| # | Polity | Coded Value | Tags | Year(s) | Edit | Desc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
absent/present/unknown Durrenberger notes the presence of legal and grammatical literature: ’According to most authors writing was introduced to Iceland when the country was Christianized in the year 1000. In the two centuries that followed, writing was used for many purposes: religious works, a grammar, a law book and a short history. Most of the family sagas were written in the thirteenth century. The saga with which I am concerned, Eyrbyggja saga (ÍF 4), is commonly believed to have been written between 1230-1250 (Schach & Hollander 1959:xx). I shall deal only with a part of this saga, which I have called the Þórgunna story (ÍF 4, ch. 49-55). I consider the Þórgunna story a myth. Anthropologists believe that myths contain hidden messages in symbolic forms. According to Malinowski (1926) myths are social charters. Lévi-Strauss (1963) argues that myths have a binary structure and that their oppositions explore contradictions in social and other relations.’
[1]
The Grágás legal code is one example: ’It is impossible to say how much of this book is represented in Grágás. Grágás has been preserved in two manuscripts which date to about 1260 and 1280. It is not possible to assign dates to individual provisions within it. The provenance of the manuscripts is unknown and neither is an official compilation (Miller 1990: 42).’
[2]
Some sources include passages of a scientific nature: ’In “Alfræði íslenzk” there are some texts that may be called of a scientific nature. Some texts from this source are definitely from the Commonwealth period.’
[3]
[1]: Odner, Knut 1992. “Þógunna’S Testament: A Myth For Moral Contemplation And Social Apathy”, 125 [2]: Durrenberger, E. Paul 1992. “Dynamics Of Medieval Iceland: Political Economy And Literature”, 80 [3]: Árni Daniel Júlíusson and Axel Kristissen 2017, pers. comm. to E. Brandl and D. Mullins |
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Quaestiones Naturales is the earliest confirmed scientific work in Norman England during the period. [Burnett 1987]
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absent/present/unknown Durrenberger notes the presence of legal and grammatical literature: ’According to most authors writing was introduced to Iceland when the country was Christianized in the year 1000. In the two centuries that followed, writing was used for many purposes: religious works, a grammar, a law book and a short history. Most of the family sagas were written in the thirteenth century. The saga with which I am concerned, Eyrbyggja saga (ÍF 4), is commonly believed to have been written between 1230-1250 (Schach & Hollander 1959:xx). I shall deal only with a part of this saga, which I have called the Þórgunna story (ÍF 4, ch. 49-55). I consider the Þórgunna story a myth. Anthropologists believe that myths contain hidden messages in symbolic forms. According to Malinowski (1926) myths are social charters. Lévi-Strauss (1963) argues that myths have a binary structure and that their oppositions explore contradictions in social and other relations.’
[1]
The Grágás legal code is one example: ’It is impossible to say how much of this book is represented in Grágás. Grágás has been preserved in two manuscripts which date to about 1260 and 1280. It is not possible to assign dates to individual provisions within it. The provenance of the manuscripts is unknown and neither is an official compilation (Miller 1990: 42).’
[2]
Some sources include passages of a scientific nature: ’In “Alfræði íslenzk” there are some texts that may be called of a scientific nature. Some texts from this source are definitely from the Commonwealth period.’
[3]
[1]: Odner, Knut 1992. “Þógunna’S Testament: A Myth For Moral Contemplation And Social Apathy”, 125 [2]: Durrenberger, E. Paul 1992. “Dynamics Of Medieval Iceland: Political Economy And Literature”, 80 [3]: Árni Daniel Júlíusson and Axel Kristissen 2017, pers. comm. to E. Brandl and D. Mullins |
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Adelard of Bath. Adelard, active in the early 12th century, is recognized for translating significant scientific works from Arabic into Latin, thereby introducing them to Western Europe.
Adelard of Bath's Quaestiones Naturales is a collection of scientific and philosophical questions that Adelard compiled after his travels in the Islamic world. One of his most influential contributions was the translation of Euclid's "Elements", a foundational text in mathematics. The translation of Euclid's Elements and other scientific texts by Adelard of Bath is dated to c. 1120. [webpage_Mathematical Treasure: Adelard’s...], [Chibnall 1996], [Burnett 1987]
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| 7 | Russian Empire, Romanov Dynasty I | Transitional (Absent -> Present) | Confident Expert | 1615 CE 1700 CE | ||
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Early 17th Century (1615-1700): In the early part of this period, scientific literature in Russia was quite limited. The country was largely isolated from the scientific advancements occurring in Western Europe. Most scholarly works were religious or philosophical in nature, and there was minimal engagement with the scientific ideas that were developing in Western Europe during the Renaissance and early Enlightenment.
Reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725): A significant change occurred during the reign of Peter the Great. Peter’s extensive efforts to modernize and Westernize Russia had a profound impact on the sciences. He founded the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1724, marking the beginning of a systematic approach to scientific research and literature in Russia. This period saw an influx of European scientists and the introduction of contemporary scientific ideas from Western Europe. [1] For example works by: Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765): Lomonosov was a polymath, scientist, and writer who made significant contributions to literature, education, and science, particularly in chemistry and physics. He wrote numerous scientific works and was instrumental in the establishment of Moscow State University. [2] Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686–1750): Tatishchev was a prominent Russian statesman and historian who is often considered the father of Russian historiography. He conducted geographical and ethnographic studies and wrote a comprehensive history of Russia. [3] [1]: Erin M. Fleener, “Peter the Great as a Constructive Revolutionary,” 2007 Zotero link: 78TADDRP [2]: “Научное Наследие — Электронная Библиотека ГНПБУ.” Accessed December 18, 2023. http://elib.gnpbu.ru/sections/0100/lomonosov/. Zotero link: 43PKCEWE [3]: “Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev | Russian Geographer, Scientist & Statesman | Britannica". Zotero link: 8JIP3N56 |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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Science; mathematics; economics. “Charles III, who has been described (perhaps unwisely) as an “enlightened despot” on the model of Frederick the Great and Joseph II, also supported the formation of local societies known as Los Amigos del País to discuss schemes for improving their regional economies. By the end of the reign there were 54 of them in the peninsula, although no more than half ever became truly active. In some regions the societies’ commitment to change aroused the opposition of the church and of local elites who saw nothing wrong with the status quo. Periodicals sanctioned by the crown to further scientific and economic interests rarely found more than a few hundred subscribers.”(Maltby 2009: 179-180) Maltby, William S. 2009. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.zotero.org/groups/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/SUSVXWVH “Court culture included an affinity for the mathematical and scientific interests of the Jesuits as well as the early stirrings of the Spanish Enlightenment, most notably in the writings of the Benedictine monk Benito Feyjóo. Lamenting that Spain had fallen behind its European neighbors in intellectual pursuits, Feyjóo argued tirelessly for a new spirit of inquiry, particularly in the sciences. Although his writings met with strong criticism from traditionalists, Feyjóo enjoyed the steadfast support of the king.”(Philips and Philips 2010: 185) Philips, William D. and Carla Rahn Philips. 2010. A Concise History of Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/ZT84ZFTP
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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“The eighteenth century saw a veritable explosion of published works of literature, science, history, religion, and philosophy in the territories ruled by the Habsburgs.”
[1]
“In 1883 under the patronage of Crown Prince Rudolf, the government of Austria-Hungary initiated a vast proj ect to make visible the diversity and dimensions of empire. Th e goal was to collect studies of the empire’s highly diverse geology, flora, fauna, and populations in a set of illustrated volumes to be made available for public subscription: the so- called Kronprinzenwerk.”
[2]
“In 1847 the Academy of Sciences was organized, with a philosophic-historical section and a second one dedicated to research in the natural sciences—belatedly in comparison with similar institutions in other countries.”
[3]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 29) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW [2]: (Judson 2016: 8) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW [3]: (Kann 1974: 371) Kann, Robert A. 1974. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/RP3JD4UV |
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The Soviet Union produced a significant amount of scientific literature across various disciplines.
Notable examples include: Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz’s "Course of Theoretical Physics": A comprehensive ten-volume series that is highly regarded in the field of physics. [1] Works by Andrei Kolmogorov: A prominent mathematician known for foundational work in probability theory, topology, and turbulence. [2] [1]: “Landau and Lifshitz: Course of Theoretical Physics: Reviews.” Maths History. Accessed November 25, 2023. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Reviews_Landau_Lifshitz/. Zotero link: PB33G9FG [2]: “Publications of A. N. Kolmogorov,” The Annals of Probability 17, no. 3 (July 1, 1989), accessed November 25, 2023, https://projecteuclid.org/journals/annals-of-probability/volume-17/issue-3/Publications-of-A-N-Kolmogorov/10.1214/aop/1176991252.full. Zotero link: DIVRAKQP |
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Literacy very low. Were there any readers of literature?
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Literacy very low. Were there any readers of literature?
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Literacy very low. Were there any readers of literature?
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Highly literate society.
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’
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present or inferred present for Greco-Bactrians in 200 BCE
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"the Western Jin, at least before 300, was a period of remarkable intellectual, scholarly, and literary activity."
[1]
Huangfu Mi (215-282 CE) was a physician.
[1]: (Knechtges 2010, 183) Knechtges, David R. in Chang, Kang-i Sun. Ownen, Stephen. 2010. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. |
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e.g. 《測圓海鏡》,《益古演段》
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Among literate Chinese.
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Experimental weapons research, such as advanced pyrotechnics and a "rocket-powered torpedo".
[1]
Hospital established by Sultan Qalaun (1279-1290 CE) "included not only wards with a regular medical staff, lecture rooms, and laboratories but also an adjoining library of medical, theological, and legal books."
[2]
[1]: (Nicolle 1996, 159-181) [2]: (Dols 1977, 177) |
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Medical texts. Kahun Gynecological papyrus (1825 BCE), the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE), and the Ebers papyrus (1500 BCE) covered "surgery, healing, skin diseases, stomach ailments, medicines, the head, dentistry, gynecology, and diseases of the extremities".
[1]
[1]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
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Present in Ramesside period.
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Present in Abbasid Caliphate.
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’
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No information found in sources so far.
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These works were mostly editions of classical authors
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ lists no mnemonic devices or nonwritten records or ’True writing, no writing’
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With the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 CE "the culture, science and learning for which Baghdad had been known for centuries simply disappeared in a period of a week."
[1]
[1]: (DeVries 2014, 209) DeVries, Kelly in Morton, N. John, S. eds. 2014. Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages: Realities and Representations. Essays in Honour of John France. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. |
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"Documentary sources also become very scarce."
[1]
[1]: (Beaulieu 2017, 7Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. 2017. A History of Babylon, 2200 BC - AD 75. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/5T3ZBRQT. |
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Mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences
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There are lack of evidences suggesting that the writing system has been already invented.
