Lost Discoveries

V

COVER

e Ancient .Roots oi

JVLoaern ocience

from the

Babvl s to the Ma y

DICK TERES

U.S. $27.00

Can. $41.00

Lost Discoveries, DickTeresi s innovative history of science,

explores the unheralded scientific breakthroughs

from peoples of the ancient world— Babylonians,

Egyptians, Indians, Africans, New World and Oceanic

tribes, among others—and the non-European medieval

world. They left an enormous heritage in the fields of

mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology,

chemistry, and technology.

The mathematical foundation of Western science is

a gift from the Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Babylonians,

and Maya. The ancient Egyptians developed the

concept of the lowest common denominator, and they

developed a fraction table that modern scholars estimate

required 28,000 calculations to compile. The Babylonians

developed the first written math and used a place-value

number system. Our numerals, 0 through 9, were

invented in ancient India; the Indians also boasted

geometry, trigonometry, and a kind of calculus.

Planetary astronomy as well may have begun with

the ancient Indians, who correctly identified the relative

distances of the known planets from the sun, and knew

the moon was nearer to the earth than the sun was. The

Chinese observed, reported, dated, recorded, and inter￾preted eclipses between 1400 and 1200 B.C. Most of

the names of our stars and constellations are Arabic.

Arabs built the first observatories.

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians said the

earth was circular. In the sixth century, a Hindu

astronomer taught that the daily rotation of the earth

on its axis provided the rising and setting of the sun.

Chinese and Arab scholars were the first to use fossils

scientifically to trace earth's history.

Chinese alchemists realized that most physical sub￾stances were merely combinations of other substances,

which could be mixed in different proportions. Islamic

scholars are legendary for translating scientific texts of

many languages into Arabic, a tradition that began

(continued on back flap)

(continuedfrom front flap)

with alchemical books. In the eleventh century, Avi￾cenna of Persia divined that outward qualities of metals

were of little value in classification, and he stressed

internal structure, a notion anticipating Mendeleyev's

periodic chart of elements.

Iron suspension bridges came from Kashmir, printing

from India; papermaking was from China, Tibet,

India, and Baghdad; movable type was invented by Pi

Sheng in about 1041; the Quechuan Indians of Peru

were the first to vulcanize rubber; Andean farmers were

the first to freeze-dry potatoes. European explorers

depended heavily on Indian and Filipino shipbuilders,

and collected maps and sea charts from Javanese and

Arab merchants.

The first comprehensive, authoritative, popularly

written, multicultural history of science, Lost Discoveries

fills a crucial gap in the history of science.

DIC K T E R E S I is the author or coauthor

of several books about science and technology, including

The God Particle. He is cofounder of Omni magazine

and has written for Discover, The New York Times

Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly, and is a frequent

reviewer and essayist for The New York Times Book

Review. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Jacket design by'Marc Cohen

Author photograph © Michael Zide

Printed in the U.S.A.

Copyright © 2002 Simon & Schuster

"If you think, as I did, that science flowered in ancient Greece—the way Athena

sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus—then read Dick Teresi's Lost Discov￾eries and revel in the global expression of early genius, from Sumerian

mathematics and ancient Indian particle physics to the sky maps of the Skidi

Pawnee and the rubber 'factories' of the Aztecs."

—Dava Sobel, author of Galileo's Daughter una Longitude

"Wow, Teresi's Lost Discoveries is a romp through the history of mathematics,

astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry, and technology. Teresi must

have pored through tons of ancient manuscripts and scholarly compendia to

unearth a rich mine of historical achievements of largely non-Western civilizations

that preceded and enabled the Golden Age of Greece. For science buffs who are

curious about 'How do we know?' and 'How did we learn?' this is a spectacular

canvas, and it illuminates the power of cultural diversity. Yes, there were peaks in

the progress of science, but today science is the only universal culture, the same in

the West, East, North, and South. Teresi's important book helps to explain why."

—Leon Lederman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and coauthor of The God Particle

>BN D-baM- 03710-

Also by Dick Teresi

Popular Mechanics Book of Bikes and Bicycling

Omni's Continuum: Dramatic Phenomena from the

New Frontiers of Science

Laser: Light of a Million Uses (with Jeff Hecht)

The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What

Is the Question? (with Leon Lederman)

LOST

DISCOVERIES

The Ancient Roots of

Modern Science—from the

Babylonians to tne Maya

DICKTERESI

SIMON & SCHUSTER

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SIMON & SCHUSTER

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New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2002 by Dick Teresi

All rights reserved,

including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks

of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All drawings and charts in Chapter 2 courtesy of

George Gheverghese Joseph. Copyright © 1991 by

George Gheverghese Joseph.

