Mathematical mystery of ancient Babylonian clay tablet solved

[Imperial Dave]

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-mathematical-mystery-ancient-babylonian-clay.html?utm_content=bufferc811c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

another great little article. I liked it even more for the Indiana Jones reference

[DougM]

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-mathematical-mystery-ancient-babylonian-clay.html?utm_content=bufferc811c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

another great little article. I liked it even more for the Indiana Jones reference

Proof positive of the torture of school children as long ago as 3,700 years. At lest they were spared conjugating Latin. Although perhaps they were made to practice Hurrian declensions.

[Andreas Johansson]

I don't know about Hurrian, but Babylonian scribes-in-training definitely were made to practice Sumerian ones (and obviously Hurrians and others were made to practice Akkadian ones).

[davidb]

This seems to a continuation of Otto Neugebauer's work.  In 1975, he published a 3 volume set On Babylonian mathematical Astronomy, and he had published books on Astronomical and Mathematical texts.

[Imperial Dave]

it is rather clever stuff. if language is the cornerstone of social development then mathematics is surely the foundation of civilisation

[Patrick Waterson]

it is rather clever stuff. if language is the cornerstone of social development then mathematics is surely the foundation of civilisation

The correlation is good, although causation is less certain.  Specialisation would seem to be the foundation of civilisation, requiring as accompaniments administration and monarchy to hold the whole thing together.  Most of all, civilisation seems to require a habit of obedience, without which a society is indistinguishable from barbarism.  (This I would see as a necessary as opposed to a sufficient prerequisite for civilisation, i.e. the mere fact of obedience is no guarantee of a better quality of life, but does make it easier to build one.)  Note that obedience can be to a law code; it does not have to be to an individual.

[Imperial Dave]

Cooperation I would say initially until a stratification of society leading to obedience

[Patrick Waterson]

Might work, although cooperation tends to be temporary unless people continue to have something to cooperate about.  I am thinking of (or trying to) what distinguishes cooperative members of a civilisation from cooperative hunter-gatherers, nomads or barbarian tribesmen.

If we look at the Mongols under Genghis Khan, they rapidly assimilated mathematics, or at least decimal arithmetic, and obedience.  One empire-building session later, numbers of them also assimilated civilisation while others pretty much stayed in tents until conquered by the Russians.  I see obedience as a prerequisite for civilisation although by itself it will not give you civilisation.  What it does give you is the ability to establish and maintain a system of specialisations which evolves as civilisation.  If you do not make the jump to this system of specialisations you will not have a civilisation.