Ancient Babylonians used early calculus to track path of Jupiter, s...
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Ancient Babylonians used early calculus to
track path of Jupiter, study finds
Technique that became basis of modern-day graphs did not emerge
in medieval Europe until 1400 years later
Steve Connor Science Editor | @SteveAConnor | 4 hours ago | ! 1 comment
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The Babylonians used geometry in their astronomy, assisting in plotting the path of Jupiter Getty
The ancient Babylonians used a complex form of geometry to
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the invention of the same technique in medieval Europe a
technique that became the basis of modern-day graphs, a study
has found.
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An historian of science has discovered evidence that Babylonian
priests living between 350BC and 50BC invented and used an
abstract form of geometry that until now was thought to have
been invented in the 14th Century, eventually evolving into
calculus, the mathematical study of how something changes over
time.
One of the clay tablets containing the cuneiform text
Although algebra and geometry were both well known in ancient
Babylonia a culture extending back to 1800BC as well as in
the later period of ancient Greece, this is the rst time that
anyone has found evidence to show that Babylonian scholars
knew how to use geometry to plot the irregular movements of a
planet, said Mathieu Ossendrijer, professor of the history of
ancient science at Humboldt University in Berlin.
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What is new is that the Babylonians also used geometry in their
astronomy. We have evidence that they used geometrical gures
to gauge the motion of planets but the really exciting thing is that
the kind of geometry they used is very special, Professor
Ossendrijver said.
What we have found essentially is almost like a modern-day
graph a geometrical gure that represents an abstract
mathematical space. Thats really new and exciting as it was
thought to have been rst invented much later, around 1350, he
said.
Babylonian cuneiform text etched onto clay tablets held in the
British Museum in London has revealed that the priests were
calculating the movements of Jupiter during the rst 60 days it
appeared above the horizon by plotting the planets irregular
motion away from the regular path of the Sun.
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Babylonian ruler King Marduk-Nadin-Akke pictured on a boundary stone (Getty)
Jupiters movement across the sky appears to slow, although it is
in fact due to the relative movements of its orbit with respect to
the Earths. A graph of Jupiters apparent velocity against time
would therefore slope down so that the area under the curve
forms a trapezoid a four-sided shape with a sloping top.
It is clear from the clay tablets that the Babylonians were able to
plot Jupiters movements as a line on a graph of movement
against time, and then calculating the distance moved by
measuring the area formed by the four-sided trapezoid shape of
the graph a shape the Babylonian priests called the oxen
head.
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It was this ability to compute the movements of an object moving
with a changing velocity using geometric principles that was
unheard of before the 14th Century AD, Professor Ossendriver
said.
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Its like a precursor if you like of what we know today as integral
calculus, which allows us to calculate the movements of
decelerating or accelerating objects. Its a concept that was
invented twice; once in ancient Babylonia and then re-invented
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this, he said.
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There are no geometrical shapes or graphs depicted on the clay
tablets, and all the descriptions are in cuneiform script. However,
it is clear from the well-documented terminology used by the
priests that they were referring to this form of abstract
geometrical calculation, Professor Ossendrijver said.
The tablets were written by priests in the temple. They
computed the position of all ve planets that they knew about,
but Jupiter had the largest number of texts devoted to it. This was
probably because Jupiter was associated with the supreme god of
Babylon, Marduk, Professor Ossendrijver said.
The study is published in the journal Science.
More about: | Ancient World | Babylonian | Jupiter|
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If the speed of light is stationary then mass x velocity x
186,000 equals 1 second. 1 second = MV x 186 x 10 (x3)
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