Even when a culture leaves behind extensive written records, it can be hard to understand their knowledge of technology and the natural world. Written records are often partial, and writers may have ...

The earliest known examples of mathematical and geometric astronomy have been identified in a series of ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets. Five ancient Babylonian clay cuneiform tablets calculate ...

While the Ancient Greeks spent their time searching for meaning in the cosmos, the Babylonians attempted, to quote fictional astronaut Mark Watney, to “science the shit” out of space. The Babylonians ...

Indiana Jones would be impressed. Thanks to a clue from a 50-year old photograph, a historian has decoded a mysterious trapezoid described on ancient Babylonian astronomical tablets. That previously ...

The purpose of four ancient Babylonian tablets at the British Museum has long been a historical mystery, but now it turns out that they describe a method that uses figures on a graph to calculate the ...