But how do we know that the theorem is true for every right triangle on a flat surface, not just the ones these mathematicians and surveyors knew about?
And if you'd really like to convince yourself, you could build a turntable with three square boxes of equal depth connected to each other around a right triangle.
And the reasoning here is they both have that triple ticked side, a double ticked side, and they're both 90-degree triangles, so this follows by the 90-degree side-side-angle congruence relation.
This proof divides one right triangle into two others and uses the principle that if the corresponding angles of two triangles are the same, the ratio of their sides is the same, too.