So first Socrates had opinions but is certainty not an authority on the development of humanity through time. Also ironically we know what he supposedly said and are still talking about it because his words have been written down.
They have been written down because there was in Athenian society enough surplus/inequality for those guys to hang out and talk and be influencers (while their wives and slaves were doing all the hard work) and produce some kind of paper/parchment.
Just like the Aztec empire (from whom we have the huehuetlatolli) who also had production surplus thus social classes thus the leisure of an intellectual life.
Both have benefited from 10000 years of settled human history painstakingly modifying the landscape to create that surplus and yet they still didn't have algebra so there's no shot this collection of tribes 12000 were conceptualizing the law of large numbers or whatnot.
Maybe I overreacted but I feel like this kind of blurb in article sounds good but is is completely misleading in that it crushes developmental history into a simple narrative to pander to a crowd of people lacking curiosity when it goes beyond knowing that colonialism is bad
So sorry I may have been talking past you to my make point but thank for your substantiated comment, that was interesting information
It's all good, I take a much more expansive view of technological development than most people.
Regarding algebra, we know very little about precolonial mathematics. Maya mathematics we've figured out from the calendar system and has zero plus the basic operations. Aztec mathematics seems to have had the same, and we're pretty sure they understood fractions based on how they recorded land area (recording field dimensions) and unit conversions between different length measures. Our knowledge is limited by the very small amount of preservation there was, not because they didn't invent other mathematics.
Similarly people in what's not the US had leisure time for things like experimentation, hobbies, and pet birds. We know they had preferences on certain numbers (3 & 4 acted as their equivalents of lucky 7, for example).
They have been written down because there was in Athenian society enough surplus/inequality for those guys to hang out and talk and be influencers (while their wives and slaves were doing all the hard work) and produce some kind of paper/parchment.
Just like the Aztec empire (from whom we have the huehuetlatolli) who also had production surplus thus social classes thus the leisure of an intellectual life.
Both have benefited from 10000 years of settled human history painstakingly modifying the landscape to create that surplus and yet they still didn't have algebra so there's no shot this collection of tribes 12000 were conceptualizing the law of large numbers or whatnot.
Maybe I overreacted but I feel like this kind of blurb in article sounds good but is is completely misleading in that it crushes developmental history into a simple narrative to pander to a crowd of people lacking curiosity when it goes beyond knowing that colonialism is bad
So sorry I may have been talking past you to my make point but thank for your substantiated comment, that was interesting information