What was the first (known) maths mistake?
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
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Written and narrated by Matt Parker
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MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
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To answer a common comment: I think the correct version should be 10 × ½ = 5. You could argue 5 × ½ = 2½ but I think it's not in keeping with the tablet.
Also: people seem to enjoy this new style of high production value video. And there could be plenty more where that came from, if, you know... www.patreon.com/standupmaths
It would be great if you would've included some examples of the operation in use. You're most likely right with your point it was supposed to be 10*(1/2)=5, but maybe it was the definition of a somehow neutral operation? Without knowing more about their math system, it's hard to tell if the writing or our understand is wrong.
Yes, those animations are so great and the ancient styled music and jingles are awesome, really loved it!
I really love your theme remixes!
But, there's another mistake. You see Ku Shim's mistake wasn't the first know to man, but the oldest to survive to this day. But then, what mathematician cares about accuracy?
I still like seeing your face though. Your grin is priceless!
“Don’t worry, everyone makes mistakes, no one will remember tomorrow.”
5000 years later:
Poor person will never live it down.
Well, I bet no one remembered it the next day
I filled out 50 000 Tablets in my day... And you Kept the THREE I F'd Up on!!! Gawd... Why did we ever invent Human Resources!!!
Ha, remember that kushim guy that got that multiplication wrong?
Tomorrow never comes
I hope everyone realizes that this video is about 5000 year old spreadsheets.
beautiful
5000y old spreadsheets on 5000y old tablets
@@Allumik the more things change...
...and spreadsheets on a tablet, no less! :P
I actually thought of my workplace during the video
Plot twist: this isn’t the earliest recorded math mistake, it’s the earliest recorded embezzlement scheme
Or record of a minor loss of 15 bowls of barley due to spillage, settling, pests or testing when transferring between storage containers. 15 bowls is only a .38% loss of the roughly 3910 bowls they had
@@ultimatecalibur They just "fell off the chariot".
@@hamag3655 Quite tragic to lose 20 bowls of barley. I don't know what we'll do after losing those 21 bowls
@@ultimatecalibur good point!
@@taelim6599 I think we should ignore those 25 bowls. It's such a small amount. What do you think Nisa? You can sign off on those missing 30 bowls, right?
“Why do I need learn math, I’ll be able to carry my abacus anywhere!”
Lol yeaaah..... funny how we never corrected that.....
Beautifully said
Math is not only calculations
@@10names55 woooosh
I'm looking forward to when you can wear an abacus on your wrist 👍
Kushim : "work is so stressful"
Kushim's wife: "its ok, what's the worse that can happen?"
*5000 years later* "lol check out this dumbass"
Two top comments in one video.. nice
@@FLS96 battin 1000 on this vid lol
I'll never understand the YT algorithm, I wrote both comments back to back, the other one got likes and this one had 0 likes for the first 2 months then YT started showing it to people again, probably since the other comment was getting likes, idk this came outta nowhere
"Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal." - Ernest Hemingway
One of those ways is apparently being an idiot.
@@MitchellD249 don’t forget the guy who sold bad copper
This is the only kind of brutally dark humor that makes my meaningless existence slightly less unbearable for a brief moment lol
Moral of the story: Even if you're an ancient accountant, the internet will still make fun of you
no one escapes lmao
We really be out here laughing at some guy that made a small math mistake from 5000 years ago
Looking at this video , the system in the video makes as much sense as the imperial system
@@AlecsNeo lmao
@@Nugcon our species have always been assholes to each other so this is not that unexpected
“I forgot to check my work, oh well, I’m sure no one will notice.”
-Kushim, not knowing how wrong he was.
You'd think 15 bowls out of 30,000 probably wasn't a error he got in trouble for.
I believe that quote is universal to everyone who ever worked out some math.
@@migtrewornan8085 Considering how imprecise a bowl is as a practical measuring implement, that's well within the margin of measurement error. I doubt their bowls were calibrated to 0.05%, and even if they were, the measurement process using bowls wouldn't be that precise.
If he only knew his error would get all over RUclips.
@@tomaskot9278 or would be known all over the world!
That symbol for which you don’t know the meaning means “Do NOT show this tablet to the tax collector”.
GREAT POINT!
