Science in the ancient world

Science in the ancient world encompasses the earliest history of science from the protoscience of prehistory and ancient history to late antiquity. In ancient times, culture and knowledge were passed through oral tradition. The development of writing further enabled the preservation of knowledge and culture, allowing information to spread accurately. The earliest scientific traditions of the ancient world developed in the Ancient Near East, with Ancient Egypt and Babylonia in Mesopotamia. Later traditions of science during classical antiquity were advanced in ancient Persia, Greece, Rome, India, China, and Mesoamerica. Aside from alchemy and astrology that waned in importance during the Age of Enlightenment, civilizations of the ancient world laid the roots of modern sciences.

Ancient Near East and North East Africa

Mesopotamia

Around 3500 BC, in Sumer (now Iraq), the Mesopotamian people began preserving some observations of the cosmos with extremely thorough numerical data.

Mathematics

Pythagorean theorem has demonstrated evidence of ancient writing forms. It was recorded in the 18th century BC on the Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet known as Plimpton 322. The columns of numbers in the tablet generates several Pythagorean triples such as (3, 4, 5) and (5, 12, 13).

Astronomy

Babylonian astronomy was "the first and highly successful attempt at giving a refined mathematical description of astronomical phenomena." According to the historian Asger Aaboe, "all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West—if not indeed all subsequent endeavour in the exact sciences—depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways". Scribes recorded observations of the cosmos such as the motions of the stars, the planets, and the Moon on clay tablets. The cuneiform style of writing revealed that astronomers used mathematical calculations to observe the motions of the planets. Astronomical periods identified by Mesopotamian scientists remain widely used in Western calendars: the solar year and the lunar month. Using data, Mesopotamians developed arithmetical methods to compute the changing length of daylight during the year, and to predict the Lunar phases and planets along with eclipses of the Sun and Moon. Only a few astronomers' names are known, such as Kidinnu, a Chaldean astronomer and mathematician. Kiddinu's value for the solar year is in use for modern calendars. Hipparchus used this data to calculate the precession of the Earth's axis. Fifteen hundred years after Kiddinu, Al-Battani used the collected data and improved Hipparchus' value for the precession. Al-Batani's value, 54.5 arc-seconds per year, compares well with the current value of 49.8 arc-seconds per year (26,000 years for Earth's axis to round the circle of nutation). Astronomy and astrology were considered to be the same thing, as evidenced by the practice of this science in Babylonia by priests. Mesopotamian astronomy became more astrology-based later in the civilisation, studying the stars in terms of horoscopes and omens.

Archaeology Following the Late Bronze Age collapse, the practice of various sciences continued in post–Iron Age Mesopotamia. For instance, in the nascent history of archaeology, king Nabonidus of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was a pioneer in the analysis of artifacts. Foundation deposits of king Naram-Sin of the Akkadian Empire dated circa 2200 BC were discovered and analyzed by Nabonidus around the 550 BC. These deposits belonged to the temples of Shamash the sun god and the warrior goddess Annunitum in Sippar, and Naram-Sin's temple to the moon god in Harran, which were restored by Nabonidus. Nabonidus was the first known figure in history to make an attempt at dating archaeological artifacts found at excavated sites, though his estimates were inaccurate by hundreds of years.

Egypt

Neolithic inhabitants constructed Nabta Playa megalithic structures, in Aswan located in Upper Egypt. These structures served to coordinate astronomical observations, religious practices and alignment with solar patterns and annual flooding cycles. These practices have been linked with the emergence of cosmology in Old Kingdom Egypt. Archaeological evidence has suggested that the Ancient Egyptian counting system had origins in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, fractal geometry designs which are widespread among Sub-Saharan African cultures are also found in Egyptian architecture and cosmological signs.The Ishango bone, according to scholar Alexander Marshack, may have influenced the later development of mathematics in Egypt as, like some entries on the Ishango bone, Egyptian arithmetic also made use of multiplication by 2; this however, is disputed. Significant advances in ancient Egypt included astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Egypt was also a centre of alchemical research for much of the Western world.

Architecture, engineering, and mathematics

Ancient Egyptian geometry was a necessary outgrowth of surveying to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile. The 3–4–5 right triangle and other rules of thumb served to represent rectilinear structures, including architecture such as post and lintel structures.

Writing

Egyptian hieroglyphs served as the basis for the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet from which the later Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets were derived. The city of Alexandria retained preeminence with its library, which was damaged by fire when it fell under Roman rule, being destroyed before 642. With it, a large amount of antique literature and knowledge was lost.

Medicine

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