Which of the Ancient Cultures were the most Brilliant?

[Gatekeeper]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

 

[Sunni Man]

Roman culture was the most inventive by far.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I'd have to go with whoever built the Moon.

 

[Diuretic]

I'm afraid I'm with Newton about standing on the shoulders of giants. However if pressed I'd have to say the ancient Greeks, because they, particularly Aristotle, showed us the way, intellectually speaking.

 

[midcan5]

"By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed." Lewis Mumford


Wow, I have no idea. Greatest? Greece, China, Roman, Islam, Hebrew, Christian, Reformation, but what's great about slavery and a life of unremitting poverty disease and death for most people till the modern age. So tongue in cheek, I think the greatest ancient civilization hasn't occurred yet. But when looked back on from say 5000 years, it will be agreed that was the time the Golden Rule was followed and life grew simple and happy. Annoys the hell of me, I will miss it - but then again you make your own happiness.


"Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia." Kurt Vonnegut

History of CIVILIZATION


On a more serious note this is interesting.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8[/ame]

 

[Cecilie1200]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

How "ancient" is ancient?

 

[Baruch Menachem]

19th century is ancient enough.

Ended slavery
had such wonders as Koch, Ehrlich, Pasture, Curie, Roetegen, Fulton, Mendeleyev, Deisel, Nobel, Darwin
Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms
Monet,
Tolstoy, Twain, Dostoevsky, Thackeray, Hugo,
Roebling, Brunnel...

Lincoln, Grant, Disraeli, Bismark, Meijii, Covour,

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

I'd have to say the answer is the Islamic Culture pre-Crusade. They were the ones that actually preserved the Hellenistic traditions of Greek science and learning after the early Christian Church shut down the Academy and the Museum and started burning and lynching Mathematicians and Scientists. They were also the ones that advanced algebraic techniques for problem solving after the Greeks got stuck in the dead end of only considering geometric techniques for problem solving. They also assimilated Hindu characters into Mathematics (Our modern number system!) along with other Chinese and Indian mathematical, medical, and scientific techniques.

Without the Islamic houses of learning science would have likely been set back a 1000 years easily as Euclid's Elements, Archimedes various writings, and other scientific works would have stayed lost. They eventually turned fundamentalist and fell apart as a civilization, but not before transmitting all that knowledge back to Europe.

 

[Annie]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

I've always liked the Minoans, trade and exploration. However their pacific nature made them right for conquest by the Mycenaeans.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The Moon: Same apparent size as the Sun, only moon in the entire solar system where this is true (yeah, just coincidence) mostly hollow, has weird spots with gravitational anomalies (caused Apollo 17 probe to crash), regulates tides on Earth and helps maintain Earth orbit and tilt, intimately connected with human females, still no coherent theory that won't make you laugh as to how it got there in the first place (MIT Astrophysicist recommended "Assume (the Moon) is an observational error"). Whoever built is also signed it by putting a triangle with 16 miles ling sides in a crater almost dead center of the side that always faces Earth.

They get my vote

 

[Cecilie1200]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

I'd have to say the answer is the Islamic Culture pre-Crusade. They were the ones that actually preserved the Hellenistic traditions of Greek science and learning after the early Christian Church shut down the Academy and the Museum and started burning and lynching Mathematicians and Scientists. They were also the ones that advanced algebraic techniques for problem solving after the Greeks got stuck in the dead end of only considering geometric techniques for problem solving. They also assimilated Hindu characters into Mathematics (Our modern number system!) along with other Chinese and Indian mathematical, medical, and scientific techniques.

Without the Islamic houses of learning science would have likely been set back a 1000 years easily as Euclid's Elements, Archimedes various writings, and other scientific works would have stayed lost. They eventually turned fundamentalist and fell apart as a civilization, but not before transmitting all that knowledge back to Europe.

I hate to break it to you, but the Muslims didn't create or advance jack. The things they get credited with, like algebra, they actually got from pre-Islamic Arabs or stole from someone else entirely. I've heard people credit Muslims with medical advances, pointing out that people came to the Middle East from all over the world to learn. They did, but from the Hospitaller Knights, who lent their name to the word "hospital". The early Muslims were actually known for destroying any sort of science or learning they came upon, because they felt that trying to figure out the world logically was "putting limits on Allah".

 

[Cecilie1200]

I'm voting for Europe during the Middle Ages, which gave us the fathering of many of our modern sciences, like astronomy and biology, as well as a stunning number of early technological inventions and advances, such as the conversion of Germany from largely swamp to the major agricultural power in Europe.

 

[Kalam]

I hate to break it to you, but the Muslims didn't create or advance jack. The things they get credited with, like algebra, they actually got from pre-Islamic Arabs or stole from someone else entirely. I've heard people credit Muslims with medical advances, pointing out that people came to the Middle East from all over the world to learn. They did, but from the Hospitaller Knights, who lent their name to the word "hospital".

Is that what they're telling you in church these days? I look forward to seeing you explain how the "filthy Muslims" stole all of these innovations:

Inventions in medieval Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Additionally, let's see you cite something credible that substantiates this:

The early Muslims were actually known for destroying any sort of science or learning they came upon, because they felt that trying to figure out the world logically was "putting limits on Allah".

 

[Kalam]

I'm voting for Europe during the Middle Ages

Gawd, what a dumb bitch you are.

