Evidence ancient Babylonians were far more advanced than we thought - BBC REEL
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- Опубліковано 5 гру 2021
- Plimpton 322 is the name given to a 3,800-year-old clay tablet discovered in Iraq in the early 20th Century by archeologist Edgar J Banks, the man believed to have inspired Indiana Jones. Over time this tablet has become one of the most significant and most studied objects of the ancient world.
Dr Daniel Mansfield, of the University of New South Wales, who has studied Plimpton 322 along with other similar tablets, argues that these are evidence that the Babylonians were solving real-world problems, such as surveying, using the basics of Pythagoras' theorem 1,000 years before the ancient Greeks.
Produced by Lucas Mullikin
Ancient Mysteries on BBC Reel: www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/anc...
#bbcreel #bbc #bbcnews
They were definitely smarter than people who spend all day on social media
And your words only help to cure that disease!
True, but then again, we're here too!🤣
Or on youtube
Could be true , but we can read a book about Einstein’s theory of relativity and we would be more advanced in our understanding of nature than 99.99999% of humans that ever lived.
Human intelligence is yet to be established....until we over come such things as Climate change; Scarcity; etc...
I fear as cleaver as we think we are, humans will never reach the “Star Trek” stage.
I would have appreciated more discussion about WHAT was actually discovered on the tablet and how it was relevant to land surveying.
The video was practically useless because it didn't really explain anything. I remain unconvinced.
Good point
What does it actually say?
At 1:00 "it was revealed to contain pythagorean triples".
These are numerical solutions to the equation a^2 = b^2 + c^2, the most common being 5^2 = 3^2 + 4^2
It is significant to surveying when you need (want) to mark out a right angled corner.
If you have a loop (triangle) of rope with side lengths 3, 4 and 5 then the angle between the 2 short sides will be a right angle.
The other tablets mentioned seem to include specific sets of values that pertain to land referenced by the tablet.
So far, so good but (theres always a but)
This method is still a very common fallback if modern equipment isn't available. However the long list of solutions is never used, only 5,4,3.
The only use for the whole list would be if laying out was done by using enough rope to span the entire length of both walls and the diagonal. That is not required since it is only necessary to extrapolate the line of the walls from the corners.
Not only that there is another method which is to measure both diagonals of a rectangle and ensure they are equal.
Exactly . Most yt? Vids are like this now . I know why . This not a learning tool .
@@sharonregnier3723 I had recently bought a smallish book, yep real paper. It's about learning Ancient Sumerian for the beginner(it's a language that was used 4000 years ago). In a nut shell it is very complicated to explain many of these ancient languages and even how they found out what was written on a clay tablet. The length of the video was enough to interest most people but not even remotely close to being long enough to give any clue as to the complexities of translating a language that uses no alphabet to convey its thoughts.
The Plimpton 322 clay tablet was essentially an ancient Babylonian "cheat sheet" for surveyors. That is beyond cool!!
Then you get the conspiracy theary club saying ancestors couldn't do complicated math or dimensions and perfect squares 😂they are hilarious thou this alone proves the ancients could easily even gardeners did
The term is "lookup table." I have a couple CRC Mathematics books FULL of math tables for virtually all math important functions, plus a book of tables for physics and chemistry values, also from CRC.
Man is a practical animal.
@@NOT.MI5.MI6.Try to spell “theory” next time.
@@asmodeus1274 I had to say thank you for your help and service you are a 🍑
Why is it so hard to believe there were always smart people
because modern science is very eurocentric.
There is mathematician’s geometry, but there is also on-the-ground geometry. I learned this on the farm growing up. My father never went to high school, yet he used geometry constantly and had a practical understanding of it. For example, he had never heard of Pythagoras but he knew that if he wanted to make a right angle when building a new shed, he just needed to have three ropes each paced out and marked at 5, 4, and 3 paces, 3 people hold the corners and it will create a 90 degree angle for getting the building square. He could trace accurate arcs by hammering a peg in the ground and them tying a rope to it them marking out the arc with pegs any size up to the length of the rope. When calculating how many posts to cut and how much wire to buy for a new fence, he painted a white mark on the tractor rear wheel then drive the route of the fence and count the revolutions of the wheel. since he could measure the circumference of the wheel it was then just a matter of multiplying that length by the number of revolutions and he had an accurate measure across hundreds of yards. This kind of practical geometry requires no sophisticated knowledge of math, and I would suggest was very similar to practical knowledge of farmers and builders of poor people’s buildings in ancient Mesopotamia and even earlier.
I expect that Stonehenge, as an example can easily be made a circle by primitive peoples just with a peg in the center, and a rop[e to mark the circle. Easy. Finding levels for say, building the pyramids, can be done by using clay to make a trough say 3 metres long, doesn’t have to be wide, filling it with water, then marking the wet clay side. To mark a level across a long distance it is possible to just look along the line made in the clay and then pulling down the trough except to the side with the line in it. Then get someone to walk the required distance, hammer a peg in the ground, then “sight” along the line in the clay and get the person at the peg to move a stick up and down the peg until it matches the sight mark. greater accuracy can be obtained by making the clay trough longer and for a narrow trough it is relatively easy to make it as long as the base of any of the pyramids but the shorter trough and then sighting is surprisingly accurate.
I would thus suggest that the practical usage of geometry came probably thousands of years before Mesopotamian scribes and Greek scientists formalised it into written rules. Rope and pegs in the ground was technology well within the scope of humans tens of thousands of years ago. And it wouldn’t take long after the invention of the wheel to realize that it is a perfect device for measuring long distances, a useful skill in mesopotamia if trying to estimate the amount of time needed to dig an irrigation channel.
I would also suggest that while academics might struggle to imagine people knowing how to work with triangles before Pythagoras, I think they should appreciate the practical application of such things because of practical necessity by very unsophisticated and uneducated people working the land. There are large circles and right angles used by the builders of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey made thousands of years before the Sumerians and their writing and math. They might have been relatively unsophisticated folk, but they did have rope and the ability to drive a peg in the ground…
Damm
Absolutely correct. What earlier engineering cultures and common workers knew was examples in nature thst worked and wrote down or memorized those that did, like 3,4,5.