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases,

please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales:

1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

Designed by Rhea Braunstein

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Teresi, Dick.

Lost discoveries : the ancient roots of modern science—from the

Babylonians to the Maya / Dick Teresi.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Science, Ancient. 2. Science—History. I. Title.

Q124.95 .T47 2002

509.3—dc21 2002075457

ISBN 0-684-83718-8

Jjoard of Advisers

Anthony Aveni

Alfred W.Crosby

Harold Goldwhite

George Gheverghese Joseph

Robert Kaplan

David Park

George Saliba

Sheila Seaman

Barbara C. Sproul

The above scientists, mathematicians, and scholars reviewed the manu￾script for scientific, mathematical, and historical accuracy. Some were

chosen for a non-Western, others for a Western bias. While I deferred

to these advisers on factual matters, they did not always agree with my

interpretation of those facts. My point of view was greatly affected by

the views expressed by my advisers, but ultimately it is my own. Where

practical, I have stated differing views by the board in the endnotes.

Anthony Aveni is the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and

Anthropology at Colgate University. He is the author of Conversing with

the Planets: How Science and Myth Invented the Cosmos and other works of

archaeoastronomy.

Alfred W. Crosby is professor emeritus of history at the University of

Texas. He is the author of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion

of Europe, 900-1900, among other works.

Harold Goldwhite is professor of chemistry at California State University,

Los Angeles, and is the coauthor, with Cathy Cobb, of Creations of Fire:

Chemistry's Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age.

Board of Advisers

George Gheverghese Joseph is professor of mathematics at the University

of Manchester (UK) and the author of The Crest of the Peacock: Non￾European Roots of Mathematics.

Robert Kaplan has taught mathematics at a number of institutions, most

recently Harvard University. He is the author of The Nothing That Is: A

Natural History of Zero.

David Park is emeritus professor of physics at Williams College. He is

the author of The Fire Within the Eye:A Historical Essay on the Nature and

Meaning of Light.

George Saliba is professor of Arabic and Islamic science at the depart￾ment of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures, Columbia Uni￾versity. He is the author of A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary

Theories During the Golden Age of Islam, among other works.

Sheila J. Seaman is associate professor of geology at the University of

Massachusetts at Amherst.

Barbara C. Sproul is director of the program in religion, Hunter College,

City University of New York. She is the author of Primal Myths: Cre￾ation Myths Around the World and was one of the founders of the Ameri￾can section of Amnesty International, which won the Nobel Peace

Prize in 1977.

VI

Contents

1 A HISTORY OF SCIENCE: Rediscovered 1

2 MATHEMATICS: Tke Language of Science 21

3 ASTRONOMY Slcy Watckers and More 89

4 COSMOLOGY TW Old-Time Religion 157

5 PHYSICS: Particles, Voids, and Fields 193

6 GEOLOGY Stones of Eartk Itself 231

7 CHEMISTRY Alckemy and Beyond 279

8 TECHNOLOGY Mackines as a Measure of Man 325

Notes 369

Selected Bibliograf>ky 421

Acknowledgments 431

Index 433

VU

LOST

DISCOVERIES

A HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Rediscovered

T

HE most important scientific achievement in Western history is

commonly ascribed to Nicolaus Copernicus, who on his death￾bed published Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

Science historian Thomas Kuhn called the Polish-born astronomer's

accomplishment the "Copernican Revolution." It represented a final

break with the Middle Ages, a movement from religion to science, from

dogma to enlightened secularism. What had Copernicus done to be￾come the most important scientist of all time?

In school we learned that in the sixteenth century, Copernicus re￾formed the solar system, placing the sun, rather than the earth, at its cen￾ter, correcting the work of the second-century Greek astronomer

Ptolemy. By constructing his heliocentric system, Copernicus put up a

fire wall between the West and East, between a scientific culture and

those of magic and superstition.

Copernicus did more than switch the center of the solar system

from the earth to the sun. The switch itself is important, but mathemat￾ically trivial. Other cultures had suggested it. Two hundred years before

Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India had understood that gravi￾tation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the

most massive object, had to be at its center. The ancient Greek as￾tronomer Aristarchus of Samos had put forth a heliocentric system in

the third century B.C.1

The Maya had posited a heliocentric solar system