Plimpton 322: The World's First Rational Trigonometric Table — E8 Intelligence Research

July 19, 2026Open Access

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Key Points

To identify and analyze Plimpton 322 as the earliest form of a trigonometric table based on rational ratios.
Examined a 3700-year-old Babylonian tablet containing 15 rows of Pythagorean triples.
Analyzed the relationships of sides in right triangles without explicit angles.
Tabulated values of ratios associated with tangents and secants in base-60.
Identified that each row of the tablet corresponds to a right triangle with specific side ratios.
Established that the tablet does not use angles but rather normalized side ratios from approximately 0.2 to 1.0.
Confirmed that the table serves as a systematic way to calculate rational trigonometric ratios.

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Finding the world's first trigonometric table based on rational ratios using ancient Babylonian mathematics.

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Andrew Stewart Caldin (2026) studied this question.

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