Popis: |
The article analyzes three famous mathematical tablets from the Yale Babylonian Collection (YBC 7290, YBC 7289, and YBC 7302) that come from the Old Babylonian period (i.e. from some time between 1800 and 1600 BC). They show an interesting approach of ancient Babyloni-an mathematicians, scribes, or students to elementary planar geometric shapes (trapezoid, square, and circle). They describe the Old Babylonian calculations of areas, the approximation to the square root of 2 as well as the knowledge of the Pythagorean Theorem and the approx-imation to the value for π. |