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"philosophy flourished in Hellenistic Babylonia, and Greek metaphysicians, astronomers, naturalists, historians, geographers, and physicians worked there."
[1]
- Hellenistic Susa likely had the same ’high culture’ to a lesser degree
[1]: (Neusner 2008, 8-9) Neusner, Jacob. 2008. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. 1. The Parthian Period. Wipf & Stock. Eugene. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"In 1851, the first modern institution of higher education was founded. Dar ul-Funun, a polytechic institute, was founded by Amir Kabir, the Prime Minister from 1848 to 1851, better known as Iran’s first reformer, to educate students in medicine, engineering, geology, and military sciences."
[1]
[1]: (Maranlou 2016, 144-145) Sahar Maranlou. Modernization Prospects For Legal Education In Iran. Mutaz M Qafisheh. Stephen A Rosenbaum. eds. 2016. Experimental Legal Education in a Globalized World: The Middle East and Beyond. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle upon Tyne. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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Some texts written by ancient writers would have been in circulation within the Papal States.
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Scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Ockham were active in what we would think of as natural science and physiognomy during this period.
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Presence of weights and measures, intellectual culture and Greek cultural inheritance.
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Weights and measures, intellectual culture and Greek cultural inheritance.
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"In the late sixteenth century, Padua was the official university of the Venetian republic".
[1]
[1]: (Harrison 2006, 213) Peter Harrison. The natural philosopher and the virtues. Conal Condren. Stephen Gaukroger. Ian Hunter. eds. The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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Sources consulted on the history of Japanese literature tend to gloss over this period. It seems reasonable to infer that authors did not simply cease to produce texts for the century or so of the Sengoku period. However, as noted for the previous polity, scientific literature had not yet emerged at this time.
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present for preceding Hepthalites. literate class under Roman and Indian influence.
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’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, 17) |
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Tsi’s influential work on planetary astronomy"
[1]
[1]: Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘The Rule of the Infidels: The Mongols and the Islamic World’, in David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (eds), The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 3. The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 155. |
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Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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Historiography and Islamic theology may have been present along with treatises on Islamic law. More material is needed on scholarly writings in the Qasimid period.
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Minaret of Jam contains mathematics of double helix.
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Mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences text from Arabic sources abroad.
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Medical texts were known in Ramesside Egypt and temples and libraries were maintained in the Kushite period.
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|
Greek intellectual world.
|
||||||
|
inferred continuity with earlier phases of this polity
|
||||||
|
Most books written in Anatolia during reign of Kayqubad I “were books and treatises relating to philosophy and natural sciences”
[1]
[1]: Yasar Ocak, Ahmet. “Social, Cultural and Intellectual Life, 1071 - 1453.” In The Cambridge History of Turkey, edited by Kate Fleet, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba, 353-422. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.p.420 |
||||||
|
Certainly absent.
|
||||||
|
Health, medicine, astronomy, astrology and mathematics. The astronomical text Yavanajataka
[1]
"Tolstov, in his study of the remains of the ancient irrigation works in Chorasmia, noted that it was precisely during the period of antiquity that a school of irrigation engineers and high priests of science emerged at Chorasmia; it remained in existence until the time of Qutayba’s campaign against Khwarizm (ancient Chorasmia). The school included experts in mathematics, water engineering, cartography, astronomy and calendrical observations, which were of great importance for an extensive irrigation economy."
[2]
Part of Chorasmia region is within boundaries of Kushan Empire.
[1]: (Bivar 2009) Bivar, A. D. H. 2009. KUSHAN DYNASTY i. Dynastic History. IranicaOnline. Site accessed: www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kushan-dynasty-i-history [2]: (Mukhamedjanov 1994, 264) Mukhamedjanov, A R. Economy and Social System in Central Asia in the Kushan Age. in Harmatta J, Puri B N and Etemadi G F eds. 1994. History of civilizations of Central Asia. Volume II. UNESCO. |
||||||
|
Physician Hua Tuo (c140-208 CE) used anaesthetic during surgery.
[1]
A director of astrology invented the seismograph in 132 CE
[2]
- this was Zhang Heng (78-139 CE) and the device was called the Di Dong Yi.
[3]
"...sulfur and saltpeter were recorded in the Pharmacopoeia of the Divine Agriculturist compiled during the Han dynasty."
[4]
Medical prescriptions.
[5]
Zhang Heng (78-139 CE) was a polymath cartographer, mathematician, inventor (poet and painter) who was for a time a royal astronomer.
[6]
[1]: (Kerr 2013, 39) [2]: (Bielenstein 1986, 494) [3]: (Yan 2007, 118) Yan, Hong-Sen. 2007. Reconstruction Designs of Lost Ancient Chinese Machinery. Springer Science & Business Media. [4]: (Lorge 2011, 33) [5]: (Knechtges 2010, 118) Knechtges, David R. in Chang, Kang-i Sun. Ownen, Stephen. 2010. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. [6]: (Yan 2007, 117-118) Yan, Hong-Sen. 2007. Reconstruction Designs of Lost Ancient Chinese Machinery. Springer Science & Business Media. |
||||||
|
Unknown. "normally it is only after writing comes to be used for display that archaeology begins to find traces of it. Because administrative documents were almost certainly written on perishable materials like bamboo and papyrus, we will probably never find them."
