{"id":173304,"date":"2023-10-02T13:22:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T18:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/pythagorean-theorem-found-on-clay-tablet-1000-years-older-than-pythagoras"},"modified":"2023-10-02T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T18:22:22","slug":"pythagorean-theorem-found-on-clay-tablet-1000-years-older-than-pythagoras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/pythagorean-theorem-found-on-clay-tablet-1000-years-older-than-pythagoras","title":{"rendered":"Pythagorean Theorem Found On Clay Tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/pythagorean-theorem-found-on-clay-tablet-1000-years-older-than-pythagoras2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras\u2019s name, or said \u201cpraise be to Pythagoras\u201d if you\u2019re a bit of a fan of triangles.<\/p>\n<p>But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a<sup>2<\/sup> + b<sup>2<\/sup> = c<sup>2<\/sup>). 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/mathsciencehistory.com\/2022\/03\/08\/it-didnt-belong-to-pythagoras\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" id=\"isPasted\">1770 BCE<\/a> \u2013 centuries before Pythagoras was born in around <a href=\"https:\/\/mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk\/Biographies\/Pythagoras\/#:~:text=Pythagoras%20was%20a%20Greek%20philosopher, the%20first%20to%20prove%20it.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">570 BCE<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Another tablet from around 1800\u20131600 BCE has a square with labeled triangles inside. Translating the markings from base 60 \u2013 the counting system used by ancient <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/tags\/babylonians\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Babylonians<\/a> \u2013 showed that these ancient mathematicians were aware of the Pythagorean theorem (not called that, of course) as well as other advanced mathematical concepts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras\u2019s name, or said \u201cpraise be to Pythagoras\u201d if you\u2019re 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 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,2229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-information-science","category-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}