this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
689 points (99.4% liked)

Science

13141 readers
107 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 129 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

What I would like to know is if tablets like this are being scanned digitally into three dimensions so that they can be reproduced. I feel like everything we find from antiquity needs to be scanned this way. With humans constantly going to war destroying history, I'd hate the idea of losing things like this forever.

UPDATE: And thus a journey down the interwebs rabbit hole begins. I need better internet and PC to check this out more later, but answering my own question, here's the entrance to the rabbit hole should others wish to venture with a few examples:

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Didn’t all kinds of antiquities get destroyed in Iraq? Totally irreplaceable stuff.

As you alluded, probably common in many places. How sad.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

Most recently I remember it happening really really badly within Syria. Very intentional destruction. But yes, it happens all the time--Iraq included. With the technology we have now, we can preserve a lot of it (digitally at least).

I hate how it's so damn hard to find these things and yet so easy to destroy it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A lot was destroyed but a lot of it was looted and and sold to sleazy collectors. Remember when the guy who owns Hobby Lobby got caught buying looted artifacts?

Still horrible, obviously, but at least there’s some hope looted items will be recovered.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

I wonder how many artifacts could be recovered if we could search all the rich people mansions...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yea ISIS and other extremist groups like to destroy evidence of their ancestor’s greatness for some reason.

Lesser sons of lesser sons

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 99 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I knew Pythagoras was smart but I never knew he invented time travel. So cool!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I took the opposite tack.

You ain't shit, Pythagoras! You just wrote it down, you didn't figure it out, you absolute fucking fraud. We're taking your immortality back!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Quick! Change all the textbooks to “clay tablet theorem”!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And he invented plagiarism too!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

nah he probably stole that as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Poor poor Plagiar, everything he invented people stole and took credit for.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 90 points 5 months ago (4 children)

This makes a strong case on the discovery side of the discovery vs. invention controversy.

Ironically, my dad idolized Pythagoras and the notion of discovering a scientific fundamental to be remembered for thousands of years, for which the secret is not to actually do science, but raise a cult of scientists who attribute their inventions to you. Like Thomas Edison.

[–] No1 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

raise a cult

*cough* Elon Musk *cough*

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Edison, Watson/Crick, Musk, Jobs....I hope today it's much harder to get away with being an idea stealing tool bag since the internet has competent archivers, sans working under a company that owns anything you make.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It was most of the Greeks. We credit Democritus with atomism even though the Greeks said it came from an earlier Phoenician, Mochus of Sidon. Even Democritus's teacher doesn't get credit.

Democritus wrote it down in a way that survived.

That's it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Not really. The Pythagorean theorem (or whomever you want to credit for it) assumes plane geometry. It’s not true in general.

Plane geometry is the invention that makes all of the math work. The earth is not a flat plane (not even close to flat pretty much anywhere). If you want to do Pythagorean-like calculations between cities on earth, for example, you’ll get a much more accurate result with spherical geometry operating on geodesics. Unfortunately, spherical triangles not obey the Pythagorean theorem!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Cool but is there a better source on this than "I fucking love science"?

[–] [email protected] 80 points 5 months ago
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Cuneiform scripts were frequently coppied by scribes, so the theorem could be even older

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (4 children)

A handful of people can be credited with discovering the theorem prior to Pythagoras, this isn't the first time this has come up, and incidentally there is almost no evidence to suggest Pythagoras did.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I think that this theorem is at least as old as the pyramids.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I thought it was pretty well established that Pythagoras didn't invent it, he was just the leader of a Math and Murder cult so he stole it

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

"Math and Murder Cult" sounds metal as hell. I'd join.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I bet Pythagoras had substandard copper too

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Pythagoras has superior copper. All other thagoras has inferior copper.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is one of the reasons why we shouldn't name things after people.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

This, and the fact that most stuff is invented by teams and not individuals. I think our tendency to name after a single person helps keep the hero/savior/Messiah complex of western society alive, and blinds us to the power of community and cooperation. It's like "individual-washing" the past.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Isn't this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@mukt @Zerush A fair number of people worked out the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras existed. For some reason his name stuck for our culture.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

People used to live longer back then, just look at the bible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

another nail in whitey's coffin. when will this woke history end

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Pythagoras wasn't white. 😎

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

and another nail in whitey’s coffin. when will this woke history end

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I don't know, this painting of him looks pretty white (please ignore that it was made in the 1920s by an American who had probably never been to Greece)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

I feel like at this point I've seen this story in 1,000 year old reposts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

What a classic situation. Some hype man taking credit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It always seemed weird to me that it would be formally developed so late. Like I've taken multiple trigonometry courses and can't even define trigonometry let alone make sense of most of it, but the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly. The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it. It should have been the first thing mathematics codified after basic arithmetic.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (4 children)

the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly.

Excuse me, what?

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

There is lots of evidence of the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras. The attribution of the rule to him comes centuries after he lived. So likely he worked on codifying and proving the relationship using the Greek deductive and axiomatic system.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

And garden of eden as well as the story with a baby in a basket in Nil, are already in Atrahasis epos, from which Gilgamesh epos copied btw.

load more comments
view more: next ›