Suddenly, Rurik, who was still staying in the warm longhouse of the priests, warming himself around the charcoal pile and shining the light on the wooden board while he was busy calculating, immediately stopped what he was doing.
He suddenly looked at Priest Vilia, who was wearing deerskin and sitting peacefully cross-legged in a meditative posture, and asked loudly: "Grandma!"
"Huh? Are you hungry? My child." Vilia suddenly opened her eyes.
"One thing! I want to know which day this year is the real winter!" Suddenly, Rurik felt that his words were not rigorous, and then asked: "This year's Hanukkah day. What day is it on the calendar?"
"You ask this? My child, have you calculated the result?"
"Yes! If you can tell me the exact day of Hanukkah, I can quickly calculate the result I want, and I won't have to measure the shadow tomorrow."
"It's December 28th, my boy."
Vilia quickly cheered up. She had indeed been a quiet observer these days. She had witnessed Rurik display many amazing behaviors.
What shocked Vilia the most was that she saw the child actually using an oriental number system on the wooden board!
According to Villa's understanding, it was a type of number invented by people living in a hot and desolate world in the far east. It was very different from the Roman number system. It is undeniable that the ancestors of the Russians had encountered other people with special clothing. They were traders from afar, claiming to be from the great country in the far east.
They claimed to have done a lot of trade with the Romans and were willing to open up new commercial routes to the northern ice and snow lands.
Those strange people were real, but they never appeared again after exchanging silver for some deerskin and sealskin from the Ross tribe long ago.
But at least they left something behind. When he was young, Villa was lucky enough to learn about another number system and the strange rumors of those weirdos.
ah! Villa couldn't help but think of her youth.
At that time, she was really unique among the tribe. She did not have a huge desire for marriage. It seemed that she was a person who worshiped Odin and was the successor to the future Valkyrie, so she had to remain pure forever.
Vilia believed very much in the myths told by his parents. Now that his parents have passed away, he has become the eldest person in the tribe.
Vilia's studious spirit made her a strange person in the tribe. Thanks to this studiousness, she knew the most knowledge and eventually became the head of the priests.
Seeing the studious Rurik, Villa couldn't help but think of his own youth.
She simply could not imagine that she could not give a reasonable explanation for all the things Rurik had shown in front of her during these days. She really could only believe that Rurik was clearly showing a miracle.
Of course, this miracle is not about infinite strength or invulnerability, but about innate knowledge.
As the head of the priests, Vilia was always calm and calm. Only when she truly witnessed Rurik's talent did she lose her temper many times.
I told Rurik the specific date, and the child I saw wiped a few wooden boards with a coarse cloth and started making new calculations. Yes, the whole calculation uses those "Oriental numerals" and some other symbols that are incomprehensible, and there is also a vague Roman vocabulary mixed in.
Finally, so many problems weighed on Vilia's mind that she couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Rurik, my child. Do you understand the Eastern numerals you are using now by nature?"
Suddenly, the piece of charcoal that was sharpened into a pen shape and held in Rurik's young right hand fell down. He was shocked and didn't know how to respond.
"Don't be nervous, there is nothing to be nervous about. You are a child blessed by Odin, and you are full of miracles."
What else could Rurik say? What shocked him was actually not that Vilya doubted the "Arabic numerals" he used, but that Vilya knew that these were some numbers and were named "Oriental numerals".
This fully shows that Vilia knows what he is writing! In other words, among the Rus tribe living in Scandinavia, there are actually people who know this kind of numbers invented by ancient Indians tens of thousands of kilometers away!
Vilia could only describe Rurik's surprise as a miracle, and she was very happy to share her past.
She came up with a very reasonable explanation, but Rurik could only claim that knowledge was innate.
So, the Vikings of this era had quite close interactions with people in Asia? Rurik was curious.
I'm afraid this is not the case. The two extremely distant ethnic groups did have exchanges, and they obviously did not have a larger impact on each other.
Rurik was very emotional. He felt as if the Ross tribe had forgotten another way up. It is said that since the tribe can advance all the way to Novgorod, it is logical to enter the upper reaches of the Volga River, land directly on the coastal areas of the Caucasus Mountains after entering the Black Sea, and eventually come into contact with the desert peoples of Asia.
Theoretically it is feasible, but the reality is before our eyes. Only the old Vilia priest in the entire Ross tribe has a certain concept of the powerful desert people.
For example, Villa specifically claimed that they were some yellow-skinned black men who were completely different from the black Romans he had encountered. Those yellow-skinned men in black always wear huge turbans and have huge black beards, just like the big beards that men in the Ross tribe like to wear.
They were just traders looking to exchange some pelts for some strange and wonderful things said to come from further lands.
Based on these few words of description, Rurik immediately thought that what Vilia was talking about was the big food in black.
Rurik understood the basic context of historical development very well. In 828 AD, the Black Food was at its peak!
The influence of a country's strength will be many-sided, for example, business and trade will become developed. Since the Dashi in history were happy to trade with the Tang Dynasty via the Silk Road, they would naturally try to go north to trade with the Vikings in the far north.
Since it is trade, the number system of the Black Clothes and Food habits will naturally collide and communicate with the Roman numeral system.
Objectively speaking, the number system born in India eventually became a global number system because its writing logic was easy to clean and the number symbols were simple to label. I am afraid it had this potential from the beginning.
Rurik simply wrote all the modern numerical symbols from 0 to 9 in charcoal on a wooden board. He also enumerated larger numbers, counting them in pure decimal superposition, clearly reflected in the simplicity and clarity of this number system.
It has to be said that this modern number system is more advanced than the one inherent in the Vikings. Villa is a discerning person. She not only understands this, but also realizes that it is more advanced than the Roman system.
"My child, do people in the far east use these numbers?" Villa asked in surprise.
"It's true, at least that's what the yellow-faced and black-clothed men you encountered are like."
When the words reached this level, Rurik could no longer control his emotions. He was eager to show all the basic mathematics he knew in front of his "friend" Vilia.
Rurik even pointed out the use of the signs of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but fearing that Villa could not hear clearly, he also deliberately made up some seemingly childish but very realistic arithmetic problems to prove his "21st century modern mathematics foundation" Tool" superiority.
Everything was as Rurik expected. Villya's heart was strongly shocked, and his old body began to tremble with excitement.
Because Rurik used a method that the people of the Ross tribe knew very well, that is, he brought "new mathematical calculation tools" into the case of commodity trading.
For example, he drew the shape of a sheep's head on a wooden board, and put the number "6" in front of it, then drew a plus sign, and then drew an antler with the number "2", and when he marked the equal sign , and finally write the number "10". To put it simply, six sheepskins plus two reindeer skins equal ten silver coins.
Rurik listed three examples in a row. Not only did Vilia understand them completely, she also had to further admire the mathematical ability of the child in front of her.
Because in a sense, the merchants of the Viking tribe were born with mathematical talents.
Rurik has already understood this, and he also understands the very complicated goods price system in the tribe, and also understands that no one has ever interfered with the economic development of the tribe. Everything is the spontaneous trade behavior of many merchants, creating the current relatively stable Prices - that's the so-called "invisible hand".
In the barbaric era, people in the far north were full of barbaric habits. They went back to plunder the wealth of other hostile tribes, and also put prices on various things they controlled, even...
It was not until the Enlightenment Movement that a small group of people in Europe were the first to wake up. They got their own insights from the Bible and came to the conclusion that human life is priceless, and actively advocated it. In the end, the whole world finally reached this consensus.
