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World's Oldest Decimal Multiplication Table Discovered
ananyo writes "From a few fragments out of a collection of 23-century-old Chinese bamboo strips, historians have pieced together what they say is the world's oldest example of a multiplication table in base 10. Each strip is about 7 to 12 millimeters wide and half a meter long, and has a vertical line of ancient Chinese calligraphy painted on it in black ink. The bamboo pieces constitute 65 ancient texts and are thought to be among the most important artifacts from the Warring States period before the unification of China. But 21 bamboo strips contained only numbers and, on closer inspection, turned out to be a multiplication table. As in a modern multiplication table, the entries at the intersection of each row and column in the matrix provide the results of multiplying the corresponding numbers. The table can also help users to multiply any whole or half integer between 0.5 and 99.5. The researchers suspect that officials used the multiplication table to calculate surface area of land, yields of crops and the amounts of taxes owed."
I've been assured that only space exploration gives us the impetus to create new technologies. How could people 2300 years ago need to compute things? How could they invent things? They had no astronauts, no 3D printers. Surely they were Luddite savages hacking each other to death because there was nothing else to do?
I want to be a researcher who gets seriously quoted as supposing that maybe people used math to do the kind of math things that people would probably need to do around that time.
It is fascinating that we continue to find artifacts from the ancient world that show far more sophistication that people today generally realize. This finding is one. The Antikythera Mechanism is another. I recently read a fascinating article about ancient Roman military medicine which was so advanced that it was not equaled in some ways until the 1900s. I have little doubt that there is much more to be found. Our ancestors could be quite astonishing in their abilities, and very human in their flaws.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
300BC is anything but a pre-historic era. Do the owners of Slashdot REALLY think you are that thick? Do any of you think that the great achievements of that period could occur WITHOUT the ability to do simple maths, like multiplying numbers?
Strict base number counting systems are arbitrary. Knowledge of one is knowledge of all of them, yet only a few weeks ago we had the humiliatingly cretinous suggestion that BINARY could be invented AFTER the concept of base number systems was understood. Even betas should be above the propaganda ploy that goes "you are geniuses, but your ancestors were know-nothing thickos". Every salesperson knows that the most idiotic 'marks' are those that fall for simple flattery.
What is true, when you go back far enough, is that practical maths skills would frequently have been treasured as 'industrial secrets' by collectives or guilds or the like- and there was little widespread desire to universally educate the 'common man'. This did NOT mean things were not known, simply that some knowledge remained well known only amongst certainly tightly knit groups of people. It was, recall, the age of the printing press that changed this situation. Before the printing press, replication of written material was painful and costly.
Google "Antikythera mechanism". If this device had not been discovered, and I said here the people of 100BC had the ability to make such a computer, the usual vile shills would immediately reply, calling me a "tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist". The scum who tell you betas to be 'amazed' at the idea of Humans multiplying two numbers together want you to be this dumb and uninformed about levels of Human achievement in the past.
It's true, trade was well established by then. It's not inconceivable. In fact nothing in China is done without the help of GE, Siemens, etc. It doesn't necessarily make them bad.
And who's surprised it wasn't found in Africa?
I, for one, would be really surprised if an ancient Chinese multiplication table were discovered in Africa.
Ezekiel 23:20
According to wikipedia at least.
Waiting for the next Indiana to thus discover a two thousand year old computer! Evidence of those time travellers we heard recently about on /.
I mean, Babylonians were doing this (granted in a different base) some 1,500 to 2,000 years prior. That's a long time. If nobody, between then and 600(ish) BC thought of doing the same thing, I would lose hope in the creativity of humans. So this really doesn't surprise me, it's not like they were idiots back then.
Well, those primitive African tribes went far beyond that. They invented fractals.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
What is impressive is how the characters hardly evolved since that time. The picture is not easy to read, but it seems that only 7 and 9 are different from modern characters.
Who decided to use a hexadecimal multiplication table as the lead image for a story about base-10 multiplication tables?
All their bases are belong to us
Chinese don't like war too much. They are not a warring tribe.
However, they love money.
Ask any Chinese, and I mean, any Chinese and you will find each and every single one of them love money.
How I know ? I am a Chinese.
The multiplication table wasn't the only Chinese invention. The ancient Chinese also invented the Abacus ( http://eileen-lian.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/abacus-1-AJHD.jpg ) because they needed something to count their money.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Example however looks hexadecimal.
The China at the time was India...!!
I come to Slashdot only to read sigs. One you are reading is mine.
See, I can be a moron too.
From my extensive education on the Warring States period, I can tell you that these multiplication tables were used to count how many millions of soldiers wouldn't have died had they paid attention when their commanders told them not to pursue Lu Bu.