[1]
[1]: (Wang 2014, 179) Wang, Haicheng. 2014. Writing and the Ancient State: Early China in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. |
||||||
|
Inferred from the fact immediately preceding polities produced scientific literature
[1]
However, Spring and Autumn polities wrote on perishable materials such as silk
[2]
, which means that texts are less likely to be preserved
[1]: (? 1996, 4519) Mathematical Reviews. Volume 96. Volume 1996. American Mathematical Society. [2]: (Cook and Major 1999, viii) Cook, Constance A. Major, John S. eds. 1999. Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China. University of Hawai’i Press. Honolulu. |
||||||
|
"early writing preserves specialized information that is of a very cursory nature at this point in cultural development."
[1]
the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[2]
[1]: (Bard 2000, 64) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
e.g.: 1450 CE:《九章算法比类大全》; 1606 CE: Euclid’s Elements (幾何原本): translated by Xu Guangqi(徐光啟) and Matteo Ricci(利瑪窦). Xu Guangqi was a Chinese scholar-bureaucrat, agricultural scientist, astronomer, and mathematician in the Ming Dynasty. Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions; 1637 CE: Tiangong Kaiwu/The Exploitation of the Works of Nature (天工開物): was a Chinese encyclopedia compiled by Song Yingxing (宋應星). It covered a wide range of technical issues and materials including agriculture, irrigation, hydraulic engineering, milling processes, sericulture, textile technology, salt technology, sugar technology, ceramics technology, transportation, bronze metallurgy, iron metallurgy, coal metallurgy, vitriol metallurgy, sulfur metallurgy, and arsenic, oil technology, papermaking, silver metallurgy, lead metallurgy, copper metallurgy, tin metallurgy, zinc metallurgy, military technology, and etc.
|
||||||
|
"By the turn of the eleventh century the four divisions that would later make up the Sung Han-lin Academy (astronomy, calligraphy, painting, and medicine) had already been established."
[1]
"Complete Essentials from the Military Classics" (Wujing Zongyao, 1044 CE) "currently ranks as the first text directly to describe the formula for gunpowder"
[2]
"The first mention of what we would call gunpowder appeared in 808... These mixtures grew out of a very long tradition of alchemical experimentation usually tied to certain schools of Daoism that sought elixirs of immortality or the means to transmute one material into another. While all of our early evidence for alchemical mixtures is tied to Daoists, this may be a historiographical artifact produced by the better preservation of texts tied to that school of though (in all its varieties). There were also medical specialists, among others, interested in the effects of various substances and compounds on materials and bodies."
[3]
[1]: (Hartman 2015, 94) [2]: (Lorge 2011, 24) [3]: (Lorge 2011, 32) |
||||||
|
Unknown. The Shang wrote on perishable materials, such as bamboo and silk.
[1]
Astronomers identified Mars and some comets.
[2]
If these facts were written down with information on how other people could identify these astronomical bodies, this would constitute scientific literature.
[1]: (The Shang Dynasty, 1600 to 1050 BCE. Spice Digest, Fall 2007. http://iis-db.stanford.edu/docs/117/ShangDynasty.pdf) [2]: (Kerr 2013, 20) |
||||||
|
"The first mention of what we would call gunpowder appeared in 808... These mixtures grew out of a very long tradition of alchemical experimentation usually tied to certain schools of Daoism that sought elixirs of immortality or the means to transmute one material into another. While all of our early evidence for alchemical mixtures is tied to Daoists, this may be a historiographical artifact produced by the better preservation of texts tied to that school of though (in all its varieties). There were also medical specialists, among others, interested in the effects of various substances and compounds on materials and bodies."
[1]
[1]: (Lorge 2011, 32) |
||||||
|
Discovery of wrought iron process and invention of multi-tube seed drill, and heavy mouldboard iron plough (could sow 11.3 acres land per day).
[1]
Mathematicians use negative numbers in multiple author book "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art."
[1]
Jing Fang (78-37 BCE) said 53 perfect fifths approximate 31 octaves, and suggested moonlight was reflection from the sun.
[2]
"...sulfur and saltpeter were recorded in the Pharmacopoeia of the Divine Agriculturist compiled during the Han dynasty."
[3]
[1]: (Kerr 2013, 38) [2]: (Kerr 2013, 39) [3]: (Lorge 2011, 33) |
||||||
|
“The influence of Islamic medicine on China during the period was also substantial. The Mongols preferred Islamic medicine themselves, and also made it available to their subjects through public clinics.”
[1]
"Other occupational groups fared better under Khubilai than under the Chinese emperors. Physicians were one such group that benefited from Mongolian rule. As a pragmatist, Khubilai valued medicine and accorded doctors a higher social status. He established branches of the Huang-hui ssu (Imperial Hospitals), staffed primarily by Muslim doctors, in K’ai-p’ing and in north China to care for the court. Mongolian officials consulted Muslim physicians, and thirty-six volumes of Muslim medicinal prescriptions were added to the Imperial Library."
[2]
[1]: (Buell 1993, 69) [2]: (Rossabi, M. 1994. The reign of Khubilai khan. In Franke, H. and D. Twitchett (eds) The Cambridge History of China, volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 710-1368 pp. 414-489. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P. 450-451) |
||||||
|
"None of the native peoples developed a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less would the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas. By 1500 A.D., the most advanced of the indigenous peoples were two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas."
[1]
[1]: (Hudson 2010, 5) |
||||||
|
None of the native peoples developed a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less would the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas. By 1500 A.D., the most advanced of the indigenous peoples were two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas."
[1]
[1]: (Hudson 2010, 5) |
||||||
|
"early writing preserves specialized information that is of a very cursory nature at this point in cultural development."
