[srean]

> Fibonacci did not, however, discover the sequence – it was recorded in Sanskrit at least as far back as 200 BC.

Possibly even earlier. This is not developed further because the article is about Leonardo.

Pingala's is perhaps the first recorded conception of the sequence. It showed up in his study of metre and rhythm of poetry. The problem he was trying to solve was to enumerate how many ways can an integral period of time be broken up into pieces of unit and double unit length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence#History

If you are a drummer I think this will make a lot of sense.

Pingala is also known for his use of binary numbers, 'Pascal's' triangle, recursive generation of strings from context free grammars. Full formalization of Sanskrit grammar as a context free grammar goes to Panini (possibly his brother).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala

[agumonkey]

I'm always surprised by the abstraction level of Sanskrit ideas. Very rapidly they talk about infinite ways of assembling rules. Was there even a strong motivation (economic or logistical value) behind this?

[srean]

I don't know enough to know why, but they were very interested in the extremes of size, both large and small, as well as the notion of infinite.

Fascination with the large seems to be a pan-cultural thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_large_numbers

The article does not talk about Mayan numbers, I would hazard a guess that they were interested in large numbers too.

There is also the Buddhist myth of Buddha enumerating a list of very large numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa%E1%B9%83khyeya

https://jain108academy.com/buddha-recites-to-infinity-a-love...

Large numbers also show up in that problem posed by Archimedes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27s_cattle_problem

https://sites.google.com/site/largenumbers/home/2-3/p12_2-3-...