Archaeologists working in northern Mesopotamia say they have uncovered visual patterns that look a lot like structured counting, even though no written numerals existed at the time. The claim is bold: ...

Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

If you claim you’ve never wondered why math exists, you’re either lying or have not been truly bored yet. Gracie Cunningham, a teenager who took to TikTok to muse about how early mathematicians came ...

In 1886 the mathematician Leopold Kronecker famously said, “God Himself made the whole numbers — everything else is the work of men.” Indeed, mathematicians have introduced new sets of numbers besides ...