This 3,700-Year-Old Babylonian Clay Tablet Just Changed The History of Maths

 

This ancient Babylonian tablet may contain the first evidence of trigonometry

A 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet was interpreted last August and might change the historical backdrop of math, proposing that trigonometry may have been created before the old Greeks. The specialists said the tablet demonstrates that the Babylonians created trigonometry exactly 1,500 years before the Greeks.


"Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles" Dr. Daniel Mansfield of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Science, said in unsw. "It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius. The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry."





More Info: unsw