another nail in whitey's coffin. when will this woke history end
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)
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Cuneiform scripts were frequently coppied by scribes, so the theorem could be even older
The recent "Fall of Civilizations" podcast talks a lot about the history of the pyramids. They may still have known a lot about geometery, but the slopes and angles involved in the pyramid building seem to have been trial and error as much as anything
The pyraamids are way more complex and accurate as been build only by trial and error. It's architects knew exactly what they were doing and also geometric theorema way more complex as the one of "Phytagoras", as shown also in other ancient buildings, which are still difficult to reproduce by modern architects.
What makes you say that? I'm not an expert. Accurate geometry or not, the pyramids are pretty cool. What about them means it couldn't have been trial and error?
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/pyramid
About halfway up, however, the angle of incline decreases from over 51 degrees to about 43 degrees, and the sides rise less steeply, causing it to be known as the Bent Pyramid. The change in angle was probably made during construction to give the building more stability
Yes, the bent pyramid, but that say nothing, maybe simply a design of an bad architect. They always exist, even today.
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There are records of why it was bent though. It was one of the first pyramids. The king wanted it very tall and steep. he ended up being burried in a pyramid with less slope. Do you have any archeological evidence of complex geometry being used?
Again, the pyramids are an impressive feat of craftsmanship and the organization of labor, but does that mean they employed the pythagorean theorem?
They may very well have known geometry, or at least developed during the course of their civilization but I don't think the pyramids represent sufficient evidence for them definitely knowing the pythagorean theorem
edit: also if you haven't heard the podcast, i recommend it. It's pretty cool
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.
the Pythagorean theorem is a purely intuitive thing everyone does regularly.
Excuse me, what?
The first person to take a diagonal shortcut while walking understood it.
Taking a diagonal shortcut means that you understand
a + b > c. That's a far leap from being able to prove thata^2 + b^2 = c^2.
It is if you needed to collect taxes and wanted a way to measure 📐
I imagine it's been developed and lost periodically, and some people are averse to irrational numbers. Greece just had continual credit in our intellectual pedigree (as opposed to, say, the Babylonians who had more advanced trig than the Greeks before them and the Greeks were aware of them in some ways).
I think you also need a lot of rectangles and squares to find it necessary. I imagine buildings, but even today a lot of materials are cut to fit (also, the building I am in is not rectangular along any dimension). Maybe legal rectangular plots of land? Idk
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
Isn't this common knowledge that the Indians knew the theorem well before Pythagorus?
This is one of the reasons why we shouldn't name things after people.
