Ancient times table hidden in Chinese bamboo strips

The 2,300-year-old matrix is the world's oldest decimal multiplication table.
From a few fragments out of a collection of 23-century-old bamboo strips, historians have pieced together what they say is the world's oldest example of a multiplication table in base 10.
Five years ago, Tsinghua University in Beijing received a donation of nearly 2,500 bamboo strips. Muddy, smelly and teeming with mould, the strips probably originated from the illegal excavation of a tomb, and the donor had purchased them at a Hong Kong market. Researchers at Tsinghua carbon-dated the materials to around 305 bc, during the Warring States period before the unification of China.


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