Another proof of the high level of knowledge of the ancients has been discovered. In this case, the level of development of mathematics in the Babylonian kingdom, which replaced Sumer and Akkad and inherited science and culture from them.
Babylonian mathematics has long puzzled historians. It was much more developed than Egyptian mathematics. The Babylonians solved quadratic equations, constructed multiplication tables, and understood geometric progressions, ratios, and percentages.
This advanced mathematical knowledge likely helped them build precisely calibrated multi-story ziggurats, which were architecturally much more complex than pyramids.
Suffice it to say that European scientists in the Middle Ages still used the Babylonian hexadecimal system for fractions. In addition, the tradition of dividing an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds arose in Babylon.
Later civilizations, especially ancient Greece, made extensive use of the achievements of Babylonian mathematicians and astronomers to advance their own sciences. Some of the discoveries traditionally attributed to the Greeks were in fact originally Babylonian discoveries.
This is exactly the case with the famous Pythagorean theorem, which is considered one of the fundamental theorems of Euclidean geometry. It was recently discovered that this theorem is actually a thousand years older than Pythagoras himself, as it was written on an ancient Babylonian tablet.
The Pythagorean theorem establishes the relationship between the sides of a right triangle, which is represented as follows: a² + b² = c², and states that in any right triangle the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two legs is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse.
The Pythagorean theorem is most often applied in architecture, construction, and astronomy because it allows the rapid calculation of segment lengths.
Pythagoras lived between 570-490 BC, while the dating of the Babylonian mathematical tablet, numbered YBC 7289, places it between 1800-1600 BC. places. This clay tablet depicts a square divided into triangles on one side and various numbers, and a right-angled triangle on the other side.
“The conclusion is inescapable. The Babylonians knew the relationship between the length of a square’s diagonal and its sides,” writes mathematician Bruce Ratner of Rutgers University College in his article.
Ratner published this discovery in 2009 in the journal ‘Focusing on Measurement and Evaluation for Advertising’. However, journalists only recently learned of it when the article became publicly available.
Some media are already suggesting that this could be one of the oldest cases of scientific plagiarism.
According to historical legend, Pythagoras formulated his theorem while examining square tiles on the floor and walls of a palace. However, experts now suggest that he most likely came across this theorem when he immersed himself in mathematics and subsequently ‘popularized it and made it his own’.
Furthermore, Pythagoras’ students may have attempted to honor their teacher, leading to the continued attribution of the theorem to Pythagoras himself.
“Out of respect for their leader, many of the discoveries of the Pythagoreans were also attributed to Pythagoras himself,” Ratner writes.
