Think that it's probably a prop from Stargate

Apparently someone worked out the circumference of the earth 2200 years ago.

Adriano, it seems you wish to dispute the origin of all knowledge.

The fact that the square of the hypotenuse of a right angled equals the sum of the square of the other two sides is generally accepted as having been revealed and proven by Pythagoras.

Would it sit better with you if his name was Adriano, Antonio, Bernado, Donato, Guiseppe, Pietro, Abdul, Ali, Ahbud, Mustafa or Muhammed or heaven forbid Jacob or Issac??

What are you prattling on about??

Cisco, if you're going to be like that, take it to heavy weather.

I was just sharing a new discovery about math. Please, there is no need to make this personal.

This discovery demonstrates that Pythagoras didn't reveal the theorem at all, but that he proved it using fractions. Who knows, maybe a line of research could look into whether Pythagoras knew about the Babylonian trigonometry and adopted the knowledge and furthered it with fractions.

The Babylonians proved it 1000 years earlier with trigonometry. The question now, is what did the Babylonians use this knowledge for?

It is the world's oldest trigonometric table. A table suggests the knowledge may have been used as a reference document, perhaps in construction or design.

Whether it's commonly accepted that Pythagoras discovered this or not is not the point. He was not the first. History has been re-written.

I thought so too. That's better than thinking everything has an agenda....

Quite an achievement ! But then it involved a very different way to count. The decimal system is easy to deal with. 10 mm to a cm. 100 cents to a dollar, and not the 12 inches to a foot, and then you have to work out the 1/8, 1/16. Quite a pain.

With 60 being the base, that can be painful for the day to day applications.

I use triangles quite a bit to work out lengths and sizes. I often thought there should be an easier way to not have to work out the square roots. Without a calculator those ancient craftsmen will have to find ways to overcome such a handicap. Good on them. I like it a lot !

Jupiter said..
But then, being a master navigator and a proud owner of a HUGE yacht, you always know best.

None of the above. Just a little 30 footer and only went to Master V and MED I and sensible enough to know that I don't know what I don't know.

Adriano said..
... and more important, were able to avoid fractions by using base 60 rather than decimals.

Oh yeah?

What's 1/3 + 2/3 in sexagesimal (or decimal)?

.... so back to the maths, where does the Chinese abacus fit into the history of calculation?