Clay Tablet Reveals Ancient Babylonians Used Calculus to Track Jupiter 1,500 Years before Europeans

A new analysis of a set of ancient clay tablets has revealed that ancient astronomers of Babylonia used advanced geometrical methods to calculate the position of Jupiter – a conceptual leap that was previously thought to have occurred in 14^th century Europe.

In a report published today in the journal Science, it was revealed that the ancient tablets containing the secret knowledge of the Babylonians, which date from 350 BC to 50 BC, had laid unnoticed in the cuneiform collection at London’s British Museum for decades.  It was not until Astroarchaeologist Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University in Berlin conducted a reanalysis of the tablets from photographs, that the significance of the text was realized.

Babylonian Astronomy

The history of astronomy in Babylonia (present-day Iraq) originated with the Sumerians who recorded their observations as early as 3500–3200 BC.  Astronomical phenomena were important to the Sumerians, who equated planets with gods that held an important role in their mythology and religion.  Jupiter, for example, was associated with their main god, Marduk, patron deity of the city of Babylon.

Sumerian astronomy had an important influence on the astronomy of the Babylonians, who produced their first star catalogues by around 1200 BC.

By the 8^th century BC, Babylonian astronomers had developed a new empirical approach to the prediction of planetary movements, an approach that was later adopted and further developed by the ancient Greeks.