Who triggered trigonometry?

Partial Ruins of Babylon     (US Navy photo)

Western civilizations tend to give far more credit to Hellenstic inventions than to those which came before.

Trigonometry (involving relationships between “lengths and angles of triangles”) is often associated with ancient Greek mathematicians and astronomers. Yet way before third-century discoveries of Euclid and Archimedes, trigonometry  was being developed within the Indus Valley, Sumeria, Anatolia, Egypt, Nubia and Babylonia.

About six decades ago, a 3700-year-old mathematical tablet was unearthed in Iraq.  This ancient Babylonian relic indicates that trigonometry was quite evolved at least a full millennium before its Greek heyday. 

This tablet, Plimpton 322, is now believed to contain the world’s “only complete accurate trigonometric table.”  Its 60-base system “could potentially influence the way we use mathematics today, as it can facilitate more precise division.”  “Based on ratios” rather than on “angles and circles,” this Babylonian system is somewhat similar to modern-day rational trigonometry.

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometry

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mysterious-babylonian-tablet-could-hold-math-secrets/ar-AAqGhfI?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Copyright September 6, 2017 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved