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Reflection of Ethnomathematics (Mr. Marsigit)

I am glad that finally I write on this blog again since it seems like a year ago from the last post about reflection on Mr. Marsigit's course. Of course this time the reflection is not about English course that Mr. Marsigit taught, but it is about his course in this semester, Ethnomathematics.
Since I am still in Mathematics Class, studying ethnomathematics is one of the important course. Otherwise some people thinks that ethnomathematics is not really necessary for the material of the mathematics itself. But what is the ethnomathematics? From the first I read the course's name, the first thing came to mind is that ethnomathematics will give us some enlightenment about the past of mathematics that has some connection to culture, especially Indonesian culture. Mr. Marsigit said the same thing about it. Ethnomathematics was the head or maybe the mother of mathematics. Every area has its mathematics, then we call it by ethnomathematics. So does Indonesia.

We knew, everybody knew, that Indonesia has so many culture. For every area, even for the small Yogyakarta, it divided into some smaller areas, which has its culture and mindset. It was interesting how the great, great Borobudur was made. From the sky we can see that Borobudur was structured by, mm, I don't know what it is, but people say it was a square, but I would say it was not square, but five beautiful polygons and now I know that it called "Kamadhatu" or low desire. The next step was three perfect circles that called "Rupadhatu", and the last was a stupa or called "Arupadhatu" or we can say that it was the symbol of the nirvana of Buddhist. The big question is, how come people on that age made something great, even greater than us, the 21st century? They did not know how to count something, like doing mathematics. They knew the concept of money like yesterday. There are the assumption if their age was worse than our age. But there is theory that believe the age of Borobudur was the greatest age ever, in this world. There is story that tells us about the war of Pandawa using airplane or air force, and using nuclear to fight the bad guy. But story was story. The big problem is how can people in Syailendra's age can construct a temple in a high place, using big amounts of stone, and construct a perfect circle and its stupa?

The ethnic things are not only about the temple, the stupa, the material heritage, the seen ones. It also can be about the spirit and the unseen ones. How comes?

Do you ever heard about "Matangpuluh Dino"? Javanese at old time followed the tradition of Buddhist and Hindu. Islam and Christian had not come yet. Javanese also had the name of the days in Javanese. We call it with Legi, Pahing, Pon, Wage, and Kliwon. Javanese tradition is if someone died, they would had the celebration every seven days, 40 days, 100 days, and 1000 days. Now days, the Javanese days is combined with International days. So the counting for 40 days, 100 days, and so on is using the concept of LCM.

What else about ethnomathematics? I think I will find it on the rest of this course. Maybe the ethnomathematics is the new field of study mathematics, and we think we don't need such thing. But I think we need to know ethnomathematics is, because if we don't want to know it then no one will tell our children about the culture, even it is not about mathematics.

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