• ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    What I would like to know is if tablets like this are being scanned digitally into three dimensions so that they can be reproduced. I feel like everything we find from antiquity needs to be scanned this way. With humans constantly going to war destroying history, I’d hate the idea of losing things like this forever.

    UPDATE: And thus a journey down the interwebs rabbit hole begins. I need better internet and PC to check this out more later, but answering my own question, here’s the entrance to the rabbit hole should others wish to venture with a few examples:

  • Klear@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I knew Pythagoras was smart but I never knew he invented time travel. So cool!

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    This makes a strong case on the discovery side of the discovery vs. invention controversy.

    Ironically, my dad idolized Pythagoras and the notion of discovering a scientific fundamental to be remembered for thousands of years, for which the secret is not to actually do science, but raise a cult of scientists who attribute their inventions to you. Like Thomas Edison.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It was most of the Greeks. We credit Democritus with atomism even though the Greeks said it came from an earlier Phoenician, Mochus of Sidon. Even Democritus’s teacher doesn’t get credit.

      Democritus wrote it down in a way that survived.

      That’s it.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Not really. The Pythagorean theorem (or whomever you want to credit for it) assumes plane geometry. It’s not true in general.

      Plane geometry is the invention that makes all of the math work. The earth is not a flat plane (not even close to flat pretty much anywhere). If you want to do Pythagorean-like calculations between cities on earth, for example, you’ll get a much more accurate result with spherical geometry operating on geodesics. Unfortunately, spherical triangles not obey the Pythagorean theorem!

  • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Cuneiform scripts were frequently coppied by scribes, so the theorem could be even older

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      A handful of people can be credited with discovering the theorem prior to Pythagoras, this isn’t the first time this has come up, and incidentally there is almost no evidence to suggest Pythagoras did.

      • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        The recent “Fall of Civilizations” podcast talks a lot about the history of the pyramids. They may still have known a lot about geometery, but the slopes and angles involved in the pyramid building seem to have been trial and error as much as anything

        • spirinolas@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          A few days ago I was building a Lego set and had to go back 10 steps because of a mistake and that made me very angry.

        • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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          7 months ago

          The pyraamids are way more complex and accurate as been build only by trial and error. It’s architects knew exactly what they were doing and also geometric theorema way more complex as the one of “Phytagoras”, as shown also in other ancient buildings, which are still difficult to reproduce by modern architects.

          • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            What makes you say that? I’m not an expert. Accurate geometry or not, the pyramids are pretty cool. What about them means it couldn’t have been trial and error?

            https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/pyramid

            About halfway up, however, the angle of incline decreases from over 51 degrees to about 43 degrees, and the sides rise less steeply, causing it to be known as the Bent Pyramid. The change in angle was probably made during construction to give the building more stability

            • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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              7 months ago

              Yes, the bent pyramid, but that say nothing, maybe simply a design of an bad architect. They always exist, even today.

              • billgamesh@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                There are records of why it was bent though. It was one of the first pyramids. The king wanted it very tall and steep. he ended up being burried in a pyramid with less slope. Do you have any archeological evidence of complex geometry being used?

                Again, the pyramids are an impressive feat of craftsmanship and the organization of labor, but does that mean they employed the pythagorean theorem?

                They may very well have known geometry, or at least developed during the course of their civilization but I don’t think the pyramids represent sufficient evidence for them definitely knowing the pythagorean theorem

                edit: also if you haven’t heard the podcast, i recommend it. It’s pretty cool

  • Juice@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    I thought it was pretty well established that Pythagoras didn’t invent it, he was just the leader of a Math and Murder cult so he stole it

      • मुक्त@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        Given what other comments are saying about him (cult leader appropriating works of others), I think the west/europe would do well not to associate themselves with him.

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Yes and also I have a hard time believing the builders if the great pyramid didn’t understand it in some capacity either. They just didn’t have symbolic algebra to express it the way we do .

      • मुक्त@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        There are mentions of pythagorian triplets in pyramid era Egypt, and in all fairness, ancient Greeks didn’t have symbolic algebra either - it is a fairly recent form of expression.

        And, as far as I know, ancient Indians were actually writing mathematical expressions in full prose form - word problems et al.

    • Muffi@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      This, and the fact that most stuff is invented by teams and not individuals. I think our tendency to name after a single person helps keep the hero/savior/Messiah complex of western society alive, and blinds us to the power of community and cooperation. It’s like “individual-washing” the past.

  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I feel like at this point I’ve seen this story in 1,000 year old reposts.

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    It always seemed weird to me that it would be formally developed so late. Like I’ve taken multiple trigonometry courses and can’t even define trigonometry let alone make sense of most of it, but the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly. The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it. It should have been the first thing mathematics codified after basic arithmetic.

    • drspod@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly.

      Excuse me, what?

    • Lukewarm_Tea@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      There is lots of evidence of the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras. The attribution of the rule to him comes centuries after he lived. So likely he worked on codifying and proving the relationship using the Greek deductive and axiomatic system.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      I imagine it’s been developed and lost periodically, and some people are averse to irrational numbers. Greece just had continual credit in our intellectual pedigree (as opposed to, say, the Babylonians who had more advanced trig than the Greeks before them and the Greeks were aware of them in some ways).

      I think you also need a lot of rectangles and squares to find it necessary. I imagine buildings, but even today a lot of materials are cut to fit (also, the building I am in is not rectangular along any dimension). Maybe legal rectangular plots of land? Idk