History of geometry
Classic geometry was focused in compass and straightedge constructions. Geometry was revolutionized by Euclid, who introduced mathematical rigor and the axiomatic method still in use today. His book, "The Elements" is widely considered the most influential textbook of all time, and was known to all educated people in the West until the middle of the 20th century.
Mathematical notation
The earliest mathematical viewpoints in geometry did not lend themselves well to counting. The natural numbers, their relationship to fractions, and the identification of continuous quantities actually took millennia to take form, and even longer to allow for the development of notation. It was not until the invention of analytic geometry by René Descartes that geometry became more subject to a numerical notation. Some symbolic shortcuts for mathematical concepts came to be used in the publication of geometric proofs. Moreover, the power and authority of geometry's theorem and proof structure greatly influenced non-geometric treatises, Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, for example.