Overview

Throughout the course of human history, science and society have advanced in a dynamic and mutual embrace. Regardless of scholarly contentions regarding an exact definition of science, the history of science in the ancient world is a record of the first tentative steps toward a systematic knowledge of the natural world. During the period 2000 B.C. to 699 A.D., as society became increasingly centered around stable agricultural communities and cites of trade, the development of science nurtured necessary practical technological innovations and at the same time spurred the first rational explanations of the vastness and complexity of the cosmos.

The archaeological record provides abundant evidence that our most ancient ancestors' struggle for daily survival drove an instinctive need to fashion tools from which they could gain physical advantage beyond the strength of the relatively frail human body...