History

Humans have studied mathematics seriously for thousands of years. Progress has happened at different rates in different eras and in different parts of the world, and knowing when and how particular mathematical ideas arose can be very useful for understanding why mathematics is as it is today. It can be helpful to remember that mathematics didn’t arrive written in textbooks, or on tablets of stone: it was developed by people, who were invariably exploring an interesting question or trying to make sense of an observation.