Northwest Africa is an immense territory extending from the Mediterranean shores to the Niger River and from Libya to the Canary Islands. It is here where Berber culture began to develop about 10,000 years ago, and where it has continued to develop until the present.
Despite the antiquity and widespread diffusion of Berber culture, North African studies have traditionally understated its contribution to human history. Camps (1980) aptly summarized the situation in the title of his book: Berbères: aux marges de l'Histoire (Berbers: On the Margins of History). Although the overall situation has improved in the last decades thanks to the efforts of a new generation of scholars – one main outcome being the ongoing publication of the Encyclopédie Berbère, of which 27 volumes have already appeared – actual research on the mathematics and astronomies of the ancient Berbers remains scarce.
A faithful exposition of the situation must take into account two main areas of research, each one of...
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García, J.B. (2008). Mathematics and Astronomies of the Ancient Berbers. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8735
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