Trig Warning: 3700-Year-Old Babylonian Tablet

     A Babylonian clay tablet known as Plimpton 322 was discovered early in the 20th century in present-day Iraq. An Australian mathematician, Dr. David Mansfield, who has been analyzing its meaning, announced his conclusions in late August, 2017, saying that "cracking the meaning of the tablet, as big as the palm of a human hand, could simplify our study of triangles."


      Up to now, trigonometry has been based on study of angles and irrational numbers. The analysis of Plimpton 322 reveals that the Babylonians used ratios during 2800 to 1700 BC.  “This gives us a different way of looking at trigonometry,” Dr. Mansfield said. “The beautiful thing about it is that it’s much simpler.” 


      "Trigonometry is not a fusty, {I find the use of the word"fusty" is awesome here!} esoteric branch of mathematics. It is essential to architecture, engineering, astronomy, surveying, and even oceanography. Up to now, it’s been taught using Greek principles. But this tablet proves that the Babylonians beat the Greeks in the discovery of trigonometry by about 1,000 years."

       The tablet was unearthed in southern Iraq, believed to be near the onetime Sumerian city of Larsa, by Edgar Banks, a collector of antiquities in the 1890s. Banks was not collecting cuneiform tablets as an archaeologist, but while using his position as the American consul to Baghdad. He sold the tablets to universities, libraries, and museums.

      "The Greek astronomer Hipparchus has been considered the father of trigonometry. But this tablet was created long before Hipparchus lived."

      Dr. Mansfield said, “Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education.”


      "The tablet got its name because an American publisher and collector named George Arthur Plimpton bought it. (He is the grandfather of writer and editor George Plimpton, founder of the Paris Review and author of Paper Lion.) In 1936, not long before he died, Plimpton donated the Babylonian tablet along with many other manuscripts to Columbia University."

     "In the 1940s, researchers who were studying the tablet concluded that the cuneiform numbers on it corresponded to the Pythagorean Theorem. But that was far as they got until Dr. Mansfield and his team took up the challenge.

      The tablet “is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius,” says Dr. Mansfield. “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.”

Not at all a fusty fuss, eh?
Steph

Elk in downtown Evergreen, CO >>>