
3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet shows Greeks did not first develop trigonometry - sjcsjc
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/08/24/3700-year-old-babylonian-tablet-rewrites-history-maths-could/
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jaclaz
>The tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered ...

Actually "Plimpton 322" (NOT 332).

Seemingly not particularly "new" news:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322)

The tablet contains couples corresponding to Pythagoraen triplets, this is
known since the late '50's, the new study doesn't seem to add that much.

Anyway, it is here:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086017...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086017300691)

The news are only about the possibility that it could have been used to solve
a range of trigonometric problems, such as (example from the article):

>Problem 1.

>Suppose that a ramp leading to the top of a ziggurat wall is 56 cubits long,
and the vertical height of the ziggurat is 45 cubits. What is the distance x
from the outside base of the ramp to the point directly below the top?

But it is to be actually _somehow_ proved that it was ever used that way, it
is an interesting hypothesis, but not much more than that.

And it has already some critic/skeptics, see:
[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ancient-babylonian-
ta...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ancient-babylonian-tablet-may-
contain-first-evidence-trigonometry)

>Mathematical historian Christine Proust of the French National Center for
Scientific Research in Paris, an expert on the tablet, calls the team’s
hypothesis “a very seductive idea.” But she points out that no known
Babylonian texts suggest that the tablet was used to solve or understand right
triangles. The hypothesis is “mathematically robust, but for the time being,
it is highly speculative,” she says. A thorough search of other Babylonian
mathematical tablets may yet prove their hypothesis, Ossendrijver says. “But
that is really an open question at the moment.”

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mgiannopoulos
Duplicate
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15094190)

