We are three kings and four episodes deep now, check out the Oldest Stories podcast as we cover the astonishingly violent Neo-Assyrian empire in its rise to power. The framework is the kings and conquests, but from this we get to take long sidetracks to consider why the empire grew the way it did, the effect it had on the people and the ancient world, and what it meant for ancient culture.

You can start out on Spotify or Youtube, but the Oldest Stories podcast is available pretty much anywhere. The Assyria series starts with episode 139: An Iron King for an Iron Age.

This is well into year 5 of the show, and while we have only just started doing video stuff, the podcast has gotten pretty in-depth covering Sumer and Akkad, the Isin-Larsa period, Old Babylon, the Hittites, Historical Israel, and plenty of other stuff as well. Check it out and let me know what you think!

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2024/Research-News/Wood-split-300000-years-ago-to-hunt-animals-study-shows

First off i apologize for any formatting on the math because i haven't done much math since high school 14 yrs ago

I got into this because is saw about the the Lotus of life drawn on the Osirion in egypt and people were discussing its mystical meaning and i researched sacred geometry. As a carpenter these stood out to me as tools. Both of these symbols can be drawn with a compass or a nail and a string making them super easy to make. And with them you can create precision shapes

Lets Start with the "Seed of Life"

https://preview.redd.it/ro0t8j2iyytc1.jpg?width=288&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0411a3acc1c6b2174d26a2eb98a55fd8da55ca26

The Seed of Life is drawn with seven overlapping circles. The first three drawn on a strait line the rest drawn on the intersections of the first three. All of "Sacred Geometry" Can be drawn from the seed of and all of it with nothing but a strait edge and a protractor or just a string/rope and nail/stake

The simplest use is to make various regular polygons This means with nothing but a stick a string and 7 circles you can find perfect 90, 60, 120, 30, degree angles. This would be very handy for a carpenter without precision tools to find these angles and make his own tools or to make very large structures square or true to a particular angle. Without the need for precise measuring tools.

https://preview.redd.it/ro7ok3ijyytc1.jpg?width=432&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=434eba0aa603f93331ee3810083e2d550fa5c10e

The next use is Finding PI and recreating the Formulas to calculate area and circumference of a circle.

I saw how the the circle is divided into 6 Triangles with curved sides. My thought was if i could find the ratio of the curved line to the radius i could calculate the area of the triangles and multiply by six. I drew a big version of the Seed of life on some plywood with a circle radius of 500mm. using a string i measured the length of the curved line. It came out to 523mm 536/500 is 1.046. So i had my ratio.

First i realized i could Use that ratio and get the circumference from the radius. My formula was then Rx1.046x6. Simplified thats 6.276R Or 2*3.138*R damn close to 2πR

Then i realized using that ratio i could find the area of each triangle. 1/2 Base times height. If you unsquash the sides of the curved triangle you get a normal triangle where the Height is the Radius and the Base is the Radius times my 1.046 ratio

So 1/2 (R*1.046)*r is the formula for the triangle then we just need to multiply times 6 and we have the are of the circle.

.5*r*1.046*r*6 Simplified that is 3.138r2 damn Close to πR2

The Larger you draw this the more accurately you can calculate Pi.

https://preview.redd.it/kmu3bl8lyytc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=dda8dd7ebe6f38f0204325c464dd2075bc8e93bd

Circle broken down into 6 equal triangles with curved sides

The Lotus of Life is pretty simple. Its a Protractor. the outside vertices are 20 degrees. breaking a circle into 18 Parts. by drawing lines through different vertices of the circles you can nearly any angle you want. Again precision without precision instruments. If you expand the lotus of life out further and draw more circles you can get even more angles all the way down to 2.5 degrees

https://preview.redd.it/cepvp4bmyytc1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f71e92ac33f10ad64ae64475749d4dd427ad406

In Conclusion. These Ancient "Sacred Symbols" are not symbolic or religious. We find them all over the world because they are just tools of the trade for mathematicians, carpenters, masons etc. Who found a way to create precision without needing to go through the steps we did to create precision tools.

It seems to me that these would actually be great tools to teach people about the practicality of Math. through this process i now understand what Pi actually is and why it works. Its just a ratio. I've often found that when i was being taught math the base of where the formulas came from was missing. I was just taught to memorize but not why it works. And without the why a big piece of understanding is lost. That ability to think critically and figure things out is gone if all we are given is formulae to memorize. Long ago i think this was common knowledge but we lost it somewhere along the way

I've done carpentry all my life and i never thought about how i would find an angle if i didn't have a square or a tape measure. and ive actually learned something practically to my daily life by studying this.