Blog 1: The Synopsis

The Medici family served as merchants and bankers. Holding offices in Ancona, Antwerp, Avignon, Basel, Bologna, Bruges, Geneva, London, Lubeck, Lyons, Milan, Naples, Pisa, Rome, and venice (P.83). French invade Florence in 1494 and take mostly everything from Medici family (P.84).

In 1202 Fibonacci introduces Arabic numerals that Arabs themselves borrowed from India (P.85). This allowed merchants to compute numbers more easily and on paper vs using an abacus. Universities, Government, and Religious sectors had great suspicions about Arabic numbers for reasons such as merchants not using the abacus, because it came from infidels, and could be easily forged by people with little education (P.85). Despite suspicions merchants quickly adopted the new number system as it proved to be efficient.

The adoption of Arabic numbers and the newly developed printing press sparked a revolution . Textbooks soon were made available teaching ordinary people mathematics. Thus, both the growth of money and banking led to interest and knowledge in mathematics, art, and humans (P.89).

Lastly, it is ended by the Spanish reaping silver and importing tons of silver and gold from the Americas. As a result, coins became more abundant and common to have that it is said it brought the lower class into the realm commerce (P.107).

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