4,000year-old clay tablet
Researchers who found a 4,000-year-old clay tablet revealed that the Babylonians were smarter and more adept at mathematics than we thought, to the point that the accuracy of their calculations could improve the mathematics we use today.
In fact, we knew that the Babylonians, who for nearly 4,000 years ruled Mesopotamia, the region extending from present-day Iraq to Syria, were diligent in mathematics, perhaps to the point of obsession, because they believed they had to be as fair as possible.
According to Australian specialists Daniel Mansfield and Norman Wildberger, an ancient document dating back to about 1800 BC supports the view that the Babylonians mastered some mathematical concepts to a greater degree than we had imagined, to the point that their invention of the arithmetic system made the Greek mathematicians of antiquity mere Amateurs because they are more than a thousand years ahead of them, and if the analyzes of the new study prove the dates are correct (about 1822-1762 BC), then the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived about 120 BC, is not the father of trigonometry. That computational system was apparently so effective that our contemporary mathematicians still benefit from many of these innovations today! It may seem to some just a joke, but the document analyzed by Australian specialists is a clay tablet, found nearly a century ago under the ground of ancient Mesopotamia, like tens of thousands of other tablets that have been found since then. The tablet, or tablet, was called “Plimpton 322” (after a previous collector of these tablets), and its size is no larger than a postcard and consists of fifteen lines of numbers divided into four columns, with short sentences, all written in cuneiform letters, engraved in Clay using pointed reeds.
Source: websites