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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We're discovering this fungus that breaks down plastics and I'm wondering... How many times have we independently invented plastic?
With the required manufacturing tools and source materials, probably not a lot of times.
Manufacturing? Like this? [Antikythera Mechanism on Wikipedia] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism)
Or this? Metalworking in pre-Columbian America (Do scroll down to the South America section)
Or just like... waves broadly The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC,...
Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c. 40,000 BC
If that fungus (or the wax worm for that matter) was more widespread at any point in the last 40,000 years, we just wouldn't know about any use of plastics.
The process is significantly more complex for plastic, not comparable to metalworking
The closest comparable material is variants of wax
oh, hundreds