It predates Pythagoras by over 1,000 years.

Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

  • JoshRW@lemmy.world
    38·
    1 year ago

    You encouraged me to go look him up on Wikipedia. The history and legend of Pythagoras is some crazy shit apparently

    • KreekyBonez@lemm.ee
      30·
      1 year ago

      damn. why did schools only teach the super boring part about the triangles. dude had the golden thigh of apollo and the super-speed of hermes.

      also, it really sounds like he was a cult leader.

    • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      No shit… these are like old Chuck Norris facts:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras

      the priest of Apollo gave Pythagoras a magic arrow, which he used to fly over long distances and perform ritual purifications

      A fragment from Aristotle records that, when a deadly snake bit Pythagoras, he bit it back and killed it.

      he once convinced a notoriously destructive bear to swear that it would never harm a living thing again, and that the bear kept its word

      • Bread@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Kinda makes you wonder if future archeologists would know the difference between the jokes being jokes about chuck Norris vs us believing he was a god that we worshipped. Maybe that’s all mythology is, some running gags that everyone took seriously.