News @lemmy.world Salamendacious @lemmy.world 9 mo. ago

Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras

www.iflscience.com Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras

It predates Pythagoras by over 1,000 years.

Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras's name, or said "praise be to Pythagoras" if you're a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

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Pythagoras CANCELLED for ACADEMIC PLAGIARISM
literally 90% of human history has gone unrecorded, and what has been recorded usually gets destroyed, ransacked or deliberately destroyed, Caligula's pleasure barges, Tower of Babel, Library of Alexander. Humans have tried to keep knowledge retained. and some people take that personally.

remember when ISIS was at its peak they were just destroying artifacts like it was a kid in a candy store. And that's just been in the 35 years I've been alive.

when Rome fell it took another century for civilization to rediscover the technology and applied lessons used then.

and im a dumb idiot, I'm just making a broad skim, if you could ask a historian they'd likely tell you all the things humans have lost, purposefully destroyed or forgotten along the way.
Ah yes the Claytablorean Theorem
I thought it was well established that Pythagoras didn't actually derive his namesake theorem?
Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras's name, or said "praise be to Pythagoras" if you're a bit of a fan of triangles.

What? Why? @Salamendacious@lemmy.world would you care to elaborate? Who curses Pythagoras? Fourier? Sure! Laplace? Fuck that guy AND the goat he rode in on! And don't get me started on Fermat and his silly margin note joke. But Pythagoras?
Permanently Deleted
I'm an idiot, no doubt about that, but fellas I gotta' say ancient Babylonian writing looks an awful lot like you just hit something with a weed whacker. Are we SURE?
Reminds me of the mediaeval nun who erased a manuscript by Archimedes who was laying out the basics of calculus long before it was formally "invented" by Newton and Leibnitz because she needed space to write prayers.
"Let no one's work evade your eyes, just plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. But always please call it research." -- Tom Lehrer (Lobachevsky)
Next to it: “First!”
Babylon: Based 60
Time travel
Omg! I didn’t know Pythagoras taught at Harvard
I’m fat. I saw a rib roast at first.
It's legend that Babylon was destroyed most likely taking all of that knowledge with it. I'm surprised that this tablet survived.
Huh, so it was invented two times. Maybe because it's fundamental and useful?
Nice. A repost from two days ago from a repost from 5 years ago. This us old news.
Sorry didn't read the article, but time travel has been proven?

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