>>>> (Actually, the history of science and mathematics seems to involve 
>>>> quite a lot of things being discovered, forgotten and then 
>>>> rediscovered, often after a seriously large length of time.)
>>>
>>> That happens a lot when fanatics burn down libraries. Hasn't really 
>>> happened much since the invention of the printing press.
>>
>> Which, AFAIK, is "fairly recent".
> 
> Yep. The first "modern" press was the mid-1400's.  There were some in 
> China that didn't work out all that well due to the lack of an 
> alphabet.

Hahaha! Isn't China that country that *has* an alphabet, but it's 22,000 
characters or something absurd?

>> seemingly nothing inbetween. 
> 
> Quite possibly due to either libraries burning down, or due to math not 
> being all that useful without science, once the basics you need for 
> architecture census and such are figured out.

Check out the graph:

http://tinyurl.com/ydncoro

Notice the huge gap in the middle, and the much smaller gap between then 
and now? I'm sure other mathematicians *existed*, they just weren't 
especially famous... ;-)

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