Babylonian mathematics (also known as Assyro-Babylonian mathematics) [1] [2] [3] [4] is the mathematics developed or practiced by the people of Mesopotamia, from the days of the early Sumerians to the centuries following the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. Babylonian mathematical texts are plentiful and well edited. [5] With respect to time they fall in two distinct groups: one from the Old Babylonian period (1830–1531 BC), the other mainly Seleucid from the last three or four centuries BC. With respect to content, there is scarcely any difference between the two groups of texts. Babylonian mathematics remained constant, in character and content, for over a millennium. [5]
In contrast to the scarcity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from hundreds of clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in cuneiform, tablets were inscribed while the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. The majority of recovered clay tablets date from 1800 to 1600 BC, and cover topics that include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations and the Pythagorean theorem. The Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation to accurate to three significant sexagesimal digits (about six significant decimal digits).
Babylonian mathematics is a range of numeric and more advanced mathematical practices in the ancient Near East, written in cuneiform script. Study has historically focused on the Old Babylonian period in the early second millennium BC due to the wealth of data available. There has been debate over the earliest appearance of Babylonian mathematics, with historians suggesting a range of dates between the 5th and 3rd millennia BC. [6] Babylonian mathematics was primarily written on clay tablets in cuneiform script in the Akkadian or Sumerian languages.
"Babylonian mathematics" is perhaps an unhelpful term since the earliest suggested origins date to the use of accounting devices, such as bullae and tokens, in the 5th millennium BC. [7]
The Babylonian system of mathematics was a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system. From this we derive the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle. [8] The Babylonians were able to make great advances in mathematics for two reasons. Firstly, the number 60 is a superior highly composite number, having factors of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 (including those that are themselves composite), facilitating calculations with fractions. Additionally, unlike the Egyptians and Romans, the Babylonians had a true place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values (much as, in our base ten system, 734 = 7×100 + 3×10 + 4×1). [9]
The ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC. From 2600 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period. [10]
Most clay tablets that describe Babylonian mathematics belong to the Old Babylonian, which is why the mathematics of Mesopotamia is commonly known as Babylonian mathematics. Some clay tablets contain mathematical lists and tables, others contain problems and worked solutions.
The Babylonians used pre-calculated tables to assist with arithmetic. For example, two tablets found at Senkerah on the Euphrates in 1854, dating from 2000 BC, give lists of the squares of numbers up to 59 and the cubes of numbers up to 32. The Babylonians used the lists of squares together with the formulae:
to simplify multiplication.
The Babylonians did not have an algorithm for long division. [11] Instead they based their method on the fact that:
together with a table of reciprocals. Numbers whose only prime factors are 2, 3 or 5 (known as 5-smooth or regular numbers) have finite reciprocals in sexagesimal notation, and tables with extensive lists of these reciprocals have been found.
Reciprocals such as 1/7, 1/11, 1/13, etc. do not have finite representations in sexagesimal notation. To compute 1/13 or to divide a number by 13 the Babylonians would use an approximation such as:
The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 (c. 1800–1600 BC) gives an approximation of √2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1;24,51,10, [12] which is accurate to about six decimal digits, [13] and is the closest possible three-place sexagesimal representation of √2:
As well as arithmetical calculations, Babylonian mathematicians also developed algebraic methods of solving equations. Once again, these were based on pre-calculated tables.
To solve a quadratic equation, the Babylonians essentially used the standard quadratic formula. They considered quadratic equations of the form:
where b and c were not necessarily integers, but c was always positive. They knew that a solution to this form of equation is:[ citation needed ]
and they found square roots efficiently using division and averaging. [14] They always used the positive root because this made sense when solving "real" problems[ citation needed ]. Problems of this type included finding the dimensions of a rectangle given its area and the amount by which the length exceeds the width.
Tables of values of n3 + n2 were used to solve certain cubic equations. For example, consider the equation:
Multiplying the equation bya2 and dividing by b3 gives:
Substituting y = ax/b gives:
which could now be solved by looking up the n3 + n2 table to find the value closest to the right-hand side. The Babylonians accomplished this without algebraic notation, showing a remarkable depth of understanding. However, they did not have a method for solving the general cubic equation.
