3. Напишите значение слов, которые Вы знаете:

Century, word, develop, add, invention, zero, number, column, important, place, society (societies – мн.ч.), finger, hand, use, day, year, find – found - found, young, wolf, some, read – read – read, write – wrote – written, language, begin – began – begun, science, people, piece, exercise, picture, man – men, arm, stone, moon, this, which, also, that (союз), each, what, most (существительное), a few.

TEXT.

Active Vocabulary.

device –устройство

the Chinese – китайцы

leave (left) behind – оставлять после себя

stem – происходить

digit – цифра

not until much later – лишь несколько позднее

remarkable – представлять

represent – представлять

derive – происходить

human beings – люди

jawbone – челюсть

cluster – большая группа

make it easier – чтобы было легче

ordinal – порядковый

cardinal – количественный

event – событие

common – обычный

relation – соотношение

produce – (зд.) быть причиной возникновения

awareness – осознанность

bone – кость

engrave – резать (по кости)

representation – подобие

prime – простой

somewhat – до некоторой степени

for instant – например

depict – изображать

a coiled rope – сложенная кольцом верёвка

blossom – цветок

tadpole – головастик

toward heaven – к небу

astonishment – удивление

evidence – свидетельство

dot – точка

counters – счёты

Around 3000 B.C. the first computing device – abacus – was developed by the Chinese. Herodotus ( 484 - 425 B.C.) mentioned pebble abacuses in the fifth century B.C., and even left behind calculations performed on them. There are references to pebble abacuses in the writing of Demosthenes in the fourth century B.C. The word «calculus» stems from the Latin word for pebble.

Between the first and the second century A.D., the Hindus developed a ninedigit numbering system. It was not until much later that they added their most remarkable invention, the zero, which represented the empty column in the abacus. The zero in one of the most important inventions in human history.

Aristotle ( 384- 322 B.C.) was the first man to note that the base – 10 system or in a few places, the base – 5, which eventually evolved in most societies, derived, from the simple fact that human beings had five fingers on each hand.

A number of societies adopted other bases for their mathematics. The Babylonians used base 60. The Mayas used 360 derived from the number of days they computed for one year, including a figure for the zero. A few societies utilized a rudimentary binary system, just 1 and 2.

In Czechoslovakia, anthropologists found the jawbones of a young wolf containing fifty-five marks arranged in two clusters, twenty – five in the first, thirty in the second. In each case the clusters were arranged in groups of five to make it easier to read. The use of written numbers proceeded the use of words for the numbers. Some experts have suggested in fact, that, ordinal numbers proceeded cardinal numbers in the language (one, two three). The use of numbers to explain astronomical events, beginning with the seasons and the changes in the moon, had become common, and this relation produced the first science. The relation between numbers were also beginning to interest people, and from that awareness the mathematical sciences evolved.

A piece of bone found in Africa and dated around 8.500 B.C. has engraved marking containing what appear to be representations of the numbers 11, 13, 17, 19, all of which are prime numbers (they can be divided only by themselves and by the number 1), a somewhat advanced mathematical exercise.

Each culture has its own, unique method of writing computations. The Egyptians, for instance had a system in which the number 1 to 9 were depicted by one to nine vertical lines. A 10 was a U or circle, 10 was a coiled rope, 1.000 was a lotus blossom , 10.000.000 was the picture of a man with his arms stretched toward heaven in astonishment. Some evidence indicates that the Egyptians also evolved a method of computation of papyrus using dots and lines. The Egyptians also employed stone counters.