C 'were in the famous Lebombo mountains, located between South Africa and Swaziland, that a Belgian geologist named Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt made a striking discovery, which can be found to this day stored on the 19th floor of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. This discovery, one suspects, made the fame of the Belgian researcher, who well before this extraordinary case, had carried out several investigations in Europe, the Middle East and America, not conclusive. But it was in Africa, around the years 1950 to 1970, in the heart of the Belgian Congo, that he made the most prodigious discoveries of his life. At the site of Ishango, 15 km from Ecuador on one of the shores of Lake Edward, he discovered a peculiar bone with a length of 10 cm, which reveals that the man was already indulging in this time. in Africa to a very high level scientific activity. The object is fascinating: a very particular baboon fibula that will turn the history of science upside down, in this case that of mathematical science.
-Formal archaeological dating attests that this object is between 20 and 000 BC. This is the famous “Lebombo Bone” which has intentionally man-made notches, “and which have close similarities to the calendar sticks still used by the Bushmen of Namibia”. The Ekang also count with math sticks.