@Pronto "For tax reference"
It might be the symbol, to throw away this tablet, because of an error in accounting
I assumed it was the location of where the barley was stored or from what area was harvested from.
"We are trying to reach you about your oxen's extended warranty."
What I'm taking from this as a 21st century engineer: there are two constants in civilization, beer and paperwork.
what about death and taxes
@@kingumi644 It is all connected. Beer causes death and taxes cause paperwork.
@@lawliet2263 and juicy men.
Id argue that paperwork causes beer but thats just me
@@paule_muc it's all interdependant, such is the way of history.
Henceforth, messing up a math problem will be know as “pulling a Kushim”.
Classic Kushim square.
The silly sanga
kushim moment
@@neilgerace355 sussy baka
Kushim Parker was Matt's ancestor
poor Kushim, being remembered 5000 years later only for his mistakes.
It's a _certain kind_ of immortality, for sure...
Better Kushim than Abu Hajar...
just like Matt Parker
Also for being a fcking baller apparently, selling metric tonnes of beer
Better than being known for selling really shitty copper...
Imagine if people are still talking about the Parker Square 5,000 years from now.
@8:22
@@oliverbrooker882 waitwaitwait _that’s what that was_
I laughed so loud at 8:22 that I think my neighbors wonder about me. Some things don't change.
Everything is recorded everywhere. It's more likely than you think!
All that will be remembered is the Parker Square
The lesson I learned today is:
If you get caught practicing "creative accounting", just claim it's a maths mistake...
seeing as how it's in the cooking range of things it simply could have been lost due to bad batch, spillage, spoilage, and they just didn't include the reason for the shortage in the document
Jimmy Carr is taking notes
"It's just a small bug in the code, anyone could have made this mistake"
or better yet; destroy the evidence
Or clam it as a spelling mistake
The first math mistake was:
"Look, there's THREE of us, and only ONE Mammoth. Dudes, we got this."
He means mistakes in math, not mistakes caused by math.
Hey wooooshers, I'm just making a correction. I understand the joke.
@@anawesomepet just because you understand the joke doesn't make your comment completely pointless
That's a judgment error not a math error.
Your joke doesn't even work.
I laughed, that makes the joke worthwhile. :)
Sheep and ZPero gets NO BITCHES
Yall are the wettest of blankets
I can imagine they were aware of the wrong symbol being used in that tablet but didn't correct it because clay tablets are hard to fix.
Happens way too often among programmers nowadays. "It's not a bug worth fixing if it's a pain in the butt to fix and we have a workaround."
Fascinating video btw.
Notice how both USB sticks and clay tablets hold their info on silicon: it's just packaged rather differently
I think your theory is most likely correct. it's the most reasonable. it's something we know is likely to happen, and likely to occur in the way you describe
clay tablets are not particularly difficult to fix.
"Typed into their tablet" got me
Kushim should've turned on auto-correct
Siri's voice recognition wasn't nearly so good back then.
They were touch sensitive tablets too.
@@gasdive Great dad joke, among the best in fact
"Type" is another word for "impression", so .. :/
I remember once reading a guide to stockkeeping for royal courts. It stated that you had to remove 0.03% from a total of grain bushels to allow for settling and crushed grains. The manuscript I read was from Denmark in the 18th century and warned that it was unethical to punish grainkeepers for this natural disappearance, which has been documented since time immeasurable.
So, the stock keepers were cereal offenders?
@@smaakjeks I don't think you've read what they wrote properly
I think the expression is "time immemorial"
There's a Danish phrase "being round-handed". Now it means "one who gladly gives money/stuff to others", but back in the day when tax collectors met with peasants to get grain as tax, they would dig into a grain bag with a big cup, and scrape off the top with their hand, to ensure they took exactly a cup of grain. However some collectors curved their hand so that they got more grain per cup; they were being "round-handed". This of course upset farmers and at some point the tax collectors were ordered to use a scraping stick instead to avoid cheating.
This is what I remember reading, but correct me if I'm wrong.
@@RandomTomatoSoup I don't think you have read what he wrote properly.
