[bisby]

oldest "math text" certainly not.

Wikipedia says "Elements is the oldest extant large-scale deductive treatment of mathematics."

There is a category for which we can count it as "the oldest"

The only older "important publications in math" Wikiepedia has are * "Moscow Mathematical Papyrus" from 1850 BC. This is referred to as a manuscript rather than a "text" though. * "Baudhayana Sulba Sutra" from 8th century BC. Which by all accounts seems to be actually a mass produced text with large reach. But also seems like these general don't contain proofs. and are more like a reference book than an explanation book.

So Elements is several hundred years behind the competition, but for a journalist to simplify "Oldest major math book that made an attempt at explaining the core fundamentals of how math works instead of just giving equations and examples" down to "oldest math text" feels fair enough.

As far as I can see, any older texts basically fall under "here is how the pythagorean theorem works" and not "here are the intrinsic laws that explain how math works, and thus why/how the pythagorean theorem works". The title is true for some definitions of "math text".

[hyperthesis]

If we Idefine* mathematics as proving statements, then Elements is the first text we know of.

If we define mathematics as, e.g. counting, it is much older.

(It's interesting that mathematics is commonly thought of today by most people as to do with numbers, yet Elements is geometry.)

[thaumasiotes]

> "Moscow Mathematical Papyrus" from 1850 BC. This is referred to as a manuscript rather than a "text" though.

There's no difference. A manuscript is a written document. A text is a written document.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think paleographers think of the text as an abstract object and manuscripts as approximations of it. E.g. you might have a couple hundred manuscripts (and other things like printings, etc) of Aristotle’s Physics, but the text is what you get after you identify and try to correct scribal errors.

[thaumasiotes]

That is not the same word "text" as used in the headline. (Note that you weren't able to say "a text".)

Wiktionary's definition page is something of a train wreck, but if you already know what to look for, the information is there:

> text (countable and uncountable, plural texts)

( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/text#English )

Of course one word cannot be "countable and uncountable". But your "text" is uncountable, and bisby's "text" is not.

[bryanrasmussen]

whereas I think in common usage text is anything written and manuscript is a subset of document.

Although manuscript in pre-computer days generally meant something handwritten, nowadays I guess you can turn in a manuscript that was written on the computer so not exactly the same.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think this is right, although I think the connotations of “text” are a bit more abstract in common usage than “manuscript”.