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Published online 22 February 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070219-9
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Islamic tiles reveal sophisticated maths
Muslim artists were 500 years ahead of western researchers.
The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have claimed.
Islamic tiling patterns were put together not with a compass and ruler, as previously assumed, but by tessellating a small number of different tiles with complex shapes, say Peter J.
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