The roles of Mesopotamian bronze age mathematics. Tool for state formation and administration—carrier of teachers’ professional intellectual autonomy. Educational studies in mathematics, special issue ‘‘The history of mathematics in mathematics education:

som velkomst 1. Uruk: A mathematical state Around the mid-fourth millennium,1 changing ecological conditions made possible the introduction of large-scale artificial irrigation in the south ofmodern Iraq. A direct consequence of thiswas a demographic explosion, an indirect consequence the emergence of a social structure characterized by several levels of administrative control and extensive division of labour – a genuine state, anthropologists would say, centred around the great temples. To all we know it was the earliest state in human history. Excess of food and population did not in themselves create this state; even the obvious need for the organization of exchange with other regions could not do that (the zone was rich in grain, dates, fowl, fish – and bitumen and mud; all other resources had to be imported).2 However, tools were at hand which allowed the transformation of needs and economic-demographic occasion into driving forces. Most important of these tools was an age-old accounting system based on small tokens of burnt clay, shaped as small and larger spheres, cones, discs, cylinders, etc. From the eight