alicewonder:

very eye opening. we all borrow from each other, so the notion of eurocentric mathematics is kinda absurd. if you don’t know where i’m coming from, read up on the pythagorean theorem.

“Ethno-mathematician” Ron Eglash is the author of African Fractals, a book that examines the fractal patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa. By looking at aerial-view photos — and then following up with detailed research on the ground — Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.” 

@Blacknerds was tweeting about this today and I knew I had seen it somewhere.  Exciting stuff