Rick Baudé Wrote:
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> Well after all of these years of listening to 'pi'
> and 'phi'. I've drifted first to one side then
> the other until finally I'm dead in the middle.
> That was until I showed my more mathematically
> competent son than I am "The Ostracon" and told
> him that it was made at the dawn of the pyramid
> age. His eyes widened as he looked at it in
> amazement, and he said, that somebody was trying
> solve a problem that could only be done by
> integration, one of the bedrock operations of
> calculus. It appears that the AE's were solidly
> on the road to calculus. So since we have only one
> ostracon with one problem I think that the AE's
> were far more advanced in mathematics than we give
> them credit for. Just some food for thought.
>

Was this based solely on his view of the ostracon or history behind it?

In other words did he assume someone was trying to find a volume/area measurement under the arc/circle/ellipse or that someone was trying to lay out an arc/segment for correct repeatability?

Regards,
Lobo-hotei
lobo

Treat the earth well, It was not given to you by your parents, It was loaned to you by your children.
Native American Proverb