Donated Chinese bamboo strips turn out to be ancient multiplication table
Thursday, January 9, 2014 - 13:01
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org) —Researchers at Tsinghua University in China are reporting that a subset of bamboo strips donated to the university five years ago has been found to make up an ancient Chinese multiplication table. Dated back to 2,300 years ago (circa 305 B.C.), the table represents the oldest-known such device that computes in base 10—ancient Babylonian tables dating back 4000 years were base 60.