The thing that surprised me most was the sheer quantity of influences between regions (often far from one another) that did not share culture or even a language. It is one thing to have a rough idea of influence and quite another to see these connections mapped out in Figure 1.4 (page 14). Moreover to recognize that this is a lower bound as there were surely many more connections for which we simply have no record. This seems to demonstrate the universality of a subject like math.
Another thing that struck me was that despite the reading being published in 1991, my undergraduate history of math course (likely taken around 2012) taught us that our modern numerals were Arabic, not Indian. This myth was clearly dispelled at least 20 years prior to my taking that class but the material was out of date. It was a good reminder for me to fact-check items from my own education that I've assumed were truths.
Finally, I was surprised to read that the concept of place value was discovered upon four independent occasions as mentioned on page 22. The reason it surprised me was because notation could have developed into absolutely anything but there was something about place value (perhaps the convenience) that people were drawn to. It reminded me of the concept of "carcinization" in evolutionary biology where unrelated crustaceans evolved to have a crab-like body. There's just something advantageous about a crab-like body, and apparently place value notation as well.
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