In this illustrated study of the “starcut diagram,” as he calls it, designer Malcolm Stewart recounts the story of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes at his home in Syracuse as a Roman army invaded. A soldier came upon the famous man contemplating a construction drawn in his sand tray. Archimedes called out to him angrily, “Don't disturb my circles!” At that, the insulted soldier swung his sword and killed him.
Stewart equates Archimedes’ circles in the sand to his own reckoning of a stellation diagram dividing the area of a square that first appeared in the historical record around the time that European artists were investigating perspective.
“It is unprovable but highly plausible that the Starcut diagram was the graphic source of some of humankind’s earliest insights into number and geometry,” Stewart suggests.
Detailing his studies of diagram’s mathematical properties, Stewart theorizes the diagram to be the source of the number system used when ancient humanity first built cities. He finds its patterns and proportions reflected in a shaman’s dance in China, the Great Pyramid in Eqypt, a Raphael fresco in Europe, and the Vedic Fire Altar in Asia.
