Sixteen binary figures generated by sand divination.
Geomancy — ʿilm al-raml, the "science of the sand" — generates sixteen figures from rows of randomly made marks, each figure four lines of one or two dots, then combines them across a chart to answer a question. Built from binary units and chance, it spread from the Arab world across Africa and medieval Europe.
Geomancy unlocks a portable, instrument-free divination: needing only a stick and ground, it turns randomness into structured, binary symbols — a striking parallel to the I Ching arising independently. It shows how many cultures reached the same insight: that meaning can be drawn from chance, encoded in ones and twos.