Where Pascal's Triangle Really Started

The so called "Pascal" triangle was known in China as early as 1261. In 1261 the triangle appears to a depth if six in Yang Hui and to a depth of eight in Zhu Shijiei in 1303. Yang Hui attributes the triangle to Jia Xian, who lived in the eleventh century. They used it the same way we do, as a means of generating the binomial coefficients. It wasn't until the eleventh century that a method of solving quadratic and cubic equations was recorded, although they seemed to have existed since the first millennium. At this time Jia Xian generalized the square and cube root procedures to higher roots by using the array of numbers known today as the Pascal triangle and also extended and improved the method into one usable for solving polynomial equations of any degree.