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Science 23 February 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5815, p. 1049
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5815.1049d
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This Week in Science

Figure 1 Islamic architecture beginning in the 10th century is marked by distinctive star and line patterns called girih. These figures were thought to be interwoven continuous lines, created by simple tools such as straightedge and compass. Lu and Steinhardt (p. 1106; see the news story by Bohannon) find that by the beginning of the 13th century, artisans began to create these patterns from tilings of decorated polygons. The tilings became increasingly complex, and by the 15th century the patterns had evolved into quasicrystalline designs, well before the mathematical description of these space-filling patterns that possess rotational symmetry yet lack translational symmetry.

CREDIT: LU AND STEINHARDT




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