Real geometric theorem came when mathematics later worked out math to find all lengths that worked with a proven formula.
@@STho205 The problem for too many academics is they assume a top-down use of geometry with educated scribes instructing uneducated peasants how to do things. I suspect that it was more a bottom-up process. Uneducated people (like my father) might not know why these things work, and they certainly can’t write them down like the scribes did, but they don’t need to know the underlying math when finding practical solutions to practical problems.
@@artistjoh mathematical theorems take what is apparently true in nature and try to find a formula or method to extrapolate it to all possible values. This way you don't have to walk around with a clay tablet of numbers that work, or rely on just remembering a couple of sets.
A carpenter speed square is full of pythagorean triples and mason squares like that are found in Egypt, Crete and Mesopotamia long before classical high civilization Greeks. However that school of Greek math is the oldest recounting of the formula. One day an older record of the formula may be found in China or India.
However you have to find square roots method to make the formula work.
You put that brilliantly! I am constantly irritated that academics try to overthink things instead of looking at the rational, practical, everyday applications and realizing that you don't have to know WHY it works to know how to use it. This applies to far more than math, of course. It's the general idea that we're so much more knowledgeable or smarter than the ancients, when really all that has changed is the level of technology, not how people actually think.
It’s crazy how some concepts are so useful, they can be forgotten and rediscovered throughout history
If science was all forgotten it would all be rediscovered because it's true, if a religion was all forgotten it would never reappear in a specific form because religion is based on made up stories, not evidence.
@@whatabouttheearth Very edgy Mr. Reddit atheist. Thanks.
@@UmamiPapi
It's not edgy, it's just real. Religion is made up fairy tale bullshit, just because people are too intellectually immature to aknowledge that it's all made up ain't my fault.
@@whatabouttheearth True. Nobody know the name of the first gods worshipped by mankind because there's too many of them.
@@backpackpepelon3867
Read 'Rivers of Life' by Col. JGR Forlong, it's an interesting read.
Imagine if this is just a cheat sheet of a regular construction worker of the time. And we’re sitting here going “omg, amazing.”
most likely what it was; there's stuff like this buried beneath the earth's surface all across the globe, but we think it's so amazing when in fact our historical record is .0001% of the actual societies of antiquity.
Exactly to the person who used this it was just a tool but to us it gives us a glimpse of their everyday lives. Also I think this is another piece of proof for something we’ve always implicitly known: people are smart.
The problem is your perception of a ‘regular construction worker’, it would be a far far different one during Babylonian times
I don't know... not saying you're wrong, but isn't it more like having a smartphone which indicates someone developed a smartphone (which was then used by regular people)
Or maybe a calculator in case people think smartphone is too much hyperbole 😅
Right!?
Thanks @BBC Reel for sharing this video! I found it very informative and entertaining. I had to look up Pythagorean Triples to know what it meant and it ended up being a constructive learning day. Thank you!
My wife is a student - she is actually paid for doing transcriptions of Babylonian tablets as of right now - and so I've got some scent of how the ancient world looked like. She taught me a bit of Akkadian - the language of Old Babylonians = too. When you read the documents, they sound extremely modern. In private letters, people write of everyday problems: here the son laments, that the mom writes to him too seldom, and asks for oil as a medicine; there a mom and a wife accuse the man of forgetting the gods and urging to bring a sacrifice - sounds just like "light a candle for Holy Mary". Letters of kings to officials look like a correspondence between a CEO and his employees. Official documents, like credits, wills and bills, are written by a scheme, created in several copies, witnessed, and so on and so forth.
If there is a window into the "so much different" past, we can see that, even if the times were alien, people and the way they address their everyday problems, was pretty much the same.
Thanks for that comment and information. It's interesting to know that people are people no matter what time period they came from.
This has to be one of the most insightful comments on UA-cam.
Thank you so much for this information. I envy you, not because you have a teacher in the ancient world with whom you can explore its wonders and glory.
God bless, brother. Love from the Philippines.
@@ricksantos3527 I left this comment about 2 years ago, and since then got in touch with school exercises. My wife's translation of one of them is about to be published - I helped her clean up the photo.
Not sure if it was that particular tablet, but my wife's professor assigned this tablet to her thinking it should be one of those legal texts it was found among in a family archive. But nay, it was just a school exercise. Was the family that proud of a child's exam that they kept it among the most valuable documents? I can only guess.
Indeed, this is most insightful not only in terms of practical "pragmatism" but also of the much often overlooked precept that "usually," the simplest explanation is not only the most elegant but also, "usually" the correct one. Thank you.
There are only so many ways to logically do something when working with material at hand. Eventually people come to similar conclusions.
I did informal study for several years and discovered among other things that the ancient Egyptians used number place value notation (which people think they did not have]) and had command of Pythagoraen triplets long before Pythagoras. So, other ancient civilizations are not really a surprise. The ancient world was different than what has mostly been believed.
Nile Delta was heavily farmed.
Landmarks washed away regularly
Boundaries need to be reestablished accurately.
@@kelaauger5359 Is that some sort of poem?
It just seems that , in my opinion, most archaeologists, teachers, historians and scientists always go looking in the past with this idea that humans were always more dumb than we are, and just because they didn’t have what we have, they can’t be like us. It seems to be more and more a fallacy that the brain power and ways of thinking in ancient times were so different to us. However, our education systems and way of “mass thinking” are much more advanced than the group think and values of people of the ancient world.
Weve been LIED TO
@counselthyself JA WEST = satanist, the egypt dvds are cool but take it wiith a grain of salt...
Fascinating information so thanks for posting. 😊
Thanks for sharing
Reorganizing the world's archives aka: museums primarily into some sort of a cohesive catalog similar to how libraries are organized is absolutely critical in order to help current researchers use their collections to their potential!!