You missed a point in the closing statement
- we are still making mistakes
- we are still brewing beer
- And we are still use tablets
Ah, humans. Don't ever change
You just made a math mistake if your own. You claim to have "a" point yet provide 3 distinct points. I'm sure you and Kushim would get along just fine!
@@paradauxio are you trying to bait someone into correcting you with your fake correction? is this all a ploy?? well I replied to you!! are you happy now??!?!!
btw it's "using tablets" OP, but oh well
@@paradauxio That was covered that in the first point. :)
plot twist: kushim was embezzling and just didn't expect anyone to check his work.
And here we are 5000 years later 😅😂
plot twist kushim was embezzling, expected his work to be checked against the actual grain and so built in some “breakage” on the record so that the record matched what the grain was
To save Kushim's honor here: that's nozt a maths mistake. that is history's first ever typo!
Right
Assuming we interpreted it correctly
Space archeologists reading my physics homework 5000 years from now:
“Haha look he got his math wrong”
Also your professor, reading it tomorrow...
"This homework by Justin is the last time any human ever did math mistake. He represents the last holdover of this dark age of humanity. Please point and laugh."
@@T33K3SS3LCH3N not until we get robot brain implants will we stop making math mistakes
@@trueaidooo not even then if our implants are anything like early Pentiums
why do I see you literally everywhere
They say you die twice:
once when you actually die, and again when nobody remembers your name.
Well, long live ku shim!
uh... I mean, I don't know the history of these documents, but if they went missing for any length of time, wouldn't his name have been forgotten and then remembered again? does that mean he died twice already and came back to life?
@@AfonsodelCB Christ may have risen after 3 days, but Kushim took a few thousand years
@@andrewhawkins6754 Really long respawn time
I heard it different: you die first when you realize you will die. You die second when your heart stops. You die third when your name is pronounced for the last time.
Yeah, weird thinking that I have every intent to live longer than the first recorded name. Not 'live on in history,' just... live. Might not make it, but I'm hopeful.
This was extremely well-produced. Kudos to your graphic designer.
And don't forget the music
Amen
Yeah, also one couple thousand years old guy - that's a tileset from The Royal Game of Ur.
They wanted to do the soomer meme
Wouldn't it be funny if the animator made a mistake. Then 5,000 years later a Blorgon holo-influencer finds it and sees a name "William Marler".
this is why math teachers always need you to show your work.
so people can laugh at you 5000 years later
What makes you think your teachers aren't laughing at you right now???
I too tend to make math mistakes when large amounts of beer are involved
Don't derive while drunk
Just an alien underrated comment
@@justanalien7255 Don't Drink and Derive.
I make math mistakes when stone cold sober. When beer is involved, math makes me mistakes!
Wow, props to the animator, this looks so pretty! (Props to the person who rerecorded the channel's theme too!)
i know this is some effort wow
"Mr. Kushim, I finished transcribing that tablet."
"Excellent." *signs it in approval*
"Don't you want to double-check it before signing it, sir?"
"Ugh... it's been such a long day. Just put it in storage, it's probably fine."
It wasn't fine.
*5000 years later*
haha, person in the past can't math.
Wouldn't it be the other way around? Kushim bringing it to Nisa?
@@jorgec98 I actually didn't see Kushim's signature on that particular tablet at all, so I was already taking some comedic liberties with this "the _one_ time he didn't check" scenario ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@HalcyonSerenade fair enough. I didn't pay it that much attention myself
@Xavier Beauchamp ooh God captain PC
My man Ku Shim skimming 15 bowls of barley off the top for his personal brewery
"But I *knead* this barley for myself."
We just didn't found his personal tablets with perfect maths
Hold up. Is that a Kripperino for a different channel?
Inventory was taken, 15 bowls of wastage or sampling losses.
@@jeffreyhueseman7061 That may be more the reason for the error.
Kushim's Ghost be like "God damnit they still talk about that?"
Picture this:
You’re laying on your deathbed, before your death, you hear your god say:
“Kusmin, you shall be remember for 5000 years.”
For what my lord?”
“Making a math mistake.”
“NOOOOOOOOO!”
Since it was ancient Uruk I would say that instead of the Lord he would see goddess Inanna/Ishtar
The adventures of kushim and nisa sounds like an amazing sitcom
After months of searching, I finally found a person with the exact same profile picture as my Discord profile picture but with different colors and style
@@Ventro_Devientro i made it myself, so idk what to tell you?
