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Just a reminder of Amazing Astronomical Discoveries from Ancient Greece.
The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known to the ancient Greeks in the mid fifth century BC. Almost as interesting as what they knew, however, is what they did not know. This sets the baseline for the remarkable advances in their understanding over the next few centuries – simply relying on what they could observe with their own eyes.
Herodotus claimed that Africa was surrounded almost entirely by sea. How did he know this? He recounts the story of Phoenician sailors who were dispatched by King Neco II of Egypt (about 600BC), to sail around continental Africa, in a clockwise fashion, starting in the Red Sea. This story, if true, recounts the earliest known circumnavigation of Africa, but also contains an interesting insight into the astronomical knowledge of the ancient world.
The voyage took several years. Having rounded the southern tip of Africa, and following a westerly course, the sailors observed the Sun as being on their right hand side, above the northern horizon. This observation simply did not make sense at the time because they didn't yet know that the Earth has a spherical shape, and that there is a southern hemisphere.
[...] Sadly, the vast majority of these works were lost to history and our scientific awakening was delayed by millennia. As a tool for introducing scientific measurement, the techniques of Eratosthenes are relatively easy to perform and require no special equipment, allowing those just beginning their interest in science to understand by doing, experimenting and, ultimately, following in the foot steps some of the first scientists.
One can but speculate where our civilisation might be now if this ancient science had continued unabated.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @09:48PM (3 children)
"One can but speculate where our civilization might be now if this ancient science had continued unabated"
"Sadly, the vast majority of these works were lost to history ..." this sounds like a good plot for a detective story of ancient going-ons?
one scene that springs to mind is hoarding said knowledge in form of books in not fire-proof libraries and poisoning pages of books containing "forbidden knowledge"?
"when the general was asked if the limited firebombs should be used on the east or west side of the besieged city, the decision came down to bomb the west side, since it only contained a worthless library but the east side was the red light district of the besieged city and the general knew that most of his men were .. well men and not book worms..."
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday May 23 2020, @01:27AM (2 children)
Not wrong. Once again, consult the original submission, where I blame the Romans.
Not only did they burn the Library of Alexandria [wikipedia.org], but sort of set the precedent:
Meanwhile, in India, the Buddhist Library at Nalanda [wikipedia.org] was also burned by invading forces:
And, Look! Wikipedia has a list of destroyed libraries, [wikipedia.org] throughout history, and not all of them accidental.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday May 23 2020, @06:18AM (1 child)
There are lots of different stories about how the collection of the library at Alexandria was lost, or sometimes not lost but just dispersed to other libraries in the area over a long period of decline. It happened during Roman times, by about the third or fourth century it was gone, which would have made it quite a feat for a Muslim army to destroy unless they were equipped with time machines.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday May 23 2020, @08:42AM
Yes, but some of us were there.