SHOULDN'T COMPUTERS HAVE BEEN INVENTED IN ANCIENT AFRICA? The genesis of "binary expansions" or "binary numbers," where a number is expressed as a string of 0's and 1's or alternately as a sum of powers of 2 is apparently very ancient. Like their modern counterparts, the ancients made some interesting observations about "binary numbers." The number system consisting of just two values, 0 and 1, is the smallest, complete arithmetic number system. More importantly, it is the number system on which the technology of the electronic, digital computer is based. In ancient Yoruba, a tortoise shell was used to represent the value 1 or 0, depending on whether it was turned face up or face down. A necklace of 8 tortoise shell could represent as many as 16 numerical values or all strings of length 8 of 0's and 1's. The necklaces of eight tortoise shells were said to represent 16 "Odu", similar to the 8 "trigrams" attributed to the legendary first Emperor of China, "Fu Hsi," probably the generic name for Ethiopia. Fu Hsi represented 8 numerical values by using "trigrams" composed of broken or solid lines (equivalent to all strings of length 3 of 0's and 1's).