Ancient Jugs Hold the Secret to Practical Mathematics in
Biblical Times Monday, June 4, 2012 Precise volume was measured
by circumference, TAU researchers find Archaeologists in the
eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical
jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine,
and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric
system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern
archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could
only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs, says
Prof. Itzhak Benenson of Tel Aviv University's Department of
Geography. Now an interdisciplinary collaboration between Prof.
Benensonand Prof. Israel Finkelstein of TAU's Department of
Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures has revealed that,
far from relying on approximations, merchants would have had
precise measurements of their wares — and therefore known
exactly what to charge their clients. The researchers discovered
that the ancients devised conv