 

[Sunni Man]

I hate to break it to you, but the Muslims didn't create or advance jack. The things they get credited with, like algebra, they actually got from pre-Islamic Arabs or stole from someone else entirely. I've heard people credit Muslims with medical advances, pointing out that people came to the Middle East from all over the world to learn. They did, but from the Hospitaller Knights, who lent their name to the word "hospital". The early Muslims were actually known for destroying any sort of science or learning they came upon, because they felt that trying to figure out the world logically was "putting limits on Allah".

I guess Cecille never heard of the great muslim scientist and scholar Averroes.

Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd (Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن رشد&#8206, better known just as Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد&#8206, and in European literature as Averroes (pronounced /əˈvɛroʊ.iːz/) (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath; a master of Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. He was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, modern day Spain, and died in Marrakesh, modern day Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe and "one of the spiritual fathers of Europe

Averroes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Toronado3800]

I'm voting for Europe during the Middle Ages, which gave us the fathering of many of our modern sciences, like astronomy and biology, as well as a stunning number of early technological inventions and advances, such as the conversion of Germany from largely swamp to the major agricultural power in Europe.

Europe in 500 to 1450? Really? That's the dark ages. The folks who restarted that flat earth joke.

I'd of taken the pre-Roman Greeks over them. The more I think of it, I'm reminded of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople as a possible "place to be" in the years 500 to 1000. Been awhile since I took a good ancient Chinese History course so the years are getting fuzzy.

In my opinion an important consideration is how advanced the civilization was compared to others world wide. This seems to favor the oldest civilizations though.

Anyone have a link to good reading about technological levels and living standards 1000BC?

 

[Old Rocks]

Someone asked a group I was with, just in general discussions, which of the ancient cultures may have contributed the most, to advancements in science, medicine and technology in general? Or as many would agree I am sure it was a 'team effort' since every culture, race etc has brilliant minds at work advancing all of the sciences.

Which then, would stand out the most, the Mayans, the Chinese, Persians? So many others to examine the list would be too long.
What say those here in USMB?

I've always liked the Minoans, trade and exploration. However their pacific nature made them right for conquest by the Mycenaeans.

I happen to agree with you on the Minoan Civilization. Given the amount of land that they colonized in Spain, and their complete dominance of the seaways in the Mediteranian for hundreds of years, I doubt that they were all that peaceful.

The match of their water and sewage systems was not to be seen until Roman times.

However, it was not the Myceanians that put an end to the Minoan Civilization, but a great volcanic eruption on Thera. The burning of most of Crete by the volcanic ash surge, and the destruction of almost all sea craft and ports virtually ended the Minoan Civilization around 1630 BC. It was 50 years after that the Myceanians invaded and conquered the remenants of that great civilization.

The Origin of the Sea Peoples

Another disruption probably occurred during the war which ended in the conquest of the Minoans in the Aegean by the Mycenaeans about 50 years after the Theran eruption. Perhaps one day in about 1580 B.C. a great Mycenaean fleet landed on the coast near the modern town of Garrucha to demonstrate the king’s power over all those that lived in the colony. The capital of El Argar was only ten kilometers inland. The Mycenaean takeover of El Argar might have been quite tricky and problematic. The king would have wanted the mineral treasures of Spain to be shipped to Mycenae as soon as possible with as little trouble as possible. The colonists may have been desperate for reinforcements at the time and still felt very much dependent on the Aegean for support in a perpetual war. This second disruption would have further pushed them to believe that help from the Aegean could not be relied on and forced them to look at the world as an independent people in need of securing their own destiny. Many of the colonists may have been resistant to the takeover of the colony’s leadership by the Mycenaeans and looked for other lands to settle in.

The Minoan policy of colonial expansion was hundreds of years old when the Mycenaeans took control. The Mycenaean controlled El Argar colony lasted until about 1350 B.C. when evidently they were finally defeated by the great alliance of Beaker peoples united against them. If it was a people’s war then the side with the larger number of warriors with the greatest resources and determination would eventually win out in a prolonged war of attrition. The El Argar and their Bronze of Levante allies had for a time increased the lands under their domain until the tide finally turned against them and things began to go badly. There may have been a great influx of warriors into Spain from Europe and the British Isles to help fight the Aegean aggressors. The Minoan colonial leadership may have been less brutal than the Mycenaeans that succeeded them. If the Mycenaean king at the time was as brutal as Agamemnon was at the sacking of Troy then the now Mycenaean war of expansion might have become quite savage indeed. It is likely the emigration of colonists by sea from Spain to Sardinia and other places in the area would have grown with these events.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Cecillie,

You're thinking of the jihadist Muslims or the post Crusade Islamic world. Most folks don't realize that there's a kind of "Golden Age" in there where the Islamic World was full of intellectuL study, assimilation, and advancement after the Europeans (and the early Catholic Church) very nearly eliminated the ability to read along with the early Helenistic Texts.

I'm no fan of Islam by any means, but it is thanks to Islam that many of the Greek texts survive at all. European scholars would flock to Moorish Spain to read/borrow/steal Greek texts from the Islamic world because that was literally the only place they could be found.

Fibbonacci, the father of our modern tradition of algebra and Hindu Arabic characters, travelled extensively in the Islamic world and likely learned nearly all of his mathematics there.

Without them there would have been no Renaissance. For that alone they deserve credit.

About all that can be said about Europe in that same period is that they managed to not forget how to read. And they began what would become our modern University system.

 

[Xenophon]

The answer is obvious.

The Sumerians.

They gave us the concept of laws, cities, the wheel, agruculture, domestic farm animals, written langauge, astronomy, math, you name it, they were involved with it.

Everyone else learned from them.

 

[xotoxi]

The answer, my friends, is found at the end of this game: