What was the first times table?

Have you ever wondered who invented times tables? Or why three times four is exactly the same as four times three? It's time to discover the quiet magic of multiplication! Imagine lining up your favorite wrapped sweets on a table in three rows of four. Now, walk around to the side of the table. Suddenly, it looks like four rows of three, but you haven't moved a single sweet! Mathematicians call this amazing swapping trick "commutativity," and it perfectly hides in plain sight in chocolate bars, egg cartons, and even the folding seats in a cinema! But how long have humans known this math secret? Grab your time machine because we are traveling all the way back to ancient China around 305 BCE! You won't find paper books here. Instead, ancient scholars wrote their math on delicate bamboo strips! In the 2010s, historians pieced together 21 muddy, waterlogged bamboo strips found in an ancient tomb to discover the oldest decimal times table in the entire world! Join Mira and Finn as they solve a 2,000-year-old puzzle, explore why this magic trick doesn't work for subtraction, and reveal the hidden math shapes in your kitchen!