Japan's oldest multiplication table has been found: the artifact is 1300 years old. Photo

In the ruins of the Fujiwara Palace in the Japanese prefecture of Nara, archaeologists have discovered a wooden plaque. On it experts found the oldest in Japan multiplication table, the age of which is about 1300 years.

Scientists believe that the tablet measuring 16.2 centimeters by 1.2 centimeters was part of a more complete multiplication table, dated to the end of VII or the beginning of VIII century. Even then, such calculations were widely used in government offices and other places, Arkeonews writes.

All the inscriptions on the wooden tablet were made with kanji - Chinese characters, also used in modern Japanese writing. Experts examined the find under infrared light and found the following: 9 x 9 = 81, 4 x 9 = 36, 6 x 8 = 48

According to the researchers, the table begins with multiplication by nine with five equations written horizontally on one line.

"If the multiplication table was whole, then the table itself would be 33 centimeters long with all the equations written down. At first I thought Japanese multiplication tables only had 2-3 equations per line, so I was genuinely surprised to find such a number similar to those in China and Korea," said Kuniya Kuwata, chief researcher at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Nara.

Earlier tables consisting of 2-3 lines were found in Japan. So the found five-line style corresponds to the styles of the Qin and Han dynasties in China, approximately from the III century BC to the III century AD.

True, researchers do not rule out that the tablet could have been created from the middle of the III to VII century, because such counts were often used to design iconic mounds of that period.

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