Study the history of mathematics. Likely, it will start at Mesopotamia 3000 BC. Now, it is undisputed H. sapiens trace back to Africa, perhaps earlier than 200 millennia ago. So, didn’t the early humans think about themselves and the environment around them? Of course they did. And they used tools of mathematics. Nearly 60 years ago, that mathematics was discovered in Ishango, the border between Uganda and the DRC. So, why does mathematics ignore Ishango?
The most interesting, of a large number of tools discovered in 1960 at Ishango, is a bone tool handle called the Ishango Bone (now located on the 19th floor of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences of Belgium in Brussels, and can only be seen on special demand)
Even among those who believe that the Ishango bone has mathematical significance there is no agreement on what that significance might be, and the proposed interpretations are speculative, diverse, and not convergent. If there is an Ishango mathematics, we don't yet know what it is.
You raise two questions: Is it significant? And what is the significance? Any sympathy to the first should push the phenomenon to the annals of history.
Wouldn't it push the phenomenon into the category of prehistoric pictographs, pictograms, or symbols? "Annals of history" seems a mite metaphorical or hyperbolical in this context.
Follow that argument deeper. Humanity would struggle to find a place for the frontier of physics.
https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/winter12/columbia_forum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_scientific_ignorance
Ignorance also drives science. Once some textbooks are written and canonized, it is quite difficult to add another (unorthodox) view.
However (!):
https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-ishango-bone http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/Ancient-Africa/ishango.html
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/index.html
The most interesting, of a large number of tools discovered in 1960 at Ishango, is a bone tool handle called the Ishango Bone (now located on the 19th floor of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences of Belgium in Brussels, and can only be seen on special demand)
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