It predates Pythagoras by over 1,000 years.

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.

  • HiddenLayer5English
    54·
    9 months ago

    Reminds me of the mediaeval nun who erased a manuscript by Archimedes who was laying out the basics of calculus long before it was formally “invented” by Newton and Leibnitz because she needed space to write prayers.

      • HiddenLayer5English
        29·
        9 months ago

        It was on parchment I believe, it was pretty common in the middle ages to scrape the ink off those and reuse them.

        • Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca
          22·
          9 months ago

          For anyone interested, that’s called a palimpsest.

          a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.