Very good idea. The current system is chaotic at best. There must be so much tucked away in forgotten nooks and crannies.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 they are called archives....
Foundation
lol I know right, it's like were trying to build a car but every country has different parts of the car
Photogrammetry could help to preserve the current state of the tablets before any further degradation occurs.
Once digitised into 3D geometry or point cloud data they can be analysed at leisure without any worry that they will be further damaged by simply retrieving them from storage, let alone holding them.
At that point it leaves the amateur community free to translate the remaining works by crowd sourcing - if nothng else to give the experts a roadmap of what is worth investigating in detail and what can simply be ignored for the time being as trade manifests etc.
As far as I am concerned, I'm certainly not underestimating any of those ancient peoples: their view of the existing universe was so complex and multifaceted that it could only come from extremely sophisticated minds. They created towns, they built buildings that would be a challenge even today, they had a rich literature, they studied the sky...
All humans have created towns and looked at the sky. Most had “spoken literature”. There is nothing we cannot make today if you factor out costs and human rights.
ALERT!! ONGOING GENOCIDE IN SWEDEN
MORE THAN 900+ POLITICAL PRISONERS NEED TO BE FREED
@@SanjayKumar-bq8fp stop trolling 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
What's impressive is they did all those things without anything remotely resembling modern technology.
@@vondahe yea people tend to forget many of these buildings took decades or even centuries to be completed and took pretty massive death tolls. People still die during construction but it just isnt on a comparable level.
Geometry originated in ancient Egypt around 2000 BC as a way to measure the land and everything in it. The Egyptians used geometry for construction, navigation, and surveying, and the earliest known examples of written records on geometry date back to Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3100 BCE. For example, the Egyptians used basic geometry to build the pyramids in 2900 BC, which have a square bottom and four triangular faces. They also used equations to approximate the area of circles
The word "geometry" comes from the Greek words geo, meaning "earth", and metria, meaning "measure". The Greeks began to generalize the practical knowledge of the Egyptians around the 6th century BCE, and Greek mathematicians like Pythagoras and Euclid made further discoveries. Pythagoras is known for proving the Pythagorean Theorem, which is used when working with triangles.
Other ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Hindu, and Chinese, also contributed to the development of geometry. For example, Babylonian clay tablets from 1900 BC, like Plimpton 322, and later tablets from 350-50 BC demonstrate the use of geometric procedures for computing Jupiter's position and motion.
Actually it was Greece as he pointed out so clearly.
Fascinating! Love this kind of stuff. :>)
It takes modern science for us to understand that ancient science had already discovered it
Dude, History and archeology isn't an exact science. They discover something and sometimes just create a huge load of nonsense around it.
"Babylonians were far more advananced then we thought" should be replaced by
"So we discovered that a huge civilization that knew very basic math" --> As in: they knew a few more things then the 12 year old learns in a basic school in Belgium.
Because that's the reality of it. They were humans with horses, swords and a basic understanding of farming, physics, math and chemistry. Ow and some of them managed to create a few nice structures.
That we would also be able to make with the same technology, but the reason we don't is because we're too lazy and because we don't care for stacking basic blocks of sand on eachother to make a pyramide because it is not hard for us.
@@jellybeans0493 dude who asked?
@@iKillborn2kilNOE I felt like pointing it out.
Modern science tries so hard maintain an edge over the public..To do so, they must intentionally mislead us and distract us from actual truth..
@@jellybeans0493 dude who asked?
This is the content i need from BBC
Have they made any more?
Then tell Rupert Murdoch to end his persistent campaign, through his media outlets, to undermine it. He would rather people are kept stupid so he and his like can propagate a world view that works for the wealthy
best i can do is a queer african doctor who
Babylonians used a base-60 numerical system, which is still used today in the measurement of time (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour) and angles (360 degrees in a circle).
Interesting. Thanks.
3:32 Seeing that ancient clay tablet above a computer keyboard is something else
What junxtaposition, huh?
Basically everyone in the past is far more advanced than we give them credit for. Which is why I get pissed off we people just go "Aliens!" when they see some impressive structure or artifact.
Also they had slaves, which makes building incredible and giant structures about 1000x more efficient
Absolutely! I'm sick and tired of mindless fools thinking they are more intelligent than prior generations simply because they hold a device with access to the world's knowledge. Most people today would not survive a week without their electronic devices.
Yeah i hate that too, historians go to answer is - it must of been slaves - it must be sacrifice - it must be aliens 😂🤦🏻♂️ C’mon give us a break
@@MrSupernova111 THIS. Sir, if this was reddit I'd give you an award.
Damn right. We've lost so much by not being in touch with the natural world the way we used to be. Technology has done wonders for modern society, but it's also very true that most people could not survive a week without all of their electronic toys. And no, it wasn't aliens. Good lord the damage that the "history" channel has caused is so immense
Awesome, very very interesting
Currently going through a boundary dispute of my own! The surveyors are important. Good fences make good neighbors. Thank you.
Pythagoras: Geometry starts with me...
Babylonians: Hold my claytable...
There s a difference between demonstrating how something works and just knowing some examples. They knew the triplets by simply measuring them, but couldn t find the theorem.
Normie
@@anonimus13fuldo you have any source for that? This is just a clay table, it's amazing, you just can't accept that that they did it before the Greeks because as you consider yourself European and Greeks were European it makes you feel superior, lmao, babylonia an did it first, 1500 years before Greeks, deal with it
@@jancarlosmanon4556 The evidence was the segment itself, which said the Babylonians were aware of many Pythagorean triples. Having a list of triples is not evidence that they knew or understood the theorem, and is a likely indication that they did not or couldn't easily calculate from it it. It's not some grand insult to different cultures to recognize this. If they had said the start of the table showed a diagram of squares made from the sides of a right triangle, then it would have been evidence they may have an understanding that pre-dated Pythagoras. What the tablet really is is evidence they saw a benefit in documenting these triangles, likely for use in surveying based on other evidence. It's a useful reference tool, but not a mathematical leap.
