This 3,700-Year-Old Tablet is the Oldest Example of Applied Geometry

But together with the Plimpton 322, it clears the air on why trigonometry tables were needed. “This is from a period where land is starting to become private – people started thinking about the land in terms of ‘my land and your land’, wanting to establish a proper boundary to have positive neighborly relationships,” Mansfield said in a press release. "And this is what this tablet immediately says. It’s a field being split, and new boundaries are made.”

We invented math because we invented property.

This 3,700-Year-Old Tablet is the Oldest Example of Applied Geometry