Throughout history, humankind has struggled to understand the fundamental workings of the material world. We've endeavoured to discover the rules and patterns that determine the qualities of the objects that surround us, and their complex relationship to us and each other. Over thousands of years, societies all over the world have found that one discipline above all others yields certain knowledge about the underlying realities of the physical world. That discipline is mathematics. I'm Marcus Du Sautoy, and I'm a mathematician. I see myself as a pattern searcher, hunting down the hidden structures that lie behind the apparent chaos and complexity of the world around us. In my search for pattern and order, I draw upon the work of the great mathematicians who've gone before me, people belonging to cultures across the globe, whose innovations created the language the universe is written in. I want to take you on a journey through time and space, and track the growth of mathematics from its awakening to the sophisticated subject we know today. Using computer generated imagery, we will explore the trailblazing discoveries that allowed the earliest civilisations to understand the world mathematical.