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FREEDOMWAYS THIRD QUARTER 1966 lations of the works of Horace and Einstein into Senegalese (Wolof) by Diop, an African scholar, prove this argument inadequate. The fact that some particular language consists of only cardinal and not ordinal numbers, it would seem, is due to the social experience of the people rather than their inability to express complex ideas. It is all too easy to pass another people off as inferior if they do not entertain the same ideas we do. However, when we do this we are unnecessarily kicking up dust because it is much more fruitful to our understanding of people if we just simply assume that they are-stripped of their cultural trappings-the same as ourselves. Language, art, society; these all are invented by man, and each particular people are responsible for their own peculiar forms of culture: it is quite reasonable that they should desire to keep what is by depth of involvement most certainly theirs. One reads Du Bois and feels this wonderful sense of rhythmic harmony; this "soul" which has the capacity to sing and dance on a flaming world, which permeates the fashions of the West with a warmth that streams from sunlight: one feels that Western science is incomplete, lacking in humanity, and it is elating to think that this once bowed human heart shall create a warmer atmosphere in the temples of science than cold aristocratic stars. numerical systems in Africa Before the advent of European civilization we find in Africa a variety of number systems. The Pygmies count: a, oa, ua, oa-oa (two-two), oa-oa-a (two-two-one), oa-oa-oa (two-two-two), and so on. The early Syriac numerals show influence of the scale of two, which indicates the antiquity of this form of counting. Another people of Africa called the Demaras are reported to have had a system of counting based on three. This is also a system which is very ancient; it was used by the Phoenicians of the ancient city of Tyre. It is contended by historians that the first system to be used extensively was the quinary (based on the scale of five). Mungo Park (1771-1806) is reported to have found a tribe in Africa which used this system; the Hottentots also used it. The Bolan, or Buramans, of the west coast of Africa used six as a base. Few traces of this system exist except in Southern Bretagne; it is reported that the inhabitants of this region still use the word triouech (three sixes) for eighteen. David Eugene Smith says, "Of the various other evidences of the scale of twenty mention may be made of the system by the Very tribe 240
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 11:09:09