Many records dating back thousands of years show that, without doubt, the Egyptians were able to calculate the area of many figures and the of a good number of three dimensional shapes. They developed fo for calculating t but in many cases their work was inaccurate. For example, we use Area X base X height find the area of any triangle Of course height this formula means the perpendicular distance from the base to the vertex. We calculate the area of the triangle shown as follows: