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Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

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Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#51

Post by mandmandam »

freework wrote: post #38

I've seen this tablet before, and an not convinced that it is actually the Pythagorean theorem. Its just a tablet with some tick marks inscribed onto it, along with a circular looking thing. It's very much a stretch to say the person who etched those markings intended to express the Pythagorean theorem. There was a point in time when I was very interested in ancient civilizations from Mesopotamia, but in more recent…

I would argue with you, but you've just produced a bunch of squiggles.

> It's very much a stretch to say the person who etched those markings intended to express the Pythagorean theorem.

No it isn't.

There are legit reasons to question a lot of the research on ancient civs, but that isn't one of them.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#55

Post by botanical »

somenameforme wrote: post #39
dr_dshiv wrote: post #10

Pythagoras was specifically known for accumulating the wisdom of diverse cultures—supposedly he met Thales, was initiated as Egyptian priest in Hermopolis, spent time in Babylon after being captured, and was initiated into every mystery cult he could. And as a boy on his home island of Samos, he would have been exposed to the building of the largest stone temple in Ancient Greece (to Hera) and the incredible engineer…

Oh how can you skip the most fun tale of them all. [1] Its authenticity is dubious, but there's probably at least parts of truth in it. In a nutshell, Pythagoras started a cult based around numbers, and the pseudo-divine purity of rational numbers - of which everything can be represented. Hippasus, a member of said cult, however managed to compellingly demonstrate that the square root of 2 could not be a rational num…

The wiki page says he drowned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippasus

Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#56

Post by gwervc »

akrauss wrote: post #12
umeshunni wrote: post #3

Actual paper from 2009: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jt.2009.16 Link above is clickbait blogspam (like most things on IFLScience)

The journal is named „Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing“, which may be the scientific equivalent of a clickbait blogspam site (but I haven’t checked more deeply).

The paper title itself could pass as-is an Buzzfeed.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#57

Post by freework »

mandmandam wrote: post #51
freework wrote: post #38

I've seen this tablet before, and an not convinced that it is actually the Pythagorean theorem. Its just a tablet with some tick marks inscribed onto it, along with a circular looking thing. It's very much a stretch to say the person who etched those markings intended to express the Pythagorean theorem. There was a point in time when I was very interested in ancient civilizations from Mesopotamia, but in more recent…

I would argue with you, but you've just produced a bunch of squiggles. > It's very much a stretch to say the person who etched those markings intended to express the Pythagorean theorem. No it isn't. There are legit reasons to question a lot of the research on ancient civs, but that isn't one of them.

How is this different from seeing a fuzzy video of some lights in the sky and then coming to the conclusion that it is definitely a UFO? If you're so convinced that this carving definitely proves that the carver was intending to express the Pythagorean formula, then what is the evidence?

Some people's definition of "evidence" is different from my own. If somebody really wants to believe something, then just about anything qualifies as evidence. This is why UFO people consider literally every single fuzzy video as undeniable proof that aliens exist.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#58

Post by spaceman_2020 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #10

Pythagoras was specifically known for accumulating the wisdom of diverse cultures—supposedly he met Thales, was initiated as Egyptian priest in Hermopolis, spent time in Babylon after being captured, and was initiated into every mystery cult he could. And as a boy on his home island of Samos, he would have been exposed to the building of the largest stone temple in Ancient Greece (to Hera) and the incredible engineer…

> initiated into every mystery cult he could

And in turn, his followers created a strange cult after him! [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism

Re: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

#60

Post by orra »

saithound wrote: post #5

Every group who ever managed to build a building with a rectangular foundation figured out the relation between the side lengths and the diagonal. The Egyptians used Pythagorean triples to measure right angles way before the birth of Pythagoras. But that's not a theorem, just an observation. It becomes a theorem when you prove (i.e. explain why) this relationship always holds, based on more evident things. The Babylo…

> It becomes a theorem when you prove (i.e. explain why) this relationship always holds, based on more evident things. [...] whereas the Greeks definitely did (we don't know whether Pythagoras himself did it

Wait, really? I thought the proofs back then were geometric, so only proved specific instances. And so it wasn't until algebra, maybe trig, was discovered it was properly proven?

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