Babylon's Calculus of Jupiter

More than 2,000 years ago, Babylonian mathematicians in modern-day Iraq were using geometry centuries ahead of their time. By sketching trapezoids beneath a curve, they could estimate the area under it. They used this method to calculate how far Jupiter had traveled across the night sky. Long before Europe's 14th-century scholars rediscovered the technique, Babylon's stargazers were already doing the math that would one day form the roots of calculus.

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