The tablet could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to construct temples, palaces and pyramids.
Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly
At least 1,000 years before the Greek mathematician Pythagoras looked at a right angled triangle and worked out that the square of the longest side is always equal to the sum of the squares of the other two, an unknown Babylonian genius took a clay tablet and a reed pen and marked out not just the same theorem, but a series of trigonometry tables which scientists claim are more accurate than any available today.
The 3,700-year-old broken clay tablet survives in the collections of Columbia University, and scientists now believe they have cracked its secrets.
The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney believe that the four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform – wedge shaped indentations made in the wet clay – represent the world’s oldest and most accurate working trigonometric table, a working tool which could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to […]
To me this is a sign that our fast pace of living has corrupted our ability to learn. It must have taken the originators of this tablet a lot of time to figure it out and today we do not take the time to do such futuristic calculations. It also shows why voters do not take the time to look carefully at who they are voting for; in an abstract metaphorical way.