Piece of Carved Wood Indicates Persian Taught Maths in Japan 1,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists have unearthed a piece of wood indicating ancient Japan as a “cosmopolitan” nation “where foreigners were treated equally”, adding  details of one Persian man teaching maths more than a millennium ago.

Scientists studied carvings on a wood with an infrared imaging technology which appeared to name a Persian lecturer working at a facility where government ministers were trained in the former Japanese capital of Nara.

According to a previous discoveries, it has been revealed that  Japan had direct trade links with Persia as early as 600AD, but this is the first time it has been suggested a Middle Eastern official may have been employed in the country at that time.

Akirhiro Watanabe of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, the man responsible for the survey, claimed that the man was likely to have taught mathematics due to Persia’s renowned expertise in the subject.

“Although earlier studies have suggested there were exchanges with Persia as early as the 7th century, this is the first time a person as far away as Persia was known to have worked in Japan,” he told Japan Times.

“This suggests Nara was a cosmopolitan city where foreigners were treated equally.”

Throughout the 17 century, for the purpose of a trade, thousands thousands of Persian merchants were known to travel to the city of Nagasaki, but the ties between the two countries are now believed to date far back earlier.

Nara was the capital of Japan between 710 and 784, before it was shifted to Kyoto and later to present-day Tokyo.

Last month let the archeologists baffled with the remarkable discovery of ancient Roman coins while excavating the ruins of Katsuren Castle on Okinawa Island recently.

It was originally thought that the four copper coins are hoax, before the revealing of their true provenance through detailed scanning.