[1]
the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[2]
[1]: (Bard 2000, 64) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
"early writing preserves specialized information that is of a very cursory nature at this point in cultural development."
[1]
the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[2]
[1]: (Bard 2000, 64) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
"early writing preserves specialized information that is of a very cursory nature at this point in cultural development."
[1]
the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[2]
[1]: (Bard 2000, 64) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
"On the contrary, the assertion of continuity with older tradition is combined with the exercise of considerable invention and originality both in materials and iconography, producing some of the most remarkable sculpture in the entire pharaonic corpus. For other spheres of cultural activity there is sometimes an unnerving lacuna in extant material—there are, for example, no literary texts securely dated to this period. For all that, close analysis of such evidence as we do possess confirms that Egyptian society and civilization as a whole were characterized by the same traits as the visual arts. We routinely encounter features with which the student of earlier periods will be completely familiar."
[1]
[1]: (Lloyd 2000, 383) |
||||||
|
Experimental weapons research, such as advanced pyrotechnics and a "rocket-powered torpedo".
[1]
Hospital established by Sultan Qalaun (1279-1290 CE) "included not only wards with a regular medical staff, lecture rooms, and laboratories but also an adjoining library of medical, theological, and legal books."
[2]
[1]: (Nicolle 1996, 159-181) [2]: (Dols 1977, 177) |
||||||
|
Experimental weapons research, such as advanced pyrotechnics and a "rocket-powered torpedo".
[1]
Hospital established by Sultan Qalaun (1279-1290 CE) "included not only wards with a regular medical staff, lecture rooms, and laboratories but also an adjoining library of medical, theological, and legal books."
[2]
[1]: (Nicolle 1996, 159-181) [2]: (Dols 1977, 177) |
||||||
|
Mathematical, medical, philosophical inquiry preserved on Egyptian papyri. Examples: The Akhmim Wooden Tablet (2000-1950 BC); The Heqanakht Papyri (2000-1950 BC); The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (1850-1800 BC); The Berlin Papyrus (1800 BC); The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus(1650 BC).
[1]
Kahun Gynecological papyrus (1825 BCE), the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE), and the Ebers papyrus (1500 BCE) covered "surgery, healing, skin diseases, stomach ailments, medicines, the head, dentistry, gynecology, and diseases of the extremities".
[2]
[1]: (http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/egypt02-04enl.html) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
||||||
|
The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
||||||
|
Medical texts. The scribe Kenhirkhepshef, who worked at Deir el Medina during the reign of Rameses II, had a large library with papyri on medical texts, religious spells, hymns, letters, poetry, household hints, dream interpretations.
[1]
Kahun Gynecological papyrus (1825 BCE), the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE), and the Ebers papyrus (1500 BCE) covered "surgery, healing, skin diseases, stomach ailments, medicines, the head, dentistry, gynecology, and diseases of the extremities".
[2]
[1]: (Booth 2011, 301) [2]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
School of medicine at Bubastis.
[1]
Imhotep, physician, architect, High Priest of Ra.
[2]
This could also be inferred from the presence of large-scale constructions such as the Great Pyramid. the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[3]
"as early as 3000 BCE official reference standards of length, volume, and weight were being maintained in temples and royal palaces in Egypt"
[4]
[1]: (Shafer 2005, 11) [2]: (Stearns 2001, 29 ) [3]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. [4]: (Willard 2008, 2244) |
||||||
|
School of medicine at Bubastis.
[1]
Imhotep, physician, architect, High Priest of Ra.
[2]
"as early as 3000 BCE official reference standards of length, volume, and weight were being maintained in temples and royal palaces in Egypt"
[3]
the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[4]
[1]: (Shafer 2005, 11) [2]: (Stearns 2001, 29 ) [3]: (Willard 2008, 2244) [4]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. |
||||||
|
medical texts still in existence? literate elite. the Edwin Smith papyrus (1700 BCE): "attempting to salvage content from an older script dating back to 3000 B.C."
[1]
"as early as 3000 BCE official reference standards of length, volume, and weight were being maintained in temples and royal palaces in Egypt"
[2]
[1]: (Marios, Hanna, Alsiegh, Mohammadali and Tubbs 2011) Loukas, Marios. Hanna, Michael. Alsaiegh, Nada. Mohammadali, M Shoja. Tubbs, R Shane. 20 April 2011. Clinical anatomy as practiced by ancient Egyptians. May 2011. Clinical Anatomy. Volume 24. Issue 4. pp 409-415. Wiley. [2]: (Willard 2008, 2244) |
||||||
|
"Physician" referred to in a list of military personnel.
[1]
[1]: (Pagliari 2012, 190) Pagliari, Giulia. 2012. Function and significance of ancient Egyptian royal palaces from the Middle Kingdom to the Saite period: a lexicographical study and its possible connection with the archaeological evidence. Ph.D. thesis. University of Birmingham. |
||||||
|
example: Tomás de Mercado’s Suma de tratos y contratos (On deals and contracts) (1571)- economic science
|
||||||
|
"Aksumite rulers who often spoke and read in Greek, put great store in written documents and in libraries to keep them".
[1]
"The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, around 50 CE, "describes the ruler of the region, King Zoscales, as ’well versed in Hellenic sciences’. This would naturally require fluency in Greek, the lingua-franca of the ancient economy."
[2]
No data on written documents but it is likely that they existed, especially in Greek along the parts of the coast engaged in trade with the Greek-speaking world, if not also further inland at the capital Aksum in Ge’ez - or its precursor language - with documents relating to the local religion and the state.
