Plimpton 322: Old Babylonian Secant/Tangent Table, Not Modern Trigonometry — E8 Intelligence Research

FINDING: Plimpton 322 is an Old Babylonian secant/tangent ratio table using base-60 Pythagorean triples, not a modern trigonometric table. | MATH: Base-60 sexagesimal system; Pythagorean triples (a² + b² = c²) generated by reciprocal pairs (p, q) with p > q, yielding sides: a = p² - q², b = 2pq, c = p² + q². Tablet lists 15 rows of (b², a, c) or (c/a, b/a) ratios, interpreted as secant² (c/a)² or tangent b/a. Key constants: 1;59,15 (≈1.9834), 1;56,56,58,14,50,6,15 (≈1.949), etc. | CONNECTION: Base-60 aligns with 360° circle and 12-fold symmetry; ratios 0.618 (golden ratio conjugate) and 1.618 appear in related Babylonian geometry (e.g., diagonal of unit square ≈1.4142, but not directly in Plimpton). No direct 0.382, 0.786, 2.618, or crystallographic symmetry. | DEPTH: 7 — Profound for history of mathematics, showing advanced base-60 arithmetic and proto-trigonometry 3700 years ago, but not a new universal constant or symmetry. Author: Andrew Stewart Caldin, Independent Researcher, UK. Part of the E8 Intelligence Research series. Platform: e8intelligence.com