@@The_Void_Alchemist I also made my logo by myself 😅
You want to see my logo?
@@Ventro_Devientro hell yeah!
Jack Sparrow meme:
You are by far the worst ancient acountant I have ever heard of.
Kushim: But you have heard of me.
After Kushim escapes with the entire supply of beer:
That's got to be the best Accountant I've ever seen...
This meme has never been more accurate xD
He's also technically the best ancient accountant I've ever heard of.
@@colinharter4094discounting Nisa here
8:22 I'm not doing the maths but I'm going to assume that's a Parker square!
I did the maths and can confirm that it's a Parker Square. The small bowls in the upper right are the exponent (2). And going across each row from left to right gives 29, 1, 47, 41, 37, 1, 23, 41, 29 which is, in fact, the Parker Square. (obviously square each number - that's what the exponent of 2 does)
Was looking for this comment!
Love it
That's what I thought! Put in on a t-shirt!
That's exactly what I thought when I saw it!
5:48 "Probably made sense at the time..." I expect it did.
5 x 6 is close to the number of days in a month, and ten times that feels reassuringly close to the number of days in a year - for which other mathematicians would surely have been developing systems (all civilisations seem to enjoy predicting movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets - one reason, I'm willing to bet, that we retain 360° in a circle, with 90 of those degrees in a right angle).
9,000 divides by 360 elegently into 25. If you are doing these sorts of calculations without the aid of more recent calculating machines, systems that work with factors of 3, 4, 5 and 10 are all very handy for mental arithmetic and division into shares.
I suspect also there may have been use in this divisions for being put on an abacus (which would be very limited in space and number of counting beads that could be placed on it). So helping in both mental math and use of an abacus wouldve been crucial
Round numbers in base 10 are pretty bad if you want to divide them evenly. 100 has only seven factors, while 90, despite being smaller, has ten. 360 has 22, compared to only 13 in 400.
turns out that when your brain is reminding you of that one mistake you made when you're going to sleep, its actually warning you that people thousands of years in the future will be bringing it up
5:50 "You can see each increase is either 3, 5, 6 or 10 times the previous, which probably made sense at the time but did leave the door open for mistakes"
Where "mistakes" is another name for "Imperial system".
MATT PARKER: So what number system would this be???
Touché. *cries three drams*
Even one bowl unit is kinda close to a gallon.
@@muche6321 COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!
FREEDOM!
/s
The animation in this video is gorgeous!
For sure, it's so clever and slick.
I wonder if the difference in multipliers could be a result of the way they were stacking/storing the grain. So there could be 5 in a jar, 6 in a crate, ten crates in a row, stacked three high and then 10 rows per area (for example). You could then compare the tablets to the stock to ensure you had what you thought. Essentially building a system based off what you were doing practically.
This makes a lot of sense. Ten is the only multiplier that occurs more than once; other multipliers based on practicality is quite convincing.
Whoever made the animations / art for this episode made a pretty damn good job. Just wanted to say that.
"Hey siri, place an order for ten dotless side-bowls of barley" - Kushim probably
Big or little dotless side-bowls?
But was Siri an individual, or a group of people who spent all their time eves-dropping, so that they would know when their services were needed and got a lot of gossip in between. "We have become so reliant on The Siri that we can no longer function without them." - Nisa - 3000bc
Siri, Cortana and their competitors would probably come up with some AI nonsense at such a request.
"I marked an appointment with Barley on Dotless 10, year of the side bowl"
I bet when he realized he made the mistake he slapped himself in the forehead and said "well, that's a real Parker Square." He would never know why he said that, or what a Parker Square is, but it seemed to make sense at the time.
This reads like an old text-based adventure prompt or a line from The Stanley Parable
The Parker Square is a timeless idea, it permeates the very fabric of space itself.
So it's all The Parker Square?
Always has been.
@@Roomsaver Or something the late Sir Terry Pratchett would write.
This line could come straight from a Hitchiker's Guide to Galaxy Book
This definitely sounds like Douglas Adams
So Matt is definitely an immortal making a video about himself
ice cold 😂😂😂
Shockingly plausible
You mean Kushim is just old Sumeric for "He who parks"?
the parker clay tablet?
