Ancient Babylonians Used Geometry That Anticipated Calculus [View all]

[n2doc]

By Erik Gregersen

In an article published in the January 29, 2016, issue of Science, Mathieu Ossendrijver, a historian of science at Humboldt University in Berlin, describes how Babylonian astronomers between 350 and 50 BCE used geometric methods thought to have been invented 1,400 years later to calculate the motion of Jupiter.

The Babylonians in effect constructed a graph with velocity across the sky as the vertical axis and time as the horizontal axis. By calculating the area under a curve on such a graph, one can obtain the total distance an object has traveled across the sky. In the case of Jupiter, the Babylonians described its motion as what looks like a trapezoid on the graph. They then calculated the trapezoid’s area. Their geometric methods were very similar to the Merton theorem, which was discovered by mathematicians at Oxford’s Merton College in the early 14th century and proved graphically by French bishop Nicholas Oresme around 1361. Such methods are a precursor to calculus.

http://www.britannica.com/story/ancient-babylonians-used-advanced-geometry-

the paper

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/351/6272/482.full.pdf