News Archaeology

Babylonians used geometry to track Jupiter’s movements

Advanced sky-watching calculations came long before Europeans did the same thing

tablet

ROSETTA TABLET  A cuneiform tablet, slightly smaller than a standard sticky note, housed in the British Museum provided an unexpected key to understanding how ancient Babylonians pioneered the use of abstract geometric spaces to understand planetary motion.

M. Ossendrijver/Science 2016 

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Ancient Babylonians charted Jupiter’s heavenly motion in a surprisingly modern, mathematically abstract way — a feat that until now was thought to have originated among European scholars who lived roughly 1,400 years later.