Puzzles, Patterns Drums: The Dawn of Mathematics in Rwanda and Burundi

Aanshenogsifaat42 8400 0ostende, Belgium. • Ther e were 4 sacred drums, of abou t six feet high. Figure 1-Zaire mountains, until the legendary Gihanga d escend ed from the heavens, along w ith the thunder, as d id other emperor s in Su meria, Mesopotamia or Creta. Besid es cattle and see d, he bro ught fire to the morta ls; the memory of this Promethean event would onl y extinguish in 1933, when the king w as converted to Catholicism . Gihanga also create d the cult o f the large drums, a very visible sign of his monarchy. These wo oden emblems had a symbolic va lue comparable to the resp ect a scepter and a nat ional flag have in other na tions. The royal d rums at the Rwanda court were not beaten but only touched when an im po rtant d ecision had to be to justified through the resonance of their deep bass sound. Historically, sma ll kingd oms exis ted in this region wi thin living memory, and each had its ow n sacred symbols, like for exa mple a little drum. There were a m ultitude of these little pr incipalities di spersed in the Hofstadter elucid ated one of the apogees of mo dem ma thema tics, Codel's theorem, but maybe at another era in history analogous sim ilarities can be discovered betw een m athematica l, grap hical and musical exp ress ions. Inven ting nam es for numbers, adding them, making geometric and numeral combinations with pawns, with lines or th rough music, mi ght ha ve been a comparable summit for humani ty, in the times of the dawn of science. In the midd le of Africa, two small cou ntries lived until recently in such an epoch. On the tops and flan ks of the almost round hills of Rwand a and Burundi, lived one of the most dense pop ulations of Africa, from agricul ture and cattle breed ing. There are many simi-lari ties betw een their populations of H utus, the vast majority of peasan ts, Tu tsis, the former aristocratic cattle-breed ers and Twas, the more marginal potters. Thei r Kinyarwanda and Kirundi languages, their tra-d ition and soci al history are closely rela ted. Some pretend that, if the word Rwanda could be interpret ed as the vast territory, (Blurundi would simply mean …