Bay Company out of business. In 1691
England created a new Massachusetts
Bay Colony by combining the old
colony with Plymouth Colony and other
lands. The new colony was controlled by
the English government.
#More to explore
Boston • Colony • Plymouth Colony
• Puritans
Massasoit
Massasoit was a chief of the Wampanoag
in the 1600s. TheWampanoag were
Native Americans who lived in what is
now Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Massasoit is remembered for keeping
peace with the Pilgrims, a group of
English settlers who set up a colony on
his tribe’s land.
Massasoit was born in about 1590. In
1620 the Pilgrims arrived from England
and started Plymouth Colony. By that
time Massasoit was a chief. In 1621 he
visited Plymouth. He was friendly to the
Pilgrims and signed a peace treaty with
them. He encouraged his people to show
the colonists how to farm, fish, and
hunt. To thank Massasoit, the English
invited him and otherWampanoag to a
great feast. The event is now celebrated
as the first Thanksgiving.
Massasoit kept the peace until he died in
1661. But tension had started to build
up because some colonists refused to
follow his treaty. They took more and
more Indian land. In 1675 Massasoit’s
son Metacom (called King Philip by the
English) tried to drive out the colonists.
This led to a war called King Philip’s
War. The war was a disaster for the
Wampanoag. The tribe was defeated,
and most of its people were killed.
#More to explore
Metacom •Wampanoag
Mastodon and
Mammoth
Mastodons and mammoths were
elephantlike animals that roamed Earth
in large numbers thousands of years ago.
These animals later became extinct.
Where and When Mastodons
and Mammoths Lived
Mastodons were early relatives of mammoths.
They first dominated Earth
Early Native
Americans
hunted both
mammoths
and
mastodons.
An illustration shows an English
colonist visiting with Chief
Massasoit in 1621.
BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA Mastodon and Mammoth 75
about 25 million years ago. Mastodons
lived all over the world.
Mammoth remains have been found on
every continent except Australia and
South America. The animals lived sometime
between 1,800,000 and about
10,000 years ago.
Physical Features
Mastodons were shorter than modern
elephants but were more heavily built.
The legs were short, massive, and like
pillars. Mastodons were covered with
long, reddish brown hair.
In comparison, most of the mammoth
species, or types, were about as large as
modern elephants. They were about 10
to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) tall. Mammoths
had a woolly, yellowish brown
undercoat about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters)
thick.
Study of Fossils
The bodies of many mammoths and
mastodons have survived for thousands
of years because they were trapped in
ice. These frozen remains were
eventually discovered by humans and
used for study. Early humans also made
paintings of some of the animals on the
walls of caves in Europe. The paintings
provide more clues about these wild
beasts.
Extinction
Scientists are not sure why mastodons
and mammoths died out. It may have
been because of a change in the weather
where they lived. Experts think that as
the weather got colder, thick ice sheets
covered vast areas of land. This
destroyed the grasslands on which the
animals lived and fed.
Mathematics
Mathematics, or math, is the study of
numbers and how they are related to
each other and to the real world. Math is
as important as language. In fact, people
sometimes describe math as a kind of
language. Everyone uses math every
day—to tell time, to play games, to
Mastodons were smaller than mammoths and modern elephants. Both mastodons and
mammoths had more hair than modern elephants.
76 Mathematics BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA
cook, to build things, and to do almost
any kind of work.
Types of Mathematics
There are many branches of mathematics.
Some of the main ones are arithmetic,
algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
calculus, statistics, and probability.
Mathematics also may be divided into
two general areas: pure and applied.
Pure math is the study of math for its
own sake. Applied math is the study of
math for the purpose of solving real-life
problems. People use applied math to
build skyscrapers, make computers, predict
earthquakes, explain how the
economy works, and many other things.
History
People have used mathematics since
ancient times. The Egyptians could not
have built the pyramids without a very
good understanding of math, especially
arithmetic and geometry. The Babylonians
of ancient Mesopotamia (now in
Iraq) invented a complex number system
and used fractions.
The ancient Greeks greatly expanded
math with many new ideas. In about
300 BC the Greek mathematician Euclid
wrote an important book on geometry
called Elements. Later, the Arabs also
contributed greatly to math. In the AD
800s an Arab mathematician named
al-Khwarizmi described a problemsolving
system that is now known as
algebra.
The ancient Greek and Arab ideas about
math eventually spread to western
Europe. Math progressed as European
scientists used it to research other subjects.
In the 1600s the astronomer
Johannes Kepler used new mathematical
ideas to study the skies. Other scientists
