ABSTRACT
Much has been said about the universality of mathematics. This concept of universality seems to become harder to sustain as recent research, mainly carried out by anthropologists, shows evidence of practices which are typically mathematical such as observing, counting, ordering, sorting, measuring, and weighing, plus attitudes and reflections which have clearly a logical structure, techniques of inferring and criteria of validity, which are carried on differently according with both natural and cultural environments. This encourages further research on the evolution of mathematical concepts and practices within a cultural and anthropological framework. We feel this has been done only to a very limited, and we might say timid, extent. On the other hand, there is a reasonable amount of literature on this by anthropologists and psychologists. To recognize a bridge between those and historians of culture and of mathematics is an important step towards identifying different modes of thought which lead to different forms of mathematics, which we may call ethnomathematics.
