We were never as dumb as some always suspected. In fact, we might be in a very long slide.

"The mathematics enscribed on the tablet isn't just incredible because it appears to contain the world's oldest trigonometric table"

Phew, I was worried it was going to turn out to be a shopping list.

Me too!!!

Fascinating stuff, and a great example of our modern world not realizing what we used to know. And given how long the human species has been in its current form it truly makes one wonder just how extensive is our historical amnesia, eh? So it goes...

where was this tablet found?

From the link below it appears that the tablet was purchased by Plimpton in 1923, fromEdgar J. Banks, who said it came from a location near the ancient
city of Larsa (modern Tell Senkereh) in Iraq. Robson estimates that
Plimpton 322 was created sometime in the six decades before Larsa
fell to Hammurabi of Babylon in 1762 BCE.

http://www.ams.org/sampling...

Yes, discovered in the early 20th century, and finally being appreciated.

This is the little known reality about Mesopotamian archaeology: The Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians were three related civilizations, of terrific literary creativity; and much of their literary output survives in these baked tablets, which fill many museums in Europe, North America and elsewhere; and yet most of them continue to be unread, or not adequately studied. We don't know what treasures remain for us to discover, and which are at hand. This is a corner of history which is sadly neglected, and has little prestige for young people entering the profession, alas.

I find the history of the entire area fascinating in so many ways. Along with the Sumerians, Babylonian's and Assyrians you mention there's are the people who built Akrotiri on the island of Santorini, and which was buried in the titanic eruption of Thera. Given what is being found under hundreds of feet of volcanic effluence historians are beginning to think the people, the city of Akrotiri, are the source of the myth of Atlantis that Plato went on to describe some thousand years afterwards.

http://www.ancient-origins....

There is just so much we do not know about ourselves, eh?

thanks!