The Rise of Rurik

Chapter 47: The Legend Of The Yellow Faced Men In Black And Their Numbers

Immediately, he stayed in the warm priest's house, heating up around the charcoal pile, and by the way, Rurik, who was busy calculating with the light on the wooden board, stopped the work in his hand.

He suddenly looked at Priest Veria, who was dressed in deerskin and sat peacefully cross-legged in a meditative posture, and asked loudly, "Grandma!"

"Huh? Are you hungry? My child." Veria suddenly opened her eyes.

"One thing! I want to know which day is the real winter this year!" Rurik suddenly felt that his words were not serious, and then asked: "Our Hanukkah day this year. What day is it on the calendar?"

"You ask this? Child, have you figured out any results?"

"Yes! If you can tell me the exact date of Hanukkah, I will quickly calculate what I want, and I won't have to measure shadows tomorrow."

"It's December twenty-eighth, my child."

Veria quickly recovered herself, she was indeed a quiet observer these days, and she had seen Rurik exhibit a lot of amazing behavior.

What surprised Veria the most was that she saw that the child was actually using an oriental number system on the wooden board!

As Veria understood, it was a number invented by people who lived in a hot and barren world in the far east, and it was very different from the Roman number system. It is undeniable that the ancestors of the Rus met other people with special clothing, who were merchants from afar, claiming to be from a great country in the far east.

They claimed to have done a lot of trade with the Romans, and they were happy to open up new commercial routes to the icy north.

Those strange people were real, but they never showed up after they traded some deerskins and sealskins for silver from the Ross tribe long ago.

But at least they left something behind, and the young Veria was fortunate enough to learn about another number system, and the strange rumors of those eccentrics.

What! Veria couldn't help but think of his youthful years.

At that time, she was really unique in the tribe. She didn't have a huge desire for marriage, as if she should be a worshiper of Odin, a follow-up to the future Valkyrie, and she must remain pure forever.

Veria believed very much in the myths told by her parents, who had long since passed away, and she had become the eldest person in the tribe.

Veria's studious spirit made her a wonder person of the tribe. Thanks to her eagerness to learn, she knew the most knowledge and eventually became the head of the priests.

Seeing the studious Rurik, Veria couldn't help but think of his youth.

She could never have imagined that Rurik was showing so much in front of her these days that she couldn't make a reasonable explanation. She really could only believe that Rurik was clearly showing a miracle.

Of course, this miracle is not infinitely powerful or invulnerable, but a huge innate knowledge.

As the head of the priests, Veria was always calm in the chaos. Only when she really witnessed Rurik's talent, she had lost her composure many times.

I told Rurik the specific day, and the boy I saw wiped a few boards with a rough cloth and started a new calculation. Yes, those "oriental numerals" are used throughout the calculation, as well as some other symbols that are incomprehensible, and Roman vocabulary is vaguely mixed in them.

Finally, many problems weighed on Willia's mind, and she finally couldn't hold back.

"Rurik, my boy. Do you know the oriental numerals you use now?"

Suddenly, the piece of charcoal shaved into the shape of a pen in Rurik's tender right hand fell, and he was startled, and he didn't know how to answer.

"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 can Rurik say? What he was shocked by was not Veria's doubts about the "Arabic numerals" he used, but that Veria knew that they were numbers.

And was named "Oriental Numbers". This fully shows that Veria knows what he is writing! In other words, in the Rus tribe living in Scandinavia, there are people who actually understand this kind of numbers invented by ancient Indians tens of thousands of kilometers away!

Veria can only describe Rurik's astonishment as a miracle, and she is also very happy to share her past.

She came up with a very reasonable explanation, and Rurik, he really can only claim that knowledge is innate.

So, the Vikings of this era have had quite close exchanges with people in Asia? Rurik was full of curiosity.

I am afraid this is not the case. The two extremely distant ethnic groups did communicate, and obviously they did not cause a larger-scale impact on each other.

Rurik was very emotional, and he felt as if the Ross tribe had forgotten another way to go. 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 in the coastal areas of the Caucasus Mountains after entering the Black Sea, and finally contact the desert peoples of Asia.

Theoretically it is feasible, the reality is in sight, the entire Ross tribe only has a certain conception of the powerful desert peoples by the aged Veria priests.

For example, Veria specifically claimed that it was some black people with yellow skin, who were completely different from the black Romans they had encountered. Those yellow-skinned men in black always wear huge headscarves and also have huge black beards, just like the beards that the men of the Ross tribe like to keep.

They're just businessmen trying to get some pelts in exchange for some strange and wonderful things said to come from farther lands.

From the description of these few words, Rurik immediately thought that what Veria was talking about was the food in black.

Rurik understood the basic context of historical development very well. In 828 AD, the Great Food in Black was in its prosperous period!

The strong influence of a country will be multi-faceted, such as commercial trade will become developed. Since the great food in history was happy to trade with Ju Tang via the Silk Road, they would naturally try to go north to trade with the Vikings in the extreme north.

Since it is a trade, the number system of the habit of eating in black will naturally have to collide and communicate with the Roman numeral system.

Objectively speaking, the number system that was born in India, because the writing logic is easy to clean and the number symbols are simple, it will eventually become a global number system, and I am afraid it has this potential from the beginning.

Rurik simply wrote all the modern numerals from 0 to 9 in charcoal on wooden boards. He also enumerates larger numbers, which are clearly expressed in a simple and clear number system in a purely decimal superimposed counting method.

I have to say that this modern digital system is more advanced than the one inherent to the Vikings. Veria is a discerning person. She not only understands this, but also realizes that it is more advanced than the Roman one.

"My child, are people in the far east using this number?" Veria asked in surprise.

"It's true, at least the yellow-faced and black-clothed people you encountered are like this."

Speaking of this level, Rurik has been unable to control his emotions, and he is eager to show all the mathematical foundations he knows in front of his "year-old friend" Veria.

Rurik even pointed out the use of the symbols of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. For fear that Veria would not be able to hear clearly. He also deliberately compiled some seemingly naive but very realistic arithmetic problems to prove his set "Modern Mathematical Basic Tools for the 21st Century" Superiority.

Everything was as Rurik had estimated, and Veria's heart was shaken violently, and his aged body began to tremble with excitement.

Because Rurik is using a method well known to the people of the Rus tribe, that is, bringing "new mathematical calculation tools" to the case of commodity trading.

For example, he painted the shape of a sheep's head on a wooden board and prefixed it with a number "6", followed by a plus sign, followed by a deer antler with the number "2", when he marked the equal sign , and finally write the number "10". That is, the simple and clear explanation, six sheepskins plus two reindeer skins, equals ten silver coins.

Rurik cited three examples in a row. Not only did Veria fully understand it, but 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 a talent for mathematics.

Rurik has already understood this, and he also understands the very complicated commodity price system in the tribe. He 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, the people of the extreme northern world were full of barbaric habits. They went back to loot the wealth of other hostile tribes, and also marked the price of various things in their possession, even...

It was not until the Enlightenment was surging, that a small group of talents 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.