How Fractions Were Born

Thousands of years ago, in ancient Egypt, there were no math tests.

But there was one problem that came back every day: How do you divide food in a fair way?

Egyptian scribes sat by the Nile and tried to solve it: How can one loaf

of bread, one field, one vegetable be shared between several people?

You can’t give everyone a “whole.” Then a new idea appeared: If we can’t give

a whole — we divide it into equal parts. They began to write special signs:

half, third, quarter. Not for numbers —

but for fairness. And that’s how fractions were born: a mathematical way to solve a human