The Babylonians learned to use geometric calculations for astronomical studies fourteen centuries earlier than previously thought, according to a test analysis found that civilization tables published today in the journal Science.
It was more than a century BC in Asia Minor and not in the fourteenth century in Europe when humanity began using geometry to study the space, according to the investigator’s report Mathieu Ossendrijver, the Humboldt University of Berlin.
So, the hypothesis is refuted by far accepted time, which attributed the merit of developing geometric calculations for the study of space scholars of Oxford (England) and Paris in the Middle Ages.
The people of the ancient Babylonians used the geometry to measure the spatiotemporal position of Jupiter, according to research “The formation and transformation of space and knowledge in ancient cultures”.
The found tables, four of which are intact, are the earliest evidence of the use of geometry to calculate positions in space, and suggests that the Babylonian astronomers influenced the rise of subsequent techniques.
In the first drawings of the tables you can see how Jupiter on the horizon and subsequent evolution of the star in the next 60 to 120 days is appreciated.
The texts contain geometric calculations based on what known as “trapezoidal area”, which rules out the previous belief that the Babylonians only operated with arithmetic, that is so much less complex.
The trapezoidal area allowed the Babylonians to compute the time in which Jupiter is hidden in the middle of the study period means, that can be encoded partitions the area.
Moreover, with geometry, “allowed an abstract application to define time and speed,” explained Ossendrijver.
This discovery redefines the history books, by revealing that the scholars of Oxford and Paris to the first geometric calculations for the space was attributed, were actually years behind their counterparts Babylonians of past.
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