These ancient designs may be the first evidence of humans doing math

Images of plants painted on pottery made up to 8,000 years ago may be the earliest example of humans’ mathematical thought, a study has found.

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined pottery produced by the Halafian people of northern Mesopotamia, who lived between 6200 BC and 5500 BC.

Many bowls featured flowers that have been depicted with four, eight, 16, 32 or 64 petals. The use of these numbers forms a “geometric sequence” that implies a form of mathematical reasoning rooted in symmetry and repetition, the researchers said in the study published last month in the Journal of World Prehistory.

Study authors Yosef Garfinkel, a professor in archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Sarah Krulwich, a research assistant and MA student at the university’s archaeology department, examined pottery fragments from 29 Halafian sites, excavated over a 100-year period from 1899.

They found that in nearly every one of the 375 fragments that depict flowers, the number of petals is determined by this doubling sequence, which divides a circle into symmetrical units.

“The strict adherence to these numbers, which are repeated in examples from different sites over hundreds of kilometers, cannot be accidental, and indicates that it was done intentionally,” Garfinkel told CNN.