Babylonians modeled exponential growth, constrained growth (via a form of sigmoid functions), and doubling time, the latter in the context of interest on loans.
Clay tablets from c. 2000 BC include the exercise "Given an interest rate of 1/60 per month (no compounding), compute the doubling time." This yields an annual interest rate of 12/60 = 20%, and hence a doubling time of 100% growth/20% growth per year = 5 years. [15] [16]
The Plimpton 322 tablet contains a list of "Pythagorean triples", i.e., integers such that . The triples are too many and too large to have been obtained by brute force.
Much has been written on the subject, including some speculation (perhaps anachronistic) as to whether the tablet could have served as an early trigonometrical table. Care must be exercised to see the tablet in terms of methods familiar or accessible to scribes at the time.
[...] the question "how was the tablet calculated?" does not have to have the same answer as the question "what problems does the tablet set?" The first can be answered most satisfactorily by reciprocal pairs, as first suggested half a century ago, and the second by some sort of right-triangle problems. [17]
Babylonians knew the common rules for measuring volumes and areas. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if π is estimated as 3. They were aware that this was an approximation, and one Old Babylonian mathematical tablet excavated near Susa in 1936 (dated to between the 19th and 17th centuries BC) gives a better approximation of π as 25/8 = 3.125, about 0.5 percent below the exact value. [18] The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the base and the height, however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. The Pythagorean rule was also known to the Babylonians. [19] [20] [21]
The "Babylonian mile" was a measure of distance equal to about 11.3 km (or about seven modern miles). This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a "time-mile" used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time. [22]
The ancient Babylonians had known of formulas concerning the ratios of the sides of similar triangles for many centuries, but they lacked the concept of an angle measure and consequently, studied the sides of triangles instead. [23]
The Babylonian astronomers kept detailed records of the rising and setting of stars, the motion of the planets, and the solar and lunar eclipses, all of which required familiarity with angular distances measured on the celestial sphere. [24]
They also used a form of Fourier analysis to compute an ephemeris (table of astronomical positions), which was discovered in the 1950s by Otto Neugebauer. [25] [26] [27] [28] To make calculations of the movements of celestial bodies, the Babylonians used basic arithmetic and a coordinate system based on the ecliptic, the part of the heavens that the sun and planets travel through.
Tablets kept in the British Museum provide evidence that the Babylonians even went so far as to have a concept of objects in an abstract mathematical space. The tablets date from between 350 and 50 B.C.E., revealing that the Babylonians understood and used geometry even earlier than previously thought. The Babylonians used a method for estimating the area under a curve by drawing a trapezoid underneath, a technique previously believed to have originated in 14th century Europe. This method of estimation allowed them to, for example, find the distance Jupiter had traveled in a certain amount of time. [29]
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers (arithmetic).
Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics." Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers, or defined as generalizations of the integers.
A Pythagorean triple consists of three positive integers a, b, and c, such that a2 + b2 = c2. Such a triple is commonly written (a, b, c), and a well-known example is (3, 4, 5). If (a, b, c) is a Pythagorean triple, then so is (ka, kb, kc) for any positive integer k. A primitive Pythagorean triple is one in which a, b and c are coprime (that is, they have no common divisor larger than 1). For example, (3, 4, 5) is a primitive Pythagorean triple whereas (6, 8, 10) is not. A triangle whose sides form a Pythagorean triple is called a Pythagorean triangle, and is necessarily a right triangle.
In algebra, a quadratic equation is any equation that can be rearranged in standard form as
In mathematics, a square root of a number x is a number y such that ; in other words, a number y whose square is x. For example, 4 and −4 are square roots of 16 because .
In elementary algebra, the quadratic formula is a formula that provides the two solutions, or roots, to a quadratic equation. There are other ways of solving a quadratic equation instead of using the quadratic formula, such as completing the square.
