Prelude: Computing from Ancient Times to the Modern Era - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 3

law by the Rhode Island Assembly was incompetent and should never have been
passed without mathematical modeling of the results of reducing polling places on
voting wait times.
The point of carping about governments passing unwise laws and issuing fool-
ish regulations is because in today's world, computers and software could easily
provide impact assessments and perhaps even eliminate thoughts of passing such
foolish laws and regulations.
The fact that humans have used mathematics, made logical choices, and kept
records from prehistory through today brings up questions that are relevant to the
history of software and computers:
• What kinds of calculations do we use?
• What kinds of information or data do we need to save?
• What are the best storage methods for long-range retention of informa-
tion?
• What methods of analysis can help in making complicated choices or de-
cisions?
• What are the best methods of communicating data and knowledge?
It is interesting to consider these five questions from ancient times through the
modern era and see how computers and software gradually emerged to help in
dealing with them.
Early Sequence of Numerical Knowledge
Probably soon after humans could speak they could also count, at least up to ten,
by using their fingers. It is possible that Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons could count
as early as 35,000 years ago, based on parallel incised scratches on both a wolf
bone in Czechoslovakia from about 33,000 years ago and a baboon bone in Africa
from about 35,000 years ago.
Whether the scratches recorded the passage of days, numbers of objects, or
were just scratched as a way to pass time is not known. The wolf bone is the most
interesting due to having 55 scratches grouped into sets of five. This raises the
probability that the scratches were used to count either objects or time.
An even older mastodon tusk from about 50,000 years ago had 16 holes drilled
into it, of unknown purpose. Because Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons overlapped
from about 43,000 BCE to 30,000 BCE, these artifacts could have come from either
group or from other contemporaneous groups that are now extinct.