@@fennugreek-gs5zb they found a babylonian table that had that kind of mathematics and it was an exam or something like that, the thing is that you are in denial because you cant accept that the babylonians did it way before greeks did it,. this is just a tablet from 1800 BC, 1500 years before the greeks, we may not have the physical proof that they used it but if you open your mind and you use logic then you can bet they used it
The Mesopotamians also discovered integral calculus but not differential calculus for the purposes of nighttime astronomical observations if I recall correctly. It’s honestly mind blowing, especially considering that integral calculus is significantly harder than differential calculus.
The mathematics the Mesopotamian astronomers used was not of the type any mathematician would normally call "calculus". They used geometries, specifically trapezoids, to approximate the areas under the curves of their plotted data and determine accumulation, a technique that was used throughout recorded history, especially by the ancient Greeks. The Greeks had conceptualized infinitesimals, but all proofs of the time were demonstrated geometrically, so they never got to the point where they accepted rigorous methods of integration. While the geometric technique is a precursor to calculus, it wasn't until the early 17th century that mathematicians rigorously formulated infinitesimals and made it possible for change and accumulation to be continuously derived from an equation.
@@CharlieQuartz How, why and where did you learn all this info?
I actually find integral calculus to be easier, tbh, and it's one of my favourite subjects when I was in college. Diffential equations and advanced engineering mathematics, however, now those are two whole Pandora boxes.
They invented Algebra too. It didnt come from Islam.
@@cardroid8615 lol. "didn't come from Islam"
🙁
Ive always felt we probably had to keep relearning things individually as society kept collapsing localy and erasing knowledge from the record. I always wunder what all traveled and survived between lost civilizations and their neihbors. Of all the ways to study intelligent life and how knowledge develops i think this is where a lot of answers are hidden and its so amazing you guys are out there finding it all out. Thank you so much for this work
Love this. Original travelers were just discovering things that had already been discovered
Fascinating
Never underestimate the wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors. Morden people, always be humble and grateful, please!
Do not trust the government narrative
I know we act like we the super generation. We are advanced because world trade truly kicked off and we were able to discover more things
@@truthfulfreedomfighter9123 Stop being sooo deluded now.
Murdered people, always be supple and hateful, please!
@@truthfulfreedomfighter9123 I think you need to define which government, as not all governments are the same.
Just imagine where we would be today if knowledge wasn’t lost or destroyed.
We are where we at because of them...
We are where we at because of them...
We are where we at because of them...
We are where we at because of them...
We are where we at because of them...
BBC does for me when these sorts of programs are made for learning of the past...........I love it.
"finding their way" to libraries and private collection got me laughing so hard
Yes, remember we need euphemism, you can't say that white people loot
Did it? How fashionable 🙄
As to what? Being destroyed by people who do not understand how they are so important?
Laughing at theft under “the white man’s burden”
Recent archaeological discoveries have shed light on the advanced technological and scientific knowledge of the ancient Babylonians. These discoveries show that the Babylonians were able to accurately predict astronomical events such as eclipses and planetary movements, as well as develop sophisticated mathematical and architectural techniques.
One of the most significant findings is the Babylonian tablet known as the Pythagorean theorem, which dates back to around 1800 BC. This tablet predates the famous Greek mathematician Pythagoras by hundreds of years and demonstrates that the Babylonians had a deep understanding of mathematics, including the concept of the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.
Furthermore, recent excavations at the site of the ancient city of Babylon have uncovered advanced irrigation systems and mathematical calculations used to design complex buildings such as ziggurats. These findings suggest that the Babylonians were highly skilled engineers and architects, capable of constructing impressive structures with precision.
Overall, these discoveries challenge the traditional view of the ancient Babylonians as a primitive civilization and instead reveal them to be a highly advanced society with a sophisticated understanding of mathematics, astronomy, and engineering. This new evidence highlights the importance of further research into ancient Babylonian civilization and its contributions to human knowledge and technology.
Yes, The Ancients were *not* stupid like everyone seems to think ("only aliens could have built the pyramids"). They obviously had a much better understanding of their world. Just because they understood it 'differently' doesn't mean it was wrong or less than ours.
Nothing wrong with burying concubines, wives, chiefs and slaves with their king after slaughtering them using axes? Your morals are Interesting...
@Hans-Joachim Bierwirth Morals change over time and are different for everyone. In the 1950s, parents were thought not to give attention to their baby as to not let it grow up spoiled, which was basically neglect. This was not too long ago. Today, we have access to everyone's perspectives, and now we are challenging each other's morals (ex. abortion). Besides, OP wasn't even talking about morals, but intelligence instead, which has no link except through how others believe things should be. (ex. researching nuclear power, it's an incredible scientific feat, but morally, it is wrong)
@@notamemethememe589 That's a whole bunch of false claims you made there. Now first things first: the poster wrote: "'differently' doesn't mean it was wrong or less than ours", and that is a moral judgement, not an assessment of complexity. So there we have your first lie intended to support a political ideology and its moral implications (QUOTE: "OP wasn't even talking about morals"). And of course morals have always been a function of intelligence. Next point is: pragmatic rules of youth care have nothing to do with morals because that is question of technique related to insights in cause and effect. And then: ancient people had no developed ethics thus leading to bad morals and they were less intelligent. So both of you made superficial statements based on ignorance without arguments. I guess you are quite young and inexperienced, but i am confident you'll learn a lot until you get old like me.
@Hans-Joachim Bierwirth You yourself made ignorant claims and tried to see beyond what was supposed to be a simple matter. I have no political ideology, and don't indulge myself in politics. When OP says "wrong or less than ours," they mean to say that their knowledge is different in terms of language or record, but not wrong in a sense that it is logically incorrect, which disregards morals. How else would ancient civilizations build what they built, and especially the most famous of them all, the pyramids? Even experts today are unsure of their methods, yet it has happened. They used slaves, yes, but do morals take away from the fact they built such a historical feat with such intelligence? We are not stupid, we just don't understand.
