Timeline of Mathematics - Before 1000 BC

Before 1000 BC

• ca. 70,000 BC — South Africa, ochre rocks adorned with scratched geometric patterns.
• ca. 35,000 BC to 20,000 BC — Africa and France, earliest known prehistoric attempts to quantify time.
• c. 20,000 BC — Nile Valley, Ishango Bone: possibly the earliest reference to prime numbers and Egyptian multiplication.
• c. 3400 BC — Mesopotamia, the Sumerians invent the first numeral system, and a system of weights and measures.
• c. 3100 BC — Egypt, earliest known decimal system allows indefinite counting by way of introducing new symbols.
• c. 2800 BC — Indus Valley Civilization on the Indian subcontinent, earliest use of decimal ratios in a uniform system of ancient weights and measures, the smallest unit of measurement used is 1.704 millimetres and the smallest unit of mass used is 28 grams.
• 2700 BC — Egypt, precision surveying.
• 2400 BC — Egypt, precise astronomical calendar, used even in the Middle Ages for its mathematical regularity.
• c. 2000 BC — Mesopotamia, the Babylonians use a base-60 positional numeral system, and compute the first known approximate value of π at 3.125.
• c. 2000 BC — Scotland, Carved Stone Balls exhibit a variety of symmetries including all of the symmetries of Platonic solids.
• 1800 BC — Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, findings volume of a frustum.
• 1650 BC — Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, copy of a lost scroll from around 1850 BC, the scribe Ahmes presents one of the first known approximate values of π at 3.16, the first attempt at squaring the circle, earliest known use of a sort of cotangent, and knowledge of solving first order linear equations.
• 1300 BC — Berlin papyrus (19th dynasty) contains a quadratic equation and its solution.