A Babylonian tablet from around 1770 BC uses principles of the Pythagorean theorem, suggesting ancient Babylonians discovered it centuries before the famous Greek mathematician Pythagoras for whom it’s named.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Basically nothing survived the millennia. The fact that so many Greek philosophers are known probably has more to do with the Greek->Roman->Medieval->Modern preservation chain than any special brilliance of the Greeks.

    • kibiz0r
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      1 year ago

      Yep. History is written by the victors. And Western textbooks are full of Greek names. But when it comes to Eastern contributions…? Eh, let’s just call it the “Chinese Remainder Theorem”. They don’t get names.

      It paints a real strange picture.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Well, copying extends important things a bit; I don’t think there’s any original Aristotle copies. It’s really easy now, so last time someone asked about future preservation on AskHistorians the experts were pretty positive on the outlook.

        You can buy stone-like optical disks that should last forever once burned, if you want to make a time capsule.

  • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    it’s not the fact that A^2 + B^2 = C^2 that’s important, it’s the proof

    there’s been evidence for ages that previous civilizations used it

  • koreth@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The paper (linked from the article) has a photo of the actual tablet in question, which was apparently discovered circa 1900.

  • ikanreed@mastodon.social
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    1 year ago

    @Bebo There’s been evidence for a long time that pythagoras was more cult-leader than mathematician, and his cult falsely attributed lots of things to him.

    • Bebo@literature.cafeOP
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      1 year ago

      I actually remember watching a video about this on youtube, that Pythagoras was a sort of cult leader more than anything. So I found it quite interesting when I came across this article about the Babylonian tablet.