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.
The square root of 2 is a positive real number that, when multiplied by itself, equals the number 2. It may be written in mathematics as or . It is an algebraic number, and therefore not a transcendental number. Technically, it should be called the principal square root of 2, to distinguish it from the negative number with the same property.
In mathematics, an algebraic equation or polynomial equation is an equation of the form , where P is a polynomial with coefficients in some field, often the field of the rational numbers. For example, is an algebraic equation with integer coefficients and
Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BCE until the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics, important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, and Varāhamihira. The decimal number system in use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number, negative numbers, arithmetic, and algebra. In addition, trigonometry was further advanced in India, and, in particular, the modern definitions of sine and cosine were developed there. These mathematical concepts were transmitted to the Middle East, China, and Europe and led to further developments that now form the foundations of many areas of mathematics.
Methods of computing square roots are algorithms for approximating the non-negative square root of a positive real number . Since all square roots of natural numbers, other than of perfect squares, are irrational, square roots can usually only be computed to some finite precision: these methods typically construct a series of increasingly accurate approximations.
Plimpton 322 is a Babylonian clay tablet, notable as containing an example of Babylonian mathematics. It has number 322 in the G.A. Plimpton Collection at Columbia University. This tablet, believed to have been written about 1800 BC, has a table of four columns and 15 rows of numbers in the cuneiform script of the period.
Regular numbers are numbers that evenly divide powers of 60 (or, equivalently, powers of 30). Equivalently, they are the numbers whose only prime divisors are 2, 3, and 5. As an example, 602 = 3600 = 48 × 75, so as divisors of a power of 60 both 48 and 75 are regular.
Early study of triangles can be traced to the 2nd millennium BC, in Egyptian mathematics and Babylonian mathematics. Trigonometry was also prevalent in Kushite mathematics. Systematic study of trigonometric functions began in Hellenistic mathematics, reaching India as part of Hellenistic astronomy. In Indian astronomy, the study of trigonometric functions flourished in the Gupta period, especially due to Aryabhata, who discovered the sine function. During the Middle Ages, the study of trigonometry continued in Islamic mathematics, by mathematicians such as Al-Khwarizmi and Abu al-Wafa. It became an independent discipline in the Islamic world, where all six trigonometric functions were known. Translations of Arabic and Greek texts led to trigonometry being adopted as a subject in the Latin West beginning in the Renaissance with Regiomontanus. The development of modern trigonometry shifted during the western Age of Enlightenment, beginning with 17th-century mathematics and reaching its modern form with Leonhard Euler (1748).
Algebra can essentially be considered as doing computations similar to those of arithmetic but with non-numerical mathematical objects. However, until the 19th century, algebra consisted essentially of the theory of equations. For example, the fundamental theorem of algebra belongs to the theory of equations and is not, nowadays, considered as belonging to algebra.
YBC 7289 is a Babylonian clay tablet notable for containing an accurate sexagesimal approximation to the square root of 2, the length of the diagonal of a unit square. This number is given to the equivalent of six decimal digits, "the greatest known computational accuracy ... in the ancient world". The tablet is believed to be the work of a student in southern Mesopotamia from some time between 1800 and 1600 BC.
In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.
South and West Asia consists of a wide region extending from the present-day country of Turkey in the west to Bangladesh and India in the east.
A mathematical constant is a key number whose value is fixed by an unambiguous definition, often referred to by a special symbol, or by mathematicians' names to facilitate using it across multiple mathematical problems. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as e and π occurring in such diverse contexts as geometry, number theory, statistics, and calculus.
IM 67118, also known as Db2-146, is an Old Babylonian clay tablet in the collection of the National Museum of Iraq that contains the solution to a problem in plane geometry concerning a rectangle with given area and diagonal. In the last part of the text, the solution is proved correct using the Pythagorean theorem. The steps of the solution are believed to represent cut-and-paste geometry operations involving a diagram from which, it has been suggested, ancient Mesopotamians might, at an earlier time, have derived the Pythagorean theorem.
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