[1]: (Murray 2009) Stuart A P Murray. 2009. The Library: An Illustrated History. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. [2]: (Glazier and Peacock 2016) Darren Glazier. David Peacock. Historical background and previous investigations. David Peacock. Lucy Blue. eds. 2016. The Ancient Red Sea Port of Adulis, Eritrea: Results of the Eritro-British Expedition, 2004-5. Oxbow Books. Oxford. |
||||||
|
SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’.
|
||||||
|
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 CE) mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. René Descartes (1596-1650 CE) philosopher, mathematician and writer (however he mostly lived abroad).
|
||||||
|
D’Alembert (1717-1783 CE). Comte de Buffon (1707-1788 CE). Clairaut (1713-1765 CE). Turgot (1727-1781 CE). Lagrange (1736-1813 CE). Lavoisier (1743-1794 CE). Lamarck (1744-1829 CE). Delambre (1749-1822 CE). Laplace (1749-1827 CE). Legendre (1752-1833 CE). Non-French scientists attracted to Paris: Cassini (Italian), Huygens (Dutch), Leibniz (German), Romer (Danish).
[1]
[1]: (Ladurie 1991, 140) |
||||||
|
‘In medieval and early modern Japan, the natural sciences—including such disciplines as medicine, mathematics, and astronomy—were largely influenced by Chinese systems of science and classification of the natural world.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.231. |
||||||
|
"More by good luck than by design and by prominence, a few other texts have come down from the period between the empires. There are, to be sure, such texts of the Śuṅga/Kāṇva and the early Kushana periods, including the older parts of Arthaśāstra (which has additions up to the first century CE), early medicine (Caraka, Suśruta), some early astronomical texts (Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja, ed. Pingree 1978, Paulīṣa, Romaka, etc.), the Bhāratīya Nāṭyaṣāstra (in part, first century CE), and some early Sanskrit poetry such as Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and Saundarānanda, Bhāsa’s dramas, etc."
[1]
[1]: (Witzel 2006, 482) Michael Witzel. 2006. ’Brahmanical Reactions to Foreign Influences and to Social and Religious Change’ in Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE, edited by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
||||||
|
SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ lists no mnemonic devices or nonwritten records or ’True writing, no writing’ We need to ascertain what Shira means by ’secular literature’.
|
||||||
|
"The Charaka Samhita and Susruta Samhita assumed the present form by the end of the 2nd century AD and were reputed works in the Gupta period. [...] Navanitakam is another work on medicine composed in the Gupta period. It gives formulae and prescriptions for the practitioner."
[1]
[1]: (Khosla 1982, 148) Sarla Khosla. 1982. Gupta Civilization. New Delhi: Intellectual Press. |
||||||
|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"More by good luck than by design and by prominence, a few other texts have come down from the period between the empires. There are, to be sure, such texts of the Śuṅga/Kāṇva and the early Kushana periods, including the older parts of Arthaśāstra (which has additions up to the first century CE), early medicine (Caraka, Suśruta), some early astronomical texts (Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja, ed. Pingree 1978, Paulīṣa, Romaka, etc.), the Bhāratīya Nāṭyaṣāstra (in part, first century CE), and some early Sanskrit poetry such as Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and Saundarānanda, Bhāsa’s dramas, etc."
[1]
[1]: (Witzel 2006, 482) Michael Witzel. 2006. ’Brahmanical Reactions to Foreign Influences and to Social and Religious Change’ in Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE, edited by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
||||||
|
"Notably, none of these documents is a poem, a hymn, a collection of sayings, a mythological narration, a chronicle, a manual, or indeed any other sort of literary or technical composition."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 92) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/ZMFH42PE. |
||||||
|
Gupta-Vakataka period: "The epoch-making discovery of the decimal system of notation with the place value of zero, which was to simplify the arithmetical processes all over the world, was made by the Hindus during our age. They had a lead over their contemporaries in the fields of algebra and arithmetic. Their progress in astronomy was also remarkable. The discovery that the earth rotates round its axis was made by Aryabhata in the 5th century. The length of his solar year is nearer its true duration than that postulated by Ptolemy."
[1]
Gupta-Vakataka period: "The six systems of Hindu philosophy assumed their classical form in our age."
[1]
[1]: (Majumbar and Altekar 1946, 6-8) Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra. Altekar, Anant Sadashiv. 1986. Vakataka - Gupta Age Circa 200-550 A.D. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. |
||||||
|
Works on Physics, Mathematics and Applied Science, such as Mechanical Technology survive from the period. One of the outstanding examples is the Kitab al-Hiyal (Book of ingenious devices), detailing over 100 devices ranging from self filling lamps and fountains to a primitive gas mask.
[1]
"The brothers Jafar, Ahmad, and Hasan ibn Musa from Merv, known as the “Sons of Musa” (Banu Musa). In ninth-century Baghdad they dominated the scientific scene under Caliph Mamun and his successors. Besides their work in geometry and astronomy, Ahmad wrote a pioneering work in practical mechanics, Book of Ingenious Devices."
[2]
Ahmad al-Farghani (c.797-860 CE). "An astronomer who hailed from the Ferghana Valley in present-day Uzbekistan. Farghani’s The Elements was among the earliest works on astronomy to be written in Arabic."