@Kernowjim The pyramids were built thousands of years before the enslavement of the Jews according to the Bible. It make no sense to build a giant funerary monument without the use of forced labor in that period of time. Not Jewish slaves, but slaves nonetheless.
Many scholars have said that the Egyptian Pyramids couldn't have been constructed without knowledge of calculus. Idk why any of this is a shock to anyone
What part(s) of calculus?
@@Lee.S321 fam, I haven't taken calculus in years, but they would have needed to know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid and you would need calculus in order to derive the correct governing equation
@@Lee.S321 geometry is derived from calculus. The proofs dictate its rules. You had to know calculus in order to do geometry. Nowadays that work has already been done, so you can teach the basic rules of geometry without calculus because those relationships have already been proven using higher math
@@Lee.S321 that’s a very broad question with a very large answer
@@P0k3D0nd3M4cG Geometry preceded calculus. But, may be a difference in terminology we're using. When I hear 'calculus' i'm thinking differential equations, definite integrals, etc. Sounds like you're talking about basic calculating volumes & estimating areas, which ancient cultures would have used frequently, but probably a stretch to compare this type of basic maths (but still very useful for ancient engineering, economic systems & so on) to the 17th century mathematical wizardry of Newton & Leibniz.
What are the musics you used in the video? They are fantastic, but I could not find them using Shazam and Soundhound
00:02 Ancient Babylonians understood mathematics at a sophisticated level
00:52 The Babylonian tablet revealed advanced knowledge of Pythagorean triples.
01:20 Ancient Babylonians had advanced understanding of geometry
01:46 Ancient Babylonians had advanced knowledge of rectangles
02:17 Ancient Babylonians used geometry for accurate boundary-making.
02:42 Babylonian surveying became more accurate with private land ownership
03:10 Babylonians had advanced mathematical understanding
03:37 Babylonian tablets reveal advanced understanding
Crafted by Merlin AI.
I realy enjoy these segments. they are like starting points for me to dig deeper into the subject. Much appreciated!
Writing on clay tablets was a far better way to preserve knowledge than we do today.
Just imagine what was lost on papayrus "paper" when the library at Alexandria burned. I truly believe we have spent centuries in a rediscovery mode and I don't believe we've understood all preceding this catastrophe to humanity.
I always make backups to my redundant array of inexpensive disks. (Well, EEPROMs.)
@@lobuxracer The library of Alexandria did not burn, its funding was cut for three hundred years. War was considered more important at first, and then the economy was in a slump. You know how it is.
@@lobuxracer And Nalanda
YEP the clay tablets have survived and can be deciphered without electricity or gadgets.
What's the music before the one minute mark?
Amazing 😍
I love how small things may contain big. Here - a tablet more than twice lesser than a hand, and gives a perspective on ancient's maths and how they used it in land-owning problems. (That's also one of many reasons I love archeology.)
yeah i wish my girlfriend had this mind set
I’m just glad this isn’t about fkn aliens
I legit was expecting aliens
This is actually a Sumerian knowledge, not Babylonian. Babylonians were very influenced by the older Sumerian culture, and they used the Sumerian counting system, and inherited many of the cultural and technical achievements of the Sumerians.
That's right!
Holy smokes
Right
And Sumerians named the Kurds/"Qarda" as the people that live in the mountains north of them. So that means Kurds are one of the most oldest and longest lasting ethnicities, if not the, on the planet! 😆🌞
And Sumerian civilization began circa 4000 B.C. when the constellation of Tauras the bull was behind the sun at sunrise. Thet is why the bull was so significant in Sumerian art. They already knew about all the signs of the Zodiac.
I’d love to learn more about how the Babylonian saw the world! Is there recommended reading?
so cool
At 1:04, the commentator speaks of ancient geometry that started in Greece and mentions the Greek astronomers while the image shows a beautiful image of a Greek astronomer looking through a telescope. For the record, the Greeks were using a magnifying glass to start a fire, which was pretty high-tech for the time, we have no evidence they had telescopes to look through. Officially, the invention of the telescope is attributed to Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey in 1608, and to other Dutch eyeglass makers. Later, Galileo Galilei perfect that and was able to make remarkable observations in the sky.
I heard somewhere that there's reason the think the English navy had telescopes even earlier but they were considered military secrets.
The invention of the steam engine is credited to James Watt, even though it is known that Egyptian temple machines had steam engines millennia earlier, because the ancient Greeks used steam engines and cited the even older Egyptians as examples. The idea survived the collapse of the Roman empire as a toy for theologists, even though none of the machines themselves did.
So if the ancient Greeks had lenses to start fires, it is absurd to believe they not also had telescopes.
@@davidwuhrer6704 The equivalencies you are trying to assert are ridiculous. If you've ever seen a working aeolipile (the ancient steam turbine) you would know that they were basically toys or curiosity devices. None were ever constructed or designed to produce enough power to move anything substantial and their description in ancient documents are as demonstrations of "the mighty and wonderful laws of the heavens and the nature of winds". You could not reasonably call them "engines" and there is no lineage from their invention to the family of pumps and engines that were designed in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which James Watt improved significantly, making the industrialized factory possible.
Likewise, it is ridiculous to believe that the simple shards of crystal we have found from the ancient world could possibly have been used as telescopes. They were only ever referred to as fire starters in literature and while some could have been curved and clear enough to use as magnifying lenses, glass manufacturing was not sophisticated enough until the 13th century to create lenses with clear focus and we have no evidence of any use of compound lenses before the 16th century or refracting telescopes before the invention mentioned by the OP.
please turn your life to Christ whilst you still can the rapture is about to happen anytime soon please repent of your sins And invite the holy spirit to make his home inside you it's not about religion its about a relationship ua-cam.com/video/QpwX-6tSE5s/v-deo.html
@@repentrepent8989 You have misspelled one of the words in your advertising here for your business. It is "rupture," not "rapture." By that we mean the time for the complete demise of the institution of religion is right around the corner. LOL You have no Idea how lame is your 14th century mentality. No rational human being buys into it anymore. As a matter of fact, no rational human being has ever bought that.
