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Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by kqr on Saturday May 21, 2022 @07:35AM (#31456998)
As far as geniuses go, many of the people we would think of as geniuses today have two things the people we are discussing here had not:

- They are able to stand on the shoulders of a far broader range of giants, thanks to writing; and

- They have access to far more tools of reasoning (arithmetic with Roman numerals is just the start!) that those in the past did not have.

So while there may well have been intellectual equals to the geniuses of today also back then, they would not have been able to perform the feats of geniuses today. Again, for lack of tooling, not wit.

Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by eropple on Saturday May 21, 2022 @09:22AM (#31457648)
> arithmetic with Roman numerals is just the start!

Arabic, I think you mean. Arithmetic with Roman numerals is awful.

Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by laxmin on Saturday May 21, 2022 @09:48AM (#31457874)
Hindu numerals if we have to be precise, transmitted to the west by Arabs
Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by eropple on Saturday May 21, 2022 @10:16AM (#31458130)
Right, true--the term I've most often heard in Western circles these days is "Hindu-Arabic" numerals, but I didn't want to confuse.
Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by CydeWeys on Saturday May 21, 2022 @10:49AM (#31458373)
I've also heard the term Western Arabic, contrasted with Eastern Arabic.
Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by kqr on Saturday May 21, 2022 @09:59AM (#31457987)
...of course. Roman numerals held us back for centuries. Sorry about that embarrassing brainfart.
Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by Jedd on Saturday May 21, 2022 @09:51AM (#31457910)
> Arabic, I think you mean. Arithmetic with Roman numerals is awful.

Hindu numerals, do you mean?

Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by earth_walker on Saturday May 21, 2022 @10:52AM (#31458401)
Why Hindu (the religion) and not Hindi (the language)?
Re:Ancient civilisation under eastern Turkey estimated to be... by Jedd on Saturday May 21, 2022 @11:07AM (#31458534)
I really don't know. It's generally phrased as Hindu-originating - I can only speculate why it's now attached to a religious / social group rather than a language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Hindu%E2%80%93A...