According to Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), the "father of History", geometry is said to have been born in Egypt on the banks of the Nile, through the calculation of agricultural land areas. The story goes that the Nile's floods regularly made careful surveying of the reshaped land necessary, so as not to cheat landowners once the waters receded. Since these owners were subject to taxes proportional to the area they held, specialists would come to estimate the areas.
This claim is certainly exaggerated, since geometry also seems to have learned from the astronomical and architectural needs of the time, but these were certainly important factors in the study of quantities and their measurement.
The beginnings of area calculation
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While it is certain that the Egyptians knew how to calculate the areas of triangles, rectangles and trapezoids without error, thanks to the Rhind papyrus (around the 16th century BC), they had no correct general formula for calculating the area of a quadrilateral.
When irregularities in the terrain required it, they appear to have made do with an approximate formula.