Oh, I just made the same comment lmao
"Don't worry Kushim, they'll forget you even made the mistake by next week"
5000 thousand years later:
"I want to do something with my life, something to be remembered for"
some summerian bureucrat not realizing he was going to be remembered for thousands of years because of a math error on his job.
Maybe there was a predetermined factor for loss, such as barley being a perishable or mouse food. and the first example shown was not a mistake but just accepted loss and the cost of doing business.
exactly i think the word is “breakage” (learned that from breaking bad lol) that was my initial thought as well
He basically says that in the video.
Y'know, as an accountant of a big company who has been struggling a lot working from home and making mistakes, it was nice to hear of someone who made it's own mistakes 5000 years ago, to remember we are all humans after all. Thank you :,)
I actually suddenly started to like my job more thanks to this video lol.
It is a job that writing is created for, woah
It's amazing how the only time base 10 turns up is when counting something organised in sets of 12.
Greatest stupidly simple inventions of humanity:
Shipping containers
Luggage with wheels
The number 0
Probably because the days in the month are base 10 too if they use 30 days/month approx
every base is base 10
8:06 had me really puzzled until the very end of that scene. What a brilliant Easter egg!
I figured it was gonna be a parker square immediately but I initially looked at the shapes the symbols made rather than their values
In the afterlife:
"MY NAME WILL BE FOREVER ETCHED IN HISTORY!"
"Yoooo, that's really cool! What did you do?"
"...I did wrong math."
A thousand years in the future, in a class room a teacher briefs their students about Kushim. "And that's how 6000 years ago we recorded our first math mistake. Now on to chapter two where we will talk about a Parker Square."
I believe Kushim would be proud to know, that they are an inspiration to us all! To honour them, i shall do some math mistakes at work tomorrow!
Well this type of math was revolutionary for that time. So unless you make some mistake in advanced mathematics or quantum physics or something the chances are kinda low😅😅
8:22 is that seriously the Parker square...
Matt... Never change...
well spotted. wow!
I want that Parker Square on a t-shirt!
I had no idea what the animation was supposed to be, but once the lines crosses it clicked, and I broke out laughing.
Scrolled down to find this - my friend is confused why i'm so happy about this
"Don't try to make the Parker Square a thing!"
- Matt Parker, 2016
This is such a beautiful video! The animations, the graphics, the sounds, the music, the humour - incredible, I am truly amazed! Even though I must admit finding the first half leading up to the mistake interesting, but a bit lengthy at certain points, I marvel at this edutaining feast!
Wow!!!!! The QUALITY of this video. The graphics, the music... Congratulations!!
5000 years from now, an archeologist is going to dig up the parker square.
Someone will have to cast one in metal or something
They'll argue whether Parker was a real person, or an institution.
To be fair, I would probably look up if someone shouted “Kushim!”.
Reallyschk?
Lmao.
It's a Hebrew joke by the way.
@@elidrissii ... what does kushim mean in the joke?
@@jean-bastienjoly5962 Kushi means Cushite, the son of Ham who's the son of Noah, and is traditionally associated with all black people. But in modern Hebrew/Israel, the euphemism treadmill made it equivalent to the N word, in terms of acceptability.
So in short, kushi is singular n word, while kushim is plural lol.
@@elidrissii Okay, i understand the joke. Thanks!
Good job putting the beer makers in the description credits:
"Beer by Kushim and Nisa"
Splendidly done with the animations and remix of Matt's theme. Well done, everyone!
boys with a time machine: no kushum don't write that down!
He said he did it to troll Stand Up Maths!
8:21
Don't think we didn't notice that Parker Square!
I laughed so hard when I noticed the Parker Square!
* In a job interview *
Kushim: Hello, my name is Kushim and I'm here for that job offer you posted.
Interviewer: Kushim? As in, the one who made that counting mistake on that grain trade?
Kushim: It was a one-time thing!
Interviewer: No, I think I'll pass.
* In the afterlife *
Anubis: State your name, mortal.
Kushim: My name is Kushim, in my life I was-
Anubis: Wait, wait... _that_ Kushim? The one who made a counting mistake on that grain trade?