[2]
[1]: Young, M. J. L., John Derek Latham, and Robert Bertram Serjeant, eds. Religion, learning and science in the ’abbasid period pp. 248-288 [2]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
||||||
|
"Akkadian administrators were accustomed to mathematical models for agricultural management and production, for example, a standard ratio of how much land could be plowed by one team."
[1]
[1]: (Foster 2016, 18) Foster, Benjamin R. 2016. The Age of Agade. Inventing Empire In Ancient Mesopotamia. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"A growing body of literature, composed now in Akkadian instead of Sumerian, accumulated through the later second and first millennia. These included new versions of earlier stories, such as Ishtar in the Netherworld, and new stories, such as Enuma elish and The Story of Erra, as well as new compositions in old and new genres of religious literature and other branches of literary composition such as disputations, fables, and love poems, and the time-honored Sumerian lexical texts, now translated and greatly expanded and developed. Epic poems about historical monarchs began to appear, including fictive “autobiographies.” On the practical side, there was a growing body of “scientific” literature: compilations of omen and divination observations, treatments for illnesses, recipes and other treatises, as well as mathematical tables and exercises."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 291) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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|
"A growing body of literature, composed now in Akkadian instead of Sumerian, accumulated through the later second and first millennia. These included new versions of earlier stories, such as Ishtar in the Netherworld, and new stories, such as Enuma elish and The Story of Erra, as well as new compositions in old and new genres of religious literature and other branches of literary composition such as disputations, fables, and love poems, and the time-honored Sumerian lexical texts, now translated and greatly expanded and developed. Epic poems about historical monarchs began to appear, including fictive “autobiographies.” On the practical side, there was a growing body of “scientific” literature: compilations of omen and divination observations, treatments for illnesses, recipes and other treatises, as well as mathematical tables and exercises."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 291) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
"A growing body of literature, composed now in Akkadian instead of Sumerian, accumulated through the later second and first millennia. These included new versions of earlier stories, such as Ishtar in the Netherworld, and new stories, such as Enuma elish and The Story of Erra, as well as new compositions in old and new genres of religious literature and other branches of literary composition such as disputations, fables, and love poems, and the time-honored Sumerian lexical texts, now translated and greatly expanded and developed. Epic poems about historical monarchs began to appear, including fictive “autobiographies.” On the practical side, there was a growing body of “scientific” literature: compilations of omen and divination observations, treatments for illnesses, recipes and other treatises, as well as mathematical tables and exercises."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2005: 291) McIntosh, J. 2005. Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspective. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/KK2E3KMD. |
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|
"The structure was also applied to texts of a ‘scientific’ nature, such as medicine."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 205) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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|
Greeks practised medicine at the royal courts of Darius I and Artaxerxes II.
[1]
Darius the Great "dispatched Estilakis and a delegation to India to report on the regional facilities for construction of a dam. The latter presented a report, equal in quality to those prepared by modern day geography and hydrology experts."
[2]
[2]: (Angelakis, Mays and Koutsoyiannis 2012, 94) Angelakis A N, Mays L W, Koutsoyiannis, D. 2012.Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia. IWA Publishing. |
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|
"Uzun Hasan patronised religious structures, encouraged religious endowments and students, including Tajik sayyids, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632), and patronised the arts and sciences".
[1]
[1]: (Newman 2009) Newman, Andrew J. 2009. Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire. I.B. Tauris. New York. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
‘In medieval and early modern Japan, the natural sciences—including such disciplines as medicine, mathematics, and astronomy—were largely influenced by Chinese systems of science and classification of the natural world.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.231. |
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Mathematics developed during this period. "there can be little doubt that the Mesopotamians knew and used the Pythagorean theorem. This is confirmed by a problem from a tablet found at Susa a couple of hundred miles from Babylon, belonging to the Old Babylonian period. It is one of the oldest examples of the use of the theorem in the history of mathematics."
[1]
"Other major administrative achievements of the Elamites included the development and use of a binary weight system, which had a major influence on the fraction systems of the whole Mesopotamia; a massive number of administrative and business documents; major architectural works; the development and management of a gigantic system of underground canals (Qanat) for irrigation, an Iranian invention that turned the arid land into an agricultural land"
[2]
-- which period?
[1]: (Joseph 2011, 165) Joseph, George Gheverghese. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Third Edition). Princeton University Press. [2]: (Farazmand 2009, 22) Farazmand, Ali. 2009. Bureaucracy and Administration. CRC Press. Boca Raton. |
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|
Hospital built in Baghdad became centre for medical research and scholarship.
[1]
Mathematicians: "Abūl Wafā’ Būzjānī (d. 998) and Omar Khayyám (d. 1122) who conveyed, in so-called conversazioni, their knowledge to architects and artisans committed to building and decorating the religious and secular buildings."
[2]
"al-Daula financed considerable scientific, medical, and Islamic religious research."
[3]
[1]: Busse, H. 1975. Iran under the Būyids. In Frye, R. N. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 4. The period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuq’s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.287 [2]: (more official source required [1]) [3]: (Ring, Watson and Schellinger 2014, 644) Ring, Trudy. Watson, Noelle. Schellinger, Paul. 2014. Middle East and Africa: International Dictionary of Historic Places. Routledge. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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e.g. "a translation from Arabic into Persian of a zoological text on the usefulness of organs and other body parts of animals (Manāfeʿ-e ḥayawān) ordered by Ḡāzān Khan"
[1]
Hulegu built an astronomical observatory for polymath Nasir al-Din Tusi.
