Ancient Babylonians Figured Out Forerunner of Calculus (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Tracking and recording the motion of the sun, the moon, and the planets as they paraded across the desert sky, ancient Babylonian astronomers used simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Now, new evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, in 14th century Europe.

Comments

Not surprising

[rasmusbr]

Civilizations tend to "discover" philosophy, mathematics, literature, drama and great works of music in the centuries after they invent ways of writing those things down.

What's probably going on is that these things have been cropping up intermittently for thousands of years (or tens of thousands of years), but the ideas would usually not survive for very long because it would take unreasonable amounts of human effort to remember and transmit them.

By the way, video finally made it possible to commit dancing to permanent media in the early 1900's, so future historians will probably think of the 1900's and 2000's as the centuries when great dancing was first invented.