Ancient Babylonians Used Geometry To Track Jupiter
Analysis of ancient Babylonian tablets reveals that, to calculate the
position of Jupiter, the tablets' makers used geometry, a technique
scientists previously believed humans had not developed until at least
1,400 years later, in 14th century Europe. These tablets are the
earliest known examples of using geometry to calculate positions in
time-space and suggest that ancient Babylonian astronomers may have
influenced the emergence of such techniques in Western science. In this
Report, Mathieu Ossendrijver discusses the translation of four almost
completely intact tablets that were most likely written in Babylon
between 350 and 50 BCE. They depict two intervals from when Jupiter
first appears along the horizon, calculating the planet's position at 60
and 120 days. The texts contain geometrical calculations based on a
trapezoid's area, and its "long" and "short" sides; previously, it was
thought that Babylonian astronomers operated exclusively with
arithmetical concepts. The ancient astronomers also computed the time
when Jupiter covers half of this 60-day distance by partitioning the
trapezoid into two smaller ones of equal area. While ancient Greeks used
geometrical figures to describe configurations in physical space, these
Babylonian tablets use geometry in an abstract sense to define time and
velocity, Ossendrijver notes. These tablets redefine our history books,
revealing that European scholars in Oxford and Paris in the 14th
century, who were previously credited with developing such calculations,
were in fact centuries behind their ancient Babylonian counterparts.
This paper is featured on the cover, with a special cover caption
describing how Science photo editors created a striking image
of a 3-D printed replica of the ancient tablet, positioned aptly under a
prominent Jupiter in the Babylonian night sky.
