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around two famous rivers Tigris and Euphrates, situated in modern day Iraq,
Iran, Syria and Turkey.
Around 2000 B.C., Babylonian geometry was already very well developed.
Babylonians knew the rules of computing simple geometric objects such as
rectangle, triangle, trapezium, cylinder and so on. They use a very advanced
number system, sexagesimal place-valued system, to record measurements.
SEXAGESIMAL PLACE-VALUED SYSTEM
The way Babylonians represent numbers that are larger than 59 or decimal
numbers is very similar to the number theory that we use nowadays. Since
Babylonians did not use decimal point,we need to guesshe value of a
Babylonian number from the context.
CUNEIFORM AND TABLETS
Babylonians wrote numbers and words on a tablet of unbaked clay using the
cut tip of a stylus, which left wedge-shaped marks on it. This is called the
cuneiform writing.
<= The famous Babylonian tablet YBC
7289.
The meaning of the Babylonian number 1
24 51 10 in the tablet is 1+24*60 -1+51*602
+10*10-3
In fact, it is a very good approximation of 2
The numbers 30 and 42 25 35 represent
the length of the side and the diagonal of the
square respectively.
BABYLONIANS PI
Besides computing the length of the diagonal of a square, Babylonians also
knew the formulas for the areas and circumference of a circle.