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.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net