Babylonian AP math.

It has long been thought that people in the ancient city of Babylon, the center of Mesopotamian civilization in modern-day Iraq, used basic math for astronomical observations. But a new study shows their math was anything but basic. A researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, analyzed clay tablets dating between 350 B.C. and 50 B.C. They revealed that Babylonian astronomers used an advanced calculus to track the motion and velocity of the planet Jupiter across the sky. (Babylonians saw Jupiter as the celestial form of their patron god, Marduk.) Until now, credit for this kind of advanced math technique had gone to 14th-century European scholars. "That is a truly astonishing find," says the researcher, Mathieu Ossendrijver. It's a kind of calculus that "is utterly familiar to any modern physicist or mathematician."