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

Salamendacious@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 1580 points – Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras
iflscience.com

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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I thought it was well established that Pythagoras didn't actually derive his namesake theorem?

It is. There's evidence of its use in the Old Babylonian period, evidence in 1800 B.C.E Egypt, India in 700-500 BCE, China during the Han Dynesty at least.

It's very simple to prove, and anywhere you find squares or triangles in architecture, it was used.

I'm assuming it was discovered multiple times independently. Pythagorean is just the one that wasn't forgotten.

The Romans built off of Greek culture, Europe built off of Roman culture, the US built off of European culture. US math is very much based on Greek math (and US education in general). You may remember doing Greek proofs in school. Greek math was by no means superior to any other culture's, it just so happens that US culture descends from Greek culture.

But thank the gods we adopted Hindu-arabic numerals.

But thank the gods we adopted Hindu-arabic numerals.

ssshh don't tell the republican bigots they are using terrorist numerals ;) /s

We do, then we film the results and laugh.

Then wonder why the r u r a l s don't like city folk.

to be fair, being "city folk" vs. being "rural" doesn't really qualify as an excuse for different levels of education. if it is the case anywhere (and admittedly it seems to be) that's a testament to the need for improvement of the education system.

being "city folk" vs. being "rural" doesn't really qualify as an excuse for different levels of education

Availability of schools and ability (or willingness) to pay for good teachers very much does correlate to levels of education available in different places.

Pretty sure the Summarians were doing astronomy, they probably had all sorts of geometry figured out.

At some points it was "superior". Elements was used as a textbook throughout Europe and the Arab world, because it was one of the first and few books with rigorous proofs. If course it was probably compromised of previous works, but there was really nothing else like it.

The Han Dynasty started in 202 BC. That's after Pythagoras died. Not the same thing.

It's a matter of debate whether he discovered it independently or not, though we've known he wasn't the first for a while.

People can re-invent and re-discover things. It still happens all the time in this day and age of worldwide massive communications. I'd be surprised if the right angle theorem didn't get discovered thousands of times throughout history.

Everyone learns something new everyday. How often have you seen a TIL and thought, "doesn't everyone know that"

Browsing the wikis, I got the impression research is unconclusive. We don't know if he had a role regarding the theorem, and what it was.

There is debate whether the Pythagorean theorem was discovered once, or many times in many places, and the date of first discovery is uncertain, as is the date of the first proof. Historians of Mesopotamian mathematics have concluded that the Pythagorean rule was in widespread use during the Old Babylonian period (20th to 16th centuries BC), over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born.[68][69][70][71]

The German version also talks about the various roles Pythagoras might have had or not had regarding the theorem, and how research is unconclusive. One such possibility is that this older Clay Tablet applied the theorem without being able to prove it, and Pythagoras or one of his students could have found a proof.

Also:

The history of the theorem can be divided into four parts: knowledge of Pythagorean triples, knowledge of the relationship among the sides of a right triangle, knowledge of the relationships among adjacent angles, and proofs of the theorem within some deductive system.

So there were lots of meaningful steps one could achieve without actually deriving the theorem. Maybe people were happy to just use math because it works, and a thousand years later someone bothered to prove why.