{"id":7323,"date":"2016-01-28T14:32:29","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T21:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7323"},"modified":"2016-03-22T14:36:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T21:36:06","slug":"astronomy-babylon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/28\/astronomy-babylon\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomy Babylon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/speaking-of-science\/wp\/2016\/01\/28\/clay-tablets-reveal-babylonians-invented-astronomical-geometry-1400-years-before-europeans\/\" target=\"_blank\">from The Washington Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1>Clay tablets reveal Babylonians discovered astronomical geometry 1,400 years before Europeans<\/h1>\n<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/people\/joel-achenbach\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Achenbach<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"courtesy-of-the-resizer zoom-in\" src=\"https:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/news\/speaking-of-science\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2016\/01\/trapezoid-textA.jpg&amp;w=1484\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" \/><em>Text A. (Trustees of the British Museum\/Mathieu Ossendrijver)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The medieval mathematicians of Oxford, toiling in torchlight in a land ravaged by plague, managed to invent a simple form of calculus that could be used to track the motion of heavenly bodies. But now a scholar studying ancient clay tablets suggests that the Babylonians got there first, and by at least 1,400 years.<\/p>\n<p>The astronomers of Babylonia, scratching tiny marks in soft clay, used surprisingly sophisticated geometry to calculate the orbit of what they called the White Star \u2014 the planet Jupiter.<\/p>\n<p>These tablets are quite incomprehensible to the untrained eye. Thousands of clay tablets \u2014 many unearthed in the 19th century by adventurers hoping to build museum collections in Europe, the United States and elsewhere \u2014 remain undeciphered.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/speaking-of-science\/wp\/2016\/01\/28\/clay-tablets-reveal-babylonians-invented-astronomical-geometry-1400-years-before-europeans\/\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at WaPo<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Washington Post Clay tablets reveal Babylonians discovered astronomical geometry 1,400 years before Europeans By Joel Achenbach Text A. (Trustees of the British Museum\/Mathieu Ossendrijver) The medieval mathematicians of Oxford, toiling in torchlight in a land ravaged by plague, managed to invent a simple form of calculus that could be used to track the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}