Fascinating discussion about African design, etc..., by Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician.
"By looking at aerial-view photos -- and then following up with detailed research on the ground -- Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.
As he puts it: "When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."
I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
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2 comments:
Isn't this fascinating!? A professor I was teaching for this semester gave our students the link to this video last month, and, when I watched it, it just blew me away. I'm always a bit sensitive to tone and audience for these sort of lectures, but the research behind it is amazing. I've been fascinated with the concept of fractals since I saw the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia about 10 years ago.
dont know anything about mathematics, but this discovery is surely fascinating as carmen posted. may i request a ling to read the full details of this report/research?
Ka huta lafiya Mailafiya
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