Mathematics is one skill that our ancestors could work in even in the Stone Age. Meaning they were actually able to do more than feed and defend themselves, they could think, and some had time for art, music, drawings, cooking, utensils and containers.
I mean, they were biologically literally the same as us. Like 98% the same, idk why people are surprised that we did math the very second we could write, and we probably did it even earlier than that.
Some people let there arrogance run them to think those people were idiot.
@@Just-a-Orion-on-the-internet.
Também não sei por que ficam surpresos
O que difere um ser humano moderno de um "antigo" é apenas o acesso à informação e a tecnologia, que aliás se desenvolveu há dezenas de anos atrás até hoje.
How is it so different? in its specificity? or generality?
I’ve currently been pondering and like to think about the variety of realities we could collectively experience, which is also true for individual experiences. I am recently seeing more videos about the variety of ways that different animals experience their environment and how they respond differently from how we or another animal would. This is interesting and if we are able to accept the variety of realities, we may become capable of better accepting one another, other species, unrealized potential, and possible paths we can take going forward.
Odd not to expect, at the very least, this level of mathematics considering people were building such precise structures as the pyramids even earlier.
Yes it has been passed down by the First Creation humans, Adam and Eve. As well as fallen angels that taught men the sciences of engineering and chemistry needed for metallurgy.
Piles of stone & precise structures & level of mathematics. Find the moron!
@@shadowlands8490 It was well before them that knowledge was being shared. You are repeating stories from earlier religions.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 you really should learn more about the geometry of the Great Pyramids of Giza.
@Anonymous D?NGO Piles of stone collapsing? Complexity? Metallurgy? Whatever you take, reduce the dose!
It's heartbreaking to see what Mesopotamia, which was the heart of human civilization has turned into. I hope one day it claims it's shine again and gets rid of wars.
The oldest modern human civilisations archaeologists have dug up so far is in Morocco or West Sahara, depending in which side of the war you're on. Before that it used to be Kenya. Whatever the oldest really was, it was almost certainly in Africa, not Asia.
The fertile crescent used to be at peace for quite a while before the colonial powers brought their wars with them there. Nowadays the former colonial powers are at peace (unless they start again over overfished fishing grounds), but they keep the wars among their most profitable former colonies going to keep prices of raw materials down.
Iraqian here
Yeah i agree
Imagine being the heart of human civilization and now being a vessel for lust and corruption
@@davidwuhrer6704 Kenya? Go figure... and then tell that to the Kenyan historians who are still mourning the fact that their ancestors were nomads who built no cities and had no scriptures. Civilization is a term rooted in the civitas, the city. There was no civilization in Kenya. And of course there was no peace in the fertile crescent until we Europeans brought them peace by giving them their first modern nation states, which has been done after the first World War by France and the UK, who freed the Arabs from ottoman colonialism.
Salt from irrigation is what fkd them, plus the "ill wind" from the nuclear attacks on soddum and gemora.
Yeah ! No islam in those days. No Turks and Arabs either, to be accurate. Long live Israel !
It was very helpful and helped us to grow our knowledge about history
Wow how interesting.
I was in Babylon in 2003, i got nice picture of lots of the structures and i can seriously say that those people were very advanced for that period, we saw structures and roadways that were like some modern day towns.
@@theyoungcavalier
Wrong. Saddam talked about rebuilding Babylon but it never happened because Bible prophecy said it would become an uninhabited heap of ruins which is EXACTLY what it is today.
Some of Rome paved roads are still usable to this day and modern road building was taken from roam. However modern roads are made with obsolescence meaning they are made cheap and break down easy thus create constant jobs. While roses technique create roads that lasted literal thousands of years they literally made the roads starting about 6 to 12 feet under the street. Making it impossible for anything to damage the roads
Ancients wanted to create things to last. Nowadays the majority of things wouldn't last 100 years. In 200 the entire modern world EVIDENCE would be gone
@King Dahaka First of all I am a kid of the 60s, I had a great education, I went to UC berkeley and became an engineer. Second, we were sold a lie and as Marines, we dont question our orders we follow them, we can now admit that it was all a bullshit war. Before insulting people, and assuming people dont understand history, how about you tell me where your experience to make any comment comes from. I was there, I spent over a year knowing the Iraqi people and understanding their struggle. Where were you?
@@Nanobits thanks for your service brother.. I believe we were there to acquire cylinder seals and cuneiform tablets.
Can we really call them Pythagorean triangles if we now know he didn't invent them? 🤔 Lots of history needs a second look it seems... Check out all the geometry inside the King's Chamber in the great pyramid. Mathematics is older than we knew.
Well actually the ancient Chinese or the ancient Indians also invented the same theorem before the Pythagoras
I might be mistaken, but from what I can gather from the fellow in the video's narrative it seems that, while the Babylonians had a "better" understanding of such mathematical phenomena than we previously thought, they still didn't have the definitive and quantitative understanding of them that Pythagoras did. I'd liken it to Newton mathematically quantifying the behavior of gravity, but not understanding its underlying nature. That had to wait for Einstein.
I think Babylonians had the triples but not the theory.
@@fotistsoukalas6916 Exactly.
It isn't a theory if you just have one or two combinations where you make it work.
"Egyptians" (dynastic ones) have not built the pyramids - the main one consists of 2.3m blocks, the whole reign of Khufu was 30 years, if he started building it on day one of his reign, it would have to be built at 1 block every 6 minutes, 24/7/365 day or night for 30 years, without a single mistake, hehe...
How are artifacts named? Like what's the methodology used?
