[irutirw222]

Then you, as Moicanu below, didn't understood my point: You learn less from the Elements than from later, curated sources. Analogously, no one would advocate reading Newton's Principia to "understand where we came from". You would first learn the theory (geometry resp physics) with up-to-date sources, then read a commentary of the original (which is often longer than the original), and only then you'd be able to get something out of reading a translation of the original.

Thus, by reading the original works you will confuse yourself with the obscure notation you will encounter, semi-circular arguments and other problems (both the Elements and the Principia are riddled with problems), which actually have prompted many many scholarly works commenting and fixing these.

[molteanu]

I've read the 'original' Elements, indeed. Apart from the geometric figures which were not even available in the original form of the manuscript, but added later as an aid, there is no obscure notation whatsoever. Indeed, there is no notation at all. It's all prose.

[irutirw222]

If you want to read it more as a historical piece of art I wouldn't object; if you want to actually get some mathematical insight out of it on the other hand, this would be a good starting point:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/845288/has-any-erro...

[mirekrusin]

One of missing pieces in education is surfacing problems, deadends and struggles of different sorts. Shame because it’s such an insightful part, often allows grasping underlying reason for why things are the way they are.