Kushim: It was just a multiplication mistake! I swear!
Anubis: I don't know, man... if I let you through, it'd be some real bad rep for us here...
* Looking inside a museum from the afterlife *
Guide: This right here is a very ancient and important record we found, it details a man named Kushim
Kushim: Me? Have they finally appreciated all I've done in my life?
Guide: He was a man known for making a counting mistake in a grain trade.
Kushim: Oh, god damn it!
@@SwordQuake2 most Proto-European Gods are based on Sumerian Gods including Abarahamic religions
@@SwordQuake2 I skipped the part where Kushim was disowned by his gods, so he had to go die in Egypt.
@wfre devg Majority of European Pagan Gods and myths (especially Egyptian, Greek, Nordic and Celtic) have originated from Anatolian and Mesopotamian Gods where Sumerian God's and myths have affected the most.
If I were the ghost of Kushim, I would wear that proudly.
I imagine that these tablets were running the original version of windows, from which Windows CE, Windows Me and Windows NT were descended - Windows CeMeNT.
I'll get my coat.
I absolutely despise you, Phil. Take my like.
Fabulous.
Imagine going years without being pestered by an update
Yeah... yeah, do get it.
I love the artistry on this video, and the clever dialogue.
this is your best production I've seen from you yet
, great work. THank you.
Imagine making a multiplication table for school and 5000 years later people are still grading your homework mistakes
Whoa! Production quality on this video is impressive. Cool adaptation of the theme!
"Johnny, you've failed your math test, and people remember your name for thousands of years."
"It goes on your permanent record" was never more true.
Fun fact: The decorative square images used in the video bumpers, such as 0:50 to 0:57, are the squares of the Royal Game of Ur, which is in the British Museum.
Forgets to carry the 1
Kushim: "This is the one. This is the one I'll be remembered for."
Absolutely loving the alternate versions of the theme song. (Anyone else briefly confused by "molten barley"?)
I heard it too! I mean, you could kind of argue that it's boiled and liquefied barley, so sort-of molten!
@@BrianSantero I thought he said Malt and Barley. Malt is what you get when it is allowed to sprout then quenched. It converts the starch to sugar for brewing.
@@briansmith8967 Yeah, he said Malt and Barley, not Molten barley
@@briansmith8967 Malt and Barley certainly makes a lot more sense.
Since I've never heard Malt before, I also understood molten barley though. (I'm not a native englisch speaker)
Now I've learned a new word and thanks to beer, I already know what it means xD
@@sebastianjost Next, look up “hops” in relation to beer.
Per the simpsons: "Alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Imagine an ancient sumerian being transported to the modern day.
"Here, let me show you on my tablet."
"Oh, you still use tablets? I knew that newfangled "papyrus"-stuff the nextdoor neighbours were using wasn't going to last..."
"Wait, Uruk? What happened to Uruk?"
"They were talking about Iraq, the current state that contains your hometown. By the way, Uruk is now abandoned."
"Oh well actually we now use Paper which is better Papyrus"
*angry sumerian accountant noises*
@@НиколаКолевски It is fitting since name "Iraq" very probably originates from the name "Uruk"
@@vladprus4019 that's speculation. It's much more likely to be derived from the persian word for lowlands or an arabic word for fertile
At 11:30 : "5*1/2 = 10" : the perpetuation of mathematical mistakes
The graphic design of this video is amazing...I hope sometime you guys go into the process behind this videos creation
Thanks MM! I may well do an animation breakdown at some point ☺️ I’m definitely going to reveal Easter eggs from this video in an end of year video 🐣
Kushim: Aw, c'mon guys that just one time and it was back in 4th grade.
Human 5000 years later:
The symbol at 6:48 is interpreted by some as a brick building with a chimney; so a granary or brewery maybe.
Interestingly the oldest known ad is for beer, in about the same time and place that Kushim was working: "Beer from the city of Ebla - the beer with the heart of a lion."
The original Singha 😂
Kushim has been weirdly silent since this video came out
I bet their PR team is thinking of ways to try to spin this.
@Xavier Beauchamp Thank you.
@@General12th no problem
Leave them alone; they're tired of having to hear the same thing for thousands of years.
