Abstract
"Chinese mathematics" was defined by Chinese in ancient times as the "art of calculation". This art was both a practical and a spiritual one. Like in Europe, many traces of calculations and solutions of equations were found by archaeologists. Today, these archaeological discoveries enable us to assert that Chinese civilization was very advanced compared to the other civilizations in the field of mathematics. But how did Chinese mathematics evolve through the centuries and on which concepts and discoveries were they precursor of modern mathematics? These numerical inscriptions contained both tally and code symbols which were based on a decimal system and they employed a positional value system. This proves that the Chinese were among the first civilizations to understand and efficiently use a decimal numeration system. Moreover, the ancient Chinese civilization was the first to discover many mathematical concepts, such as the pi number (π), the existence of zero, the magic squares or the Pascal's triangle. All these discoveries, which nowadays constitute the fundamental bases of arithmetics, were discovered centuries later in Occident. Then, during the 1st century A.D., the Chinese worked out the most famous of the mathematical treaties of ancient China, the "Jiuzhang Suanshu". This treaty, also called "Arithmetic in Nine Sections", is the most well-known and influential Chinese mathematical text.
