Posted on 11/20/2010 6:43:57 AM PST by SunkenCiv
An illuminating exhibition of thirteen ancient Babylonian tablets, along with supplemental documentary material, opens at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) on November 12, 2010. Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics reveals the highly sophisticated mathematical practice and education that flourished in Babylonia -- present-day Iraq -- more than 1,000 years before the time of the Greek sages Thales and Pythagoras, with whom mathematics is traditionally said to have begun.
The tablets in the exhibition, at once beautiful and enlightening, date from the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 1900-1700 BCE). They have been assembled from three important collections: the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; and the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University.
Before Pythagoras has been curated by Alexander Jones, ISAW Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, and ISAW visiting scholar Christine Proust, historian of mathematics and ancient sciences at the Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées, in Marseille. The exhibition remains on view at ISAW through December 17, 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at artdaily.org ...
First you need the BEST personal injury attorney money can buy.
Are these the same mathematical achievements that the barbaric muslims are claiming as their own?
You mean everyone can’t read cuneiform? Why, just this past Tuesday the guy stocking the apples at WalMart and I were discussing what the appropriate cuneiform abbreviation for delicious is.
Heck, some people can’t even read facetious!
Man, those Babylonian crib sheets must have been a bear to sneak into the classroom back then being made out of clay and everything.
Yup.
Somebody needs to share this information with Obama. He thinks the Arabs invented Math.
.... date from the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 1900-1700 BCE)
Arrrrgggghhhh!!!
When I hear that 'BCE' carp on the Science Channel my head almost explodes.
Ditto when they'll say stuff like : 'In the year 100, of the Common Era.'.
It's 'BC' and 'AD', period!
A Magi: “0ne plus one equal one. No, that won’t be discovered for thousands of years when it is taught to elementary school kids as New Math.”
I'm thinking that date can be pushed back to around 5,000 BC as many Babylonian texts were copied from the Sumerians.
Fascinating...got to see if I can find my book on some early mathematics.
Translation:
The Book of MORMON is true and Joseph Smith is GOD’s Prophet.
They just wanted their OWN good impressions...
The Sumerians only had writing by 3000 BC, rather than 5000 BC. They also were better at math than the Sumerians, which is ironic, considering that cuneiform writing probably was developed out of an accounting system.
In the shadow of the Moon
New Scientist | 30 January 1999 | editors
Posted on 08/31/2004 8:42:25 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1203912/posts
I think The Who came to that conclusion.
Hey, everyone knows that the Greeks stole everything from the Great Library of Alexandria. /sarc
Everybody knows about the bird, everybody knows that the bird is the word.
I’ve seen that 3 4 5 method recommended more than once for DIYers planning to lay their first ceramic tile and/or marble tile floors.
I’ll bet the innings take forever in base 60.
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