Amazing video with great visuals, very well done 👍
Wow... Some real effort was made on this video! Music and animations are on point!
Maybe they were both drunk when that mistake was made...
5:12 Wow, that bowl-dot system makes almost as little sense as imperial units!
lmao
The bowls and dots make perfect sense if you count in base 60
Depends how you look at things - for past civilisations an inch (roughly the length of the end of your thumb), a foot, a cubit (length from your elbow to the end of your middle finger) were measurements everyone could relate to, even if everyone's inches, feet and cubits were different sizes, you could usually get a decent approximation.
Units based on 1 ten millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator are rather harder to visualise!
@@RJSRdg sure, but by "imperial units" I meant the _system_ of measurements and not how handy the individual units are when you're stranded on a desert island without a tape measure.
These days we need to calculate more and count less and there, the system based on the length of the king's foot really shows its age. But hey, if you're really in a pinch, a yard's about a meter.
@@unvergebeneid However weight units were more convenient as you had to compare using weighed scales and the units divided better.
They called him Kushim back then, today we call him Matt.
@Xavier Beauchamp thats confusing
Future archeologist discovering the Parker square "this civilization liked to give it a go, we don't know if Parker was a person or an institution, surely they tried with their heart, but likely weren't so advanced"
One possibility is that some of the bowls are reserved for tax!
Hats off to William Marler for the amazing animations, and Howard Carter for the incredible music!
Yeah, but are Kushim Squares a thing?
I think that'd be Kushim Bowls
8:20 looks like a Kushim square to me
@@Spicarium My thought exactly!
@@Spicarium It's Parker's Square.
@@Spicarium I would wear this shirt
2:22 To be fair, if someone were to shout "Kushim!" right beside me, I would look up too. My name isn't Kushim.
Of course that’s because you just had it legally changed to Victor
If someone yelled Kushim out of the blue, I'd probably answer "bless you"
To alcohol: The cause and solution to all of life's maths problems.
This video is beautifully well made!
I would love a science RUclips channel that explained how we figured out what these early symbols mean
I bet most of it is guessing that an expression might be a multiplication, solving it, and then seeing if that contradicts the next expression on the tablet. If a bunch of tablets can be interpreted as multiplication in the same way, that's probably what they are.
You ever done logic puzzles? These are just logic puzzles that span multiple pages. you work out the meaning through inferences made by comparing several documents and seeing where things match, where they change, and HOW they change when they do.
And for pronunciation we have a few tablets which have the same things translated including names with different languages and alphabet.
@@mollistuff Then what if those ‘mistakes’ are not actually mistakes but us merely misinterpreting what the symbols mean?
@@randomblueguy If it's one or two mistakes where you can clearly see where they went wrong, I'd say you can make a pretty good call. But yeah, never 100% sure
My first thought was that this was an audit issue: perhaps the front side of the tablet was the invoice, and the back side was the inventory received. Thus, the tablet is simply a report that items were not received.
But, I love the multiplication table error. In particular, I am fascinated by the aspect you didn't cover: how do we know the amount each symbol represents? In part, by using maths to determine what the only possible values are based on tablets like this!
damn, this episode has it's own soundtrack
The “surface area of a country” video also had an amazing reinstrumentation!
It is the same standup maths theme and I love it
Wish he would give the opportunity to download it somewhere because it slaps
The music creator needs its own RUclips channel with the soundtracks on it, like many have. (kurzgesagt->Epic Mountain Music , MSFS20->Finishing Move Inc.)
What a great video! Loved every second of it.
Also I'm suggesting that Kushim was side hustling the 'missing' ingredients.
wow, these videos have gotten so well made i haven't notices i clicked on a Matt Parker video until the intro credits rolled
This video itself needs an award of some kind. Beautiful, interesting, entertaining and educational. Humble Pi deserves its award, fully.
now we know, the *real* oldest profession was Beer Accountant
What struck me about the first ‘mistake’ is it isn’t necessarily wrong (even if someone isn’t skimming off the top). Remember these are quantities of real things being added up or divided. We all know if you take 100L tub, and divide it up in to cups, you won’t get 400 cups out.
What a wonderful design and animation! Great job, William Marler!
The editing on this is awesome