Where Did Algebra Come From?

from The Quiet Shift: Everyday Wonders for Sleep Hosted by The Quiet Shift

Here is a soft thought to fall asleep to: the word algebra means restoration - the mending of something broken. The same word once described the person who set your broken bone.Tonight, a gentle journey in the company of patient people. Babylonian scribes solving puzzles in wet clay at dusk. An Indian astronomer explaining negative numbers as fortunes and debts. A Baghdad scholar completing the square the way you would finish a jigsaw, corner by corner. Italian rivals, a poem that holds a secret, and a little Welsh equals sign invented to save a tired man some writing. Nothing to memorise, nothing to solve, no test at the end - just the quiet history of how human beings learned to find the things they had lost, one unknown at a time.Drift off somewhere around ancient Egypt. Nobody will mind. That is rather the point.