Origin of mathematics

Answer 1

The first math operations would be such as a shepherd counting his sheep to make sure that none have been lost. And the counting of the days of the seasons so as to know when to plant.

An early written language was Cuneiform, which consisted of making a sharp-pointed triangular mark on a tablet of clay.

When Cuneiform was eventually deciphered, it was discovered that most of the records were accounting records! Whether the allowed irrigation had been used? Or the amount of grain, or olive oil had been placed in the communal storage?

Earlier than this, we know that the ancient Egyptians used math + geometry to make sure that buildings were square and so on.

From simple practical use of numbers, the ancient Greeks chose to consider such things as 'can we calculate the diagonal of a square?' Studying such unanswerable questions leads to further related thinking, and to the discovery of new branches of math.