500 years older than Leibnitz’s binary.

According to the researchers, Chhandah shastra represents the connection of short and long syllables in a piece of music through a binary coefficient.

It is sometimes said that Pingala was the first to use zero because he used the binary system for so long. However 0 and 1 are usually only used in modern algorithms, and Pingala used laghu (light) and guru (heavy) instead of 0 and 1 in describing syllables.

Besides, the fact that the binary coefficient was invented in India is hardly surprising to researchers. Not long ago, scientists discovered an ancient Indian manuscript called Bakhshali, the content of which rewrote the history of zero and the whole of mathematics.