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By Richard G. Olson
Why did the Greeks excel in geometry, yet lag commence the Mesopotamians in mathematics? How have been the nice pyramids of Egypt and the Han tombs in China developed? What did the complicated approach of canals and dykes within the Tigris and Euphrates river valley need to do with the deforestation of Lebanon's famed cedar forests? This paintings offers a cross-cultural comparability of the ways that the ancients discovered approximately and preserved their wisdom of the wildlife, and the ways that they built applied sciences that enabled them to evolve to and form their atmosphere. protecting the most important old civilizations - these of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, the Indus Valley, and Meso-America - Olson explores how language and numbering platforms inspired the social constitution, how probably invaluable development initiatives affected a civilization's upward push or decline, how faith and magic formed either drugs and agriculture, and the way alternate and the ensuing cultural interactions remodeled the making of either daily home items and goods meant as artwork. alongside the way in which, Olson delves into how medical wisdom and its technological functions replaced the day-by-day lives of the ancients.
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Example text
For comparison purposes, Ptolemaic Egypt had a population of about 10 million under the nominal control of a single king. , Rome was drawn into a series of wars with Carthage when it went to the defense of Messina, in Sicily, at the request of the local rulers. E. with the complete destruction of Carthage and the Roman appropriation of the Carthaginian Empire, which comprised the western Mediterranean including the Iberian Peninsula, what is now southern France, North Africa, and western Egypt.
Thus Rhind papyrus problem number 28 is stated as follows: Think of a number. Add to it its 2/3 part. To this sum add its third part. Find a third of this result, and say what your answer is. Suppose the answer is 10. Then add 1/4 and 1/10 to this ten, giving 13 and 1/2, its third is 9, which added makes 22 and 1/2. Then 1/3 of 22 and 1/2 is 7and 1/2, which added makes 30. Then 1/3 of this 30 is 10. That is how you do it. (Gillings 1972, 184) 40 Technology and Science in Ancient Civilizations EARLY GEOMETRY The Greek historian Herodotus (484 – c.
Thus, for example, 107/12 ϭ 8 ϩ 9/10 ϩ 1/100 ϩ 6/1,000 ϩ 6/10,000 ϩ. . 9166666. . A second, and very important, way of handling division problems in place value systems is to treat them as multiplications by the reciprocal. 5. In Mesopotamia, there are many texts of common reciprocals to be used in converting division problems into multiplication problems. GENERAL COMMENTS ON ARITHMETIC COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS One can easily see that, although addition and subtraction are conceptually simpler in the non-place value Egyptian counting practice because one need not keep track of where a symbol appears in the expression of a number, the complexity of multiplication, and even more, of division problems, becomes a major barrier to rapid calculation in their computational system (and of such Egyptian derivative systems as those of the Greeks and Romans).