Can someone tell me what's the music at 0:23
This seems to happen a lot when we rely on the old eurocentric explanations....
Nice
Awesome
In 5000 years, do you think there will be evidence of our mathematical smarts? I think not. We don't use clay. We use paper, magnetic digital, etc. methods. which will all vanish in short time. How many of our critical mathematic truths are etched in clay, or stainless steel for posterity?
None. We are one mega catastrophe away from being the figment of some future dude's imagination
if the burj khalifa is still standing by that time, it is a record that we know advanced math… for example…
One Solar Storm away from a worldwide EMP
Yes, there'll be evidence - structures, materials, altered land-forms, all of which will have been impossible without advanced technology. It takes a lot longer than that to erase everything.
Our works and structures and creations and inventions will remain.
Pythagorean triples can be found stamped on any good carpenters framing square .
The carpenters 3,4,5 square rule is used to make walls at 90° to each other
Stamped in decimal fractions, I guess no current day carpenter could make use of them
I think what people fail to understand is how much communication and exchange of ideas influenced our advancement of mathematics and sciences. For instance if one culture had very well developed numbers (say including 0 and negative numbers) they didn’t necessarily have well developed geometry, and if geometry was exceptionally good like here it didn’t mean they had the numerical system to put it into a complete systematic theorem and have their descendants explore the ideas further. As the world became more connected and they exchanged ideas information and new mathematical tools our advancement of mathematics and sciences reached a absolute rapid speed snd with newer faster easier means of communication it will continue to advance at an ever increasing speed
This is truly amazing to think that early civilizations so far back in time were using pythagreom triples to solve problems.
I think ancient civilisations were alot more advanced than us in many ways, in terms of being in line with nature better than we could ever even comprehend. The self watering Babylonian gardens would be a great example, or Machu Picchu in Peru that had a self functioning water system. Amazing detail and sophistication.
But where are they today?
You must not be aware of automated sprinkler systems. It's not like they created the water out of nothing. What you're describing is plumbing. Rest assured that these ancient cities had a detrimental impact on their surrounding environment.
The megalithic builders were by far the most advanced cycle of civilisation so far.
@@paulchamberlain8355builders? You mean the forces of erosion? No one placed those giant rocks down, they're just there
That's a funny thing to say @@idzidz833. Did you mean that the rock just magically created the pyramids in Egypt, the walls of Sacsayhuamán, the Celtic dolmen? Is that what you mean? Erosion put the stones on top of each other in a pyramid shape, a wall shape, a walls with roof shape?
My favorite is Tablet SI-483839 which has the first knock-knock joke ever recorded.
What does it say
@@stevethea5250knock knock
@@deathpunch23who's there? DEATH PUNCH!
hs anyone though that these tablets are a catalog of reliefs for use in duplication on to rollers (clay, then fired and re dowel mounted, with an inking roller or felt tablet) that could be then rolled onto papyrus sheets for distribution?
The annual inundations ( floodings) of tigris and euphrates river systems as well as nile in egypt washed away fences ,post and other landmarks hence the need for accurate surveying methods
Considering the destruction in Iraq recently, the question of whether these artefacts surviving us cannot be a certainty.
Why do you think the USA invaded Iraq 🤔 It wasn't like Osama bin ladin lived there or was even born there.
@@paulchamberlain8355 My statement above doesn't question the political actions of national governments. OK, but since you brought it up, for all Saddam's abuses, the historical artefacts were safe until Islamist terrorists under a so-called Caliphate wrought destruction. In the re-capture of Baghad by US-led coalition forces, let's not forget the 'legendary' looting which followed, of which books and films have been made. I think till today, a great deal is still not accounted for. That is the crux of my point. (Geneva Convention 1949, Additional Protocols I and II 1977, against cultural pillaging and destruction.)
No one ever invented maths. But great civilizations like this discovered it as the language of the Gods
Actually, you do invent Maths and mathematical rules. Ratios are natural, but not mathematics.
@@kavorka8855 it was never invented it was discovered. That and frequency are the natural fundamentals of the universe. You use your versions of arithmetic but that's it. It was never invented its a natural law of the universe
How is this associated with god's. If humans used this to
Be applied to earth ly. Problems. These tools were not developed by god. There no evidence that God or god's
Gave these to humans.
Not correct.
These triangular surveying principles are also used in architecture and quilt-making.
Great
I believe the reason that they came up with all the mathematics was because they were calculating the orbital trajectory of the progenitor of the Taurid Stream, they were not sky watchers of only static stars. The cuneiform texts show a sophisticated society, as to-days legal, real-estate, and civil law. They even record the space debris destruction as this planet is subjected to through the cyclic ages.
They were so advanced they even used tablets long before us ;)
And all these years later they are still waiting for tech support.
I would have liked to learn how they could tell the tablet relates to land surveying and not to architecture or cloth weaving.
I thought it was about How to Make Cookies Babylonian style when I saw the thumbnail. Darn.
I am very honored that i spent 20 years studding Babylonian and Sumerian and Mesopotamian documents and history .I feel also very honored because i lived in this ancient Babylonian-Sumerian region and this is why i read 1000 page on daily basis about Mesopotamia.
I was born in al nasriyah Iraq. What ancient civilisation came from that region?
@@ratedm90 Mesopotamia. You are Arabs now because Arabs conquered the region but are not related to these ancient civilizations ethnically.
Assyrians
@@jacqueslee2592 That’s not true it’s a mix, you can tell by some features.
@@ratedm90 No, the ethnic groups that composed those ancient civilizations were genocided by others and by the Arab Berbers. They do not exist anymore. Similar to the many tribes that existed in Europe which either assimilated to the Romans or were genocided. However, the Middle Easterners of today are in the majority Arabs from the Arab Gulf pennisula. The other ethnic groups today are not related either.
I'm curious. Did the ancient Babylonians have museums too, or is that a recent development?
romans and greeks had historical collections and museums, so did medieval europeans
@@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 - that's good to know. Thanks...
No, all they had were ceremonial sites where they howled st the moon :) oh, between sessions of building the most impressive monuments in history.
@@SimonHaestoe - LOL
@@SimonHaestoedo you have any proof? Pretty sure they had something like museums too
Can you assume things, such as reading direction, from a specimen like this? The flush-left alignment and etched base-lines _might_ support a left-right hypothesis.
I suppose a better question would be: “Are there other specimens, with similar patterns (alignment, baselines) that read in different directions from one another?”. To wit; two different specimens, different contexts (language, time, geography &c), both flush-left, one of which reads L-R, the other R-L.
Ancient Aliens: **Heavy Breathing**
i am always amazed that we believe that people from ancient civilizations were not as smart as we are today
Only the beeb believes this. Everyone is far smarter than the beeb
When we read their graffiti it reveals they were just as we are today. Not much has changed. ; )
John still loves Mary. And Jack is a jerk. Same as always. lol
what should really blow your mind is a Paleolithic humans were just as smart as we are today
@@mikeball6182 Justin Bieber? LOL!
@@Taricus beeb is a shortened form of BBC. I don't know enough about Justin Bieber to comment.
I wonder if the three ancient civilizations just decided to hide their knowledge and what we find are just the pieces that they missed.
Sadly the majority of ancient artifacts and knowledge have been destroyed by our own ignorance. Whats left is what we didnt steal or destroy.
@@osamabinlackin435 not by ignorance, but by Islam. Beautiful Bamiyan Buddha destroyed by Satan followers.
Nah, a lot of stuff gets lost because of constant wars.
@@AbhishekSharma-vf8vd kk whatever u say buddha
@@gyroscope993 prove me if I'm wrong. Beautiful city of hampi was ruined by Satan worshipping cult.
The Cassini Map or Academy's Map, the first topographic and geometric map made of the Kingdom of France as a whole, was compiled by the Cassini family, mainly César-François Cassini (Cassini III) and his son Jean-Dominique Cassini (Cassini IV) in the 1700s, was on a scale of 1/86,400.
The map was, for the time, a real innovation and a decisive technical advance being the first map to be based on a geodesic triangulation. Four generations of the Cassini carried out the work, taking more than 6 decades to complete. 0:30
Wow !!! 😮
Does anyone know the tune played between 0:23-0:49 ?
Oh Gosh. I'm in love with it. Please share if you've found it.
Just cause they were "Ancient" or earlier man, doesn't make them less smart. They have always been as smart..
Good
I find it hard to believe that it would be boundaries of property that they would be marking out, “this is my backyard, that’s yours”. It seems a little trivial, plotting foundations or measuring distances for cartography sounds a bit more accurate. The concept of private property or individual ownership of land came a bit later from a different culture.
I get sad when I read stuff like this. It always reminds me how much humanity can loose in its intermittent dark ages and how long it takes to win it all back.
Excellent. These BBC REEL documentaries are pretty good.
Considering that Babylonian and Earlier civilizations mapped the stars and recorded movement of all planets and recurring comets, their knowledge of mathematics seemed quite certain!
I respect pure mathematicians who trying to solve seemingly meaningless problems
I wish I had this presenter as my geometry teacher in high school. He makes the subject very interesting.
He doesn't even understand the principles involved. With teachers like that you end up as a moron. On the other hand that might qualify for a job at the BBC.
The greeks themselves literally told us they got their knowledge from the east and from egypt.
Well, they were lying just so people would turn into conspiracy theorists!
...:D
They didnt say that
I blame the feathered serpent
the thing about maths is that it is everywhere and so much of the practical stuff is intuitive, even if you can't accurately describe it in mathematician's terms you may know exactly what you're doing. stonemasons have had techniques for drawing out blueprints using a system built around proportions, ratios and spatial relationships for thousands of years. knowledge that was passed down by tradesmen and gradually refined with more modern methods. people who were illiterate could still make skilled craftsmen because the craft didn't require you to speak the language, only to understand it.
Ok I guess. I’m always surprised on how smart people always amazed to find other smart people in history. I mean come on. You are surprised that people who built 320 ft tall walls by 85 miles long didn’t know how basic geometry and math worked? Seriously dude? Modern engineers couldn’t pull that off with the precision cuts involved but you think ancient people just got lucky?
They just conveniently forget about all these
1:48 how did they know if a triangle had a nice hypotenuse without the theorem? did they just measure? Did they then include any near misses that look close to a whole number when you're measuring a small triangle?
They didn't. They didn't even care. The BBC spreads pseudoscience like a whore spreads syphillis. Disgusting!
They used base 6. A much better method for measuring and calculation.
@@paulchamberlain8355, you're going to have to explain how the base helps to determine the triples without the theorem.
@@JNCressey ua-cam.com/video/J5Ug3Cr8RUE/v-deo.html
@@paulchamberlain8355, that video says that they did know the Pythagorean theorem, contrary to the claim in this BBC video.
This is so underrated? Very true! Also in Vedic astrology Sun means ego and that might be the reason we are having conflicts more when we are more affected by Sun waves.
i think we always downplay our past, people are used to think about it as some sort of prehistoric/primitive setup till most recent centuries, while instead, it probably was/felt a lot more similar to modern days than we imagine, just the general setup being different but the substance of it being the same. if there is a small tablet , then there would have probably been bigger ones that didn't make it through time, for me it's like looking to one of those lil summary books for highschool/university.
The point is that a lot of history is Eurocentric and that if it wasn’t done by Europeans , then it can’t be done or known by other civilians before them
Great thinkers and math visionaries have always helped us move forward. It wasn't Aliens we just seem to reject the notion that we are these authors of such wonders.
I think those ancient alien worshippers reject the idea that people could do things thousands of years ago that would be impossible today.
They credited their knowledge to fish ppl. Half man, half fish. Came ashore, taught them and then returned to the sea. The pope's hat is attributed to the their garb.