2023-10-05 08:11:55
October 5, 2023
Baghdad/Al-Masala Al-Hadath: The recent discovery indicates that the famous Pythagorean theorem could be the oldest known case of plagiarism in the world.
Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher born in 570 BC, is credited with inventing the mathematics that helps in finding the missing side of a right-angled triangle.
The Pythagorean theorem says that in right-angled triangles, the square of the length of the side opposite the right angle is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides.
But a contemporary mathematician discovered an ancient Babylonian tablet that contains a concept that predates the birth of Pythagoras by more than 1,000 years, according to what the British newspaper Daily Mail reported.
The mathematician who conducted the research is Bruce Ratner, who holds a PhD in mathematical statistics and probability from Rutgers University.
The evidence was translated from a clay tablet named YBC 7289, formed between 1800 and 1600 BC, which uses the principles of the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the length of the diagonal within a rectangle.
Experts believe the ancient Greek philosopher may have heard about the theory orally and spread it, but made it his own.
Ratner drew the numbers by translating from base 60, the counting system used by the ancient Babylonians.
Base 60, also known as the Babylonian sexagesimal system, is a number system that uses the number 60 as its base instead of the more common base 10 (decimal number) that we use in our daily lives.
In the sexagesimal system, numbers are represented using 60 different symbols or numbers, just like how the numbers 0 through 9 are used in our decimal system.
After studying the Babylonian dial and numbers, Ratner came to the conclusion that the value mentioned on the clay tablet was the square root of the number 2, and he said that the conclusion was inevitable.
He went on to explain in the study that there are two factors related to the clay tablet that are of particular importance. The first is that the marks prove that the Babylonians knew how to calculate the square root of a number with remarkable accuracy.
The unknown creator of the clay tablet understood a simple method of computing nearly 4,000 years ago: multiplying the side of a square by the square root of two.
But one question remains unanswered: Why did the copyist choose a side of 30 for his example, Ratner wrote.
He added: It is likely that the number 30 was used for convenience, because it was part of the Babylonian sexagesimal system… From here, one can derive the modern use of 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, and 360 (60 x 6) degrees in Circle.
Babylonians and trigonometry
Scientists from the University of South Wales (UNSW) in Australia identified a Babylonian clay tablet dating back 3,700 years as the oldest and most modern trigonometric table in the world.
In short, this table reveals that the Babylonians preceded the ancient Greeks in inventing trigonometry by more than 1,000 years, which confirms Ratner’s findings above.
The trigonometry table that appeared on the clay tablet is considered the most accurate and oldest in the world, which means that the Babylonians were the ones who discovered the Pythagorean rule hundreds of years before the Greek scientist after whom the rule was named.
This is because the sexagesimal system has more precise fractions than the decimal system, which means numbers are rounded less closely to the whole number. While the decimal system contains only two numbers that can be divided by without the need for rounding, which are the numbers two and five.
This means that the base 60 system or the sexagesimal system has much more power than the decimal system, especially with regard to correct fractions and rounding numbers less and more accurately in mathematics.
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