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This is a very recent announcement: the paper is published on August 24, 2017.
I have not read the paper yet, but from the public announcement (on Youtube) I conclude that
this is a table of sines.

Of course you can use any table of sines for solving any kind of trigonometric problems,
plain or spherical. 

You can because you know spherical trigonometry.

But for Babylonians, this is very unlikely. What is known about Babylonian astronomy shows
that they did not have the celestial sphere in our sense, or any geometric model whatsoever for their
astronomy. So it s extremely unlikely that they had spherical trigonometry: 
there was no reason to develop it.

On the other hand, even  the fact that they had a table of sines, will be a 
big and surprising discovery if confirmed.
(One cannot make far-reaching judgement from a single recent paper describing a single tablet).

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Alex. 



________________________________________
From: NavList@fer3.com [NavList@fer3.com] on behalf of Jackson McDonald [NoReply_McDonald@fer3.com]
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 6:53 PM
To: eremenko@math.purdue.edu
Subject: [NavList] Ancient Babylonian tablet - world's first trig table?

Scholars have discovered evidence of an ancient Babylonian system of 
trigonometry dating from 1000 years before Pythagoras.

I wonder if this system could be applied to spherical trigonometry.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i9-ZPGp1AJE

JMcD

   

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