So it seems Jupiter's orbit was being accurately measured and monitored at least 1,500 years earlier than initially believed. That right, the Babylonians were ahead of their times and only later did Oxford scientists pick up where they left off.
An article in Nature notes:
The inscriptions on the tablets show that they measured the daily apparent velocity of Jupiter (as seen from Earth) at different dates in its orbit. Then they used these velocities and times to deduce the distance that Jupiter must have travelled during the intervening period. That calculation is equivalent to the geometrical notion of plotting velocity against time, and calculating the area under that plot.
This discovery was made by science historian Mathieu Ossendrijver at the Humboldt University in Berlin. The tablets now belong to the British Museum in London. One can only wonder what else sits quietly in a dark corner of the museum awaiting discovery.
