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They give a bit more context in this video. (from 2017)
By the way, I got that link from an article in The Guardian, and I can't find anything in either of those two articles that really adds on top of what was known in 2017. It could just be hard for a layperson to understand, and so was oversimplified?
TLDW is that researchers have known for decades that this tablet showed the Babylonians knew the Pythagorean Theorem for 1000 years before Pythagoras was born. So, that part isn't new.
They seem to be saying that what's new is that they understand each line of this tablet describes a different right triangle, and that due to the Babylonians counting in base 60, they can describe many more right triangles for a unit length than we can in base 10.
They feel like this can have many uses in things like surveying, computing, and in understanding trigonometry.
My take is that this was a very interesting discovery, but that they probably felt pressure to figure out a way to describe it as useful in the modern world. But we've known about the useful parts of this discovery for forever. Our clocks are all base 60. And our computers are binary, not base 10, just to start with.
We overvalue trying to make every advance in knowledge immediately useful. Knowledge can be good for its own sake.
"Having many more right triangles for a unit length" would have an incredible benefit in constructing enormous triangly things.
Instead becoming more acute about triangly things... we were more obtuse and went base ten
Well yeah, who's got 60 fingers? I mean sure, there's Fingers Georg, but that guy's weird.
Now I’m wondering why the Babylonians didn’t have giant triangle shaped orbital habitats.
Base 60 is based.
They can math.
Base 12 is a good compromise between math and meat imo
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, to market, stayed home.
Some days I wonder what would be different if we’d evolved with six fingers on each hand.
That's very interesting. Thank you for giving us your insight on this.