Question

The types of problems found on ancient papyri, books, and tablets focuses primarily on problems that relate to daily life. The solution methods for many ancient cultures are generally verbal, with mathematical statements written out in words. Why did most ancient cultures primarily write out their mathematical texts in words?

Answer 1

Most ancient societies had symbols to represent numbers, but they did not have symbols to represent operations or unknown quantities. Thus, the problems and solutions to the problems had to be written in word form.

Answer 2

Ancient cultures primarily used verbal methods to find the solution to unknown equations because many of these ancient societies did not have a defined symbolic notation for these unknown quantities and operations that we currently use, resulting in a great deal of confusion.