Stonehenge Builders Used Pythagoras' Theorem 2,000 Years Before He Was Born

If there's one thing the ancient mathematician Pythagoras of Samos is most famous for, it's a formula to work out the longest side of a right-angled triangle.

The pointy-bearded Greek might get the kudos, but the theorem has popped up independently throughout history, and across the globe. A new book adds another to the list – it was used in ancient Britain to build the famous monument Stonehenge.

The authors behind Megalith: Studies in Stone have used the geometry of the massive blocks making up the henge to suggest their creators knew a thing or two about the relationship between a hypotenuse and its opposing sides.

Most of us learn this as the Pythagorean theorem, which is spelled out as a^2 + b^2 = c^2, where a and b meet at a right angle and c makes up the triangle's long side.

This pattern is incredibly useful when you want to accurately determine distances between points in a right angled triangle or in quadrilaterals, whether it's for constructing monuments, mapping constellations, or dividing up land.

So it's little surprise that scholars have seen signs of its use among Babylonian, ancient Chinese, and Vedic Indian cultures.

The reason we slap Pythagoras's name on it is more an accident of history than anything.

The mathematician lived around the sixth century BCE, and later writers spoke of his mathematical proof of the theorem. Unfortunately, like a lot of writing from that period, first-hand accounts have been lost to time.

But there is a tradition we can trace from your grade 8 mathematics teacher through European, Islamic, Persian, and finally Greek schools and textbooks that attribute the formula and its proof to Pythagoras.

As for all of those other mathematicians who stumbled on this relationship, they either didn't impress anybody enough with a proof, or at that point there was nobody around singing their praises.

Hints can still be found, though, and according to reports, this new book argues such examples exist in the 4,500 year old arrangements of Stonehenge.

"We see triangles and double squares used which are simple versions of Pythagorean geometry," editor John Matineau told The Telegraph.

"And then we have this synthesis on different sites of solar and lunar numbers."

https://www.sciencealert.com/pythagoras-triangle-used-construction-stonehenge

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