Crest of the Peacock Intro

Three things that surprised me (and why):

Thing the first: I was surprised by the initial focus of the book on the direct impact of colonialism and how current scholars are working to decolonize. It makes complete sense as a starting point for this sort of text, but my experience with mathematics instruction generally had prepared me for a text that was not so self-critical. It makes me think of how those colonial impacts are still felt today with what we consider to be "real mathematics" and the European focus on formalism and the mathematics of the academic class. I'm always very inspired by people without formal math training who think in new, creative, mathematical ways. A historical example of this would be Ramanujan, for example.

Thing the second: I didn't realize that Spain was closely connected with Arab mathematics. I don't have a good understanding of the political history of that time beyond a simplistic understanding of what was happening in Europe and China (I wonder why that is!), so it was interesting to learn of that connection. I was fortunate to have learned math from a math historian (Glen Van Brummelen), so I'm familiar with many of the other examples given. I was also encouraged by Glen to read Berlinghoff & Gouvea during my undergrad, so I was a bit less easily surprised by the mathematics of the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Arabs.

Thing the third: I didn't expect that Babylonians were using a generalized form of algebra. My impression was previously that algebra was a technique developed exclusively in the Arab world and later diffused to other cultures of mathematics. This leads to a more general point of surprise, which is the amount of cross-cultural communication that was clearly occurring.