Today many Africans trek to Europe and other places to study and work, but the reverse was true in the past when other nationals braced the peril of the seas and deserts to come to study in Africa. These included European intellectual and cultural icons who sat at the feet of African masters and went back to their native lands to spread the light they had seen from the so-called "dark continent". They came to learn the rudiments of science, mathematics, philosophy and all. Contrary to what many would have expected, the oldest universities in the world are located in Africa, not in ancient Greece or Europe, a study has revealed. The foundation for the US first university was laid as late as in 1636 while the oldest university in Europe, the University of Bologna in Italy was founded in 1088 years after Africa had established universities, followed by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1096.
According to the research, the oldest universities in the world are located in Egypt, Morocco and Mali respectively. Almost every Greek philosopher worth his salt, from the Ionian school consisting of Thales, Athenian school spent time in Africa or their tutors were taught by African philosophers. After nearly 3,000 years of prohibition against the Greeks, they were allowed to enter Kemer to study. This was made possible, first, through the Persian invasion and, secondly, through the invasion of Alexander the Great (from the 6th century BC) to the death of Aristotle (322 BC). When Egypt came under Roman control, they looted and ransacked the great libraries of Egypt in 1798 AD. Indeed, Democritus, another Greek historian, accused his fellow Greek, Anaxagoras, of having "stolen" the Egyptian mystical teachings on the sun and moon, and passed it round as his.
Africa is home to the world's earliest known use of Mathematical measuring tools and calculation, confirming the continent as the birthplace of both basic and advanced mathematics. The knowledge spread throughout the entire world after series of migration out of Africa beginning around 30,000BC and later by a series of invasion of Africa by European and Asians (1700BC).
The oldest mathematical instrument is the Lebombo bone (35,000 BC) a baboon fibula used as a measuring device and was named from its location of discovery in Lebombo mountain in Swaziland or Eswatini. Ishango bone (20,000 BC) is one of the world's oldest mathematical instrument also made from baboon fibula bone discovered in present day Congo. The bones has markings that represents different quantities.
It is now house in the museum of natural science in Brussels.
References
1. James, George G. M.,(March 3, 2010).Stolen Legacy: The Egyptian Origins of Western Philosophy". Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy. 3 (2): 167–170. doi:10.3860/krit.v3i2.1536. ISSN 1908-7330.
2. Bangura, Abdul Karim. African Mathematics: From Bones to Computers. University Press of America, 2011.
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