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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @11:55AM (2 children)
Copper wasn't mined in the Keweenaw Peninsula until colonization. Rather, the area is so rich in it, they would just pick up a blue rock and polish it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 23 2020, @07:53PM (1 child)
The significant of Keweenaw copper is that it is native copper [wikipedia.org]. It's not a blue rock that you'd have to smelt to get the copper out. It's (nearly) pure copper just waiting for someone to pick it up. If you had read the linked studies, you would see that they determining mining happened because of the significant spiking of lead in lake sediment. Only known cause in that part of the world is human mining of the copper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @03:00AM
Mining the copper would be stupid though, because it was already on the surface, everywhere. You can still find copper up there just walking. They also didn't smelt metals at all, unless that technology was somehow lost and yet never shows up at all in the archaeological record, which clearly shows trade of that same copper across the US.