Polynesians May Have Invented Binary Math

sciencehabit writes "How old is the binary number system? Perhaps far older than the invention of binary math in the West. The residents of a tiny Polynesian island may have been doing calculations in binary—a number system with only two digits—centuries before it was described by Gottfried Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, in 1703."

Comments

Re:"Discovered" would be more appropriate

[PIBM]

I'm sorry for you! If you had all of your fingers, you'd make it to 1023!

Re:There were 10 types of ancient societies

[Mr D from 63]

I thought they invented polynomials.

What's with this "may"?

[newcastlejon]

Either they did or they didn't.

Re:How is this news?

[JustOK]

There was a Mayan tribe that went around naked. The men used base 21 and the women base 22

Binary is much older than Leibniz...

[Anonymous Coward]

Leibniz freely admits that he took ideas from the I Ching: http://www.leibniz-translations.com/binary.htm

What is amazing in this reckoning is that this arithmetic by 0 and 1 is found to contain the mystery of the lines of an ancient King and philosopher named Fuxi, who is believed to have lived more than 4000 years ago, and whom the Chinese regard as the founder of their empire and their sciences.2 There are several linear figures attributed to him, all of which come back to this arithmetic, but it is sufficient to give here the Figure of the Eight Cova, as it is called, which is said to be fundamental, and to join to them the explanation which is obvious, provided that one notices, firstly, that a whole line — means unity, or 1, and secondly, that a broken line -- means zero, or 0.

The Chinese lost the meaning of the Cova or Lineations of Fuxi, perhaps more than a thousand years ago, and they have written commentaries on the subject in which they have sought I know not what far out meanings, so that their true explanation now has to come from Europeans. Here is how: It was scarcely more than two years ago that I sent to Reverend Father Bouvet,3 the celebrated French Jesuit who lives in Peking, my method of counting by 0 and 1, and nothing more was required to make him recognize that this was the key to the figures of Fuxi. Writing to me on 14 November 1701, he sent me this philosophical prince's grand figure, which goes up to 64, and leaves no further room to doubt the truth of our interpretation, such that it can be said that this Father has deciphered the enigma of Fuxi, with the help of what I had communicated to him. And as these figures are perhaps the most ancient monument of [GM VII, p227] science which exists in the world, this restitution of their meaning, after such a great interval of time, will seem all the more curious.

The Chinese (of course)

[nightcats]

Perhaps an apocryphal story, but it goes that Leibniz was introduced to the I Ching (Yijing) oracle by a Catholic missionary friend who had gotten it translated into Latin (must have been strange). Anyway, the story goes that Leibniz instantly recognized the binary system in the 64 hexagrams and 8 trigrams. The I Ching is somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 yrs. old in the format and ordering it still has today.

Re:"Discovered" would be more appropriate

[mugnyte]

That's called thumb's-complement - still in IEEE committee, but quite handy.

Re:"Discovered" would be more appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are always negative when good looking women are around..... Sorry for you.

Re:There were 10 types of ancient societies

[Mateorabi]

No there are 10 types of people:
Those that understand binary
Those that don't
And those that don't realize the joke is base-3.