[2]
[1]: Stefano Carboni, ’IL-KHANIDS iii. Book Illustration’ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/il-khanids-iii-book-illustration [2]: (Morgan 2015, 66) Morgan, David. 2015. Medieval Persia 1040-1797. Routledge. |
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|
"Credit for the discovery and use of the monsoon as an aid to navigation in the Indian Ocean is given to a merchant named Hippalus about the year 100 B.C."
[1]
Astronomy, primarily for calendar.
[2]
"We know that varied schools of philosophy flourished in Hellenistic Babylonia, and Greek metaphysicians, astronomers, naturalists, historians, geographers, and physicians worked there. The Parthian court made considerable use of such trained and able men for building its bureaucracy."
[3]
[1]: (Debevoise 1938, 43-44) Debevoise, Neilson C. 1938. A Political History of Parthia. University of Chicago Press Chicago. https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/political_history_parthia.pdf [2]: (Hopkins 2008) Chris Hopkins. 2008. http://www.parthia.com/parthia_science.htm [3]: (Neusner 2008, 8-9) Neusner, Jacob. 2008. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. 1. The Parthian Period. Wipf & Stock. Eugene. |
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|
"Credit for the discovery and use of the monsoon as an aid to navigation in the Indian Ocean is given to a merchant named Hippalus about the year 100 B.C."
[1]
Astronomy, primarily for calendar.
[2]
"We know that varied schools of philosophy flourished in Hellenistic Babylonia, and Greek metaphysicians, astronomers, naturalists, historians, geographers, and physicians worked there. The Parthian court made considerable use of such trained and able men for building its bureaucracy."
[3]
[1]: (Debevoise 1938, 43-44) Debevoise, Neilson C. 1938. A Political History of Parthia. University of Chicago Press Chicago. https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/political_history_parthia.pdf [2]: (Hopkins 2008) Chris Hopkins. 2008. http://www.parthia.com/parthia_science.htm [3]: (Neusner 2008, 8-9) Neusner, Jacob. 2008. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. 1. The Parthian Period. Wipf & Stock. Eugene. |
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|
"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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e.g. Shakyh Baha’al-Din al-Amili "wrote on a diverse variety of topics, including scientific works such as treatises on mathematics, numerology and astrolabes; traditional Islamic sciences such as tafsir and hadith".
[1]
[1]: 1. Sholeh A. Quinn, ‘Iran under Safavid Rule’, in David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (eds), The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 3. The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 222. |
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|
"Iranian interest in Indian philosophy and science during the Sasanian period is demonstrated by translations into Middle Persian of Indian works on mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and of belles-lettres and didactic texts".
[1]
in volume more in later Sassanid period than the first Court doctors, including Indian doctors, suggest Indian medical works likely translated.
[2]
However, most scientific literature translated was from Syriac and Greek.
[2]
"astrologers and the various kinds of medical specialists".
[3]
[1]: (Khromov 1996, 94-95) Tafazzoli, A. and Khromov, A. L. Sasanian Iran: Intellectual Life. in Litvinsky, B. A. ed. and Iskender-Mochiri, I. ed. 1996. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume III. The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. pp.82-105. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001046/104612e.pdf [2]: (Khromov 1996, 95) Tafazzoli, A. and Khromov, A. L. Sasanian Iran: Intellectual Life. in Litvinsky, B. A. ed. and Iskender-Mochiri, I. ed. 1996. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume III. The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. pp.82-105. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001046/104612e.pdf [3]: (Eisenstadt 1969, 71) Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. 1969. The Political Systems of Empires. Transaction Publishers. |
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|
Astronomy, medicine, mirrors (translated from India).
[1]
Medical treatises (translated from Romans).
[2]
"Iranian interest in Indian philosophy and science during the Sasanian period is demonstrated by translations into Middle Persian of Indian works on mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and of belles-lettres and didactic texts".
[3]
Court doctors, including Indian doctors, suggest Indian medical works likely translated.
[4]
However, most scientific literature translated was from Syriac and Greek.
[4]
[1]: (Daryaee 2009, 27-37) [2]: (Daryaee 2009, 27-37) Daryaee, Touraj. 2009. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. I.B. Tauris. London. [3]: (Khromov 1996, 94-95) Tafazzoli, A. and Khromov, A. L. Sasanian Iran: Intellectual Life. in Litvinsky, B. A. ed. and Iskender-Mochiri, I. ed. 1996. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume III. The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. pp.82-105. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001046/104612e.pdf [4]: (Khromov 1996, 95) Tafazzoli, A. and Khromov, A. L. Sasanian Iran: Intellectual Life. in Litvinsky, B. A. ed. and Iskender-Mochiri, I. ed. 1996. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume III. The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. pp.82-105. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001046/104612e.pdf |
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|
" "Babylonian astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and medicine were studied and developed by Greek inhabitants of the region [of Babylonia], and Babylonian astrology flooded the western world."
[1]
Mathematics and astronomy were written in cuneiform (even when most literature was written in Greek).
[2]
[1]: (Neusner 2008, 4) Neusner, Jacob. 2008. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. 1. The Parthian Period. Wipf & Stock. Eugene. [2]: Joannes, F. 2004. The Age of Empires: Mesopotamia in the first millennium BC. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p254. |
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|
Farid al-Din Attar (1145-1221 CE): "Pharmacist and Sufi poet from Nishapur."
[1]
Zayn al-Din Jurjani (1040-1136 CE): "Author in Gurganj of a massive compendium of medical knowledge, the Khwarazm Shah’s Treasure, which focused on the needs of the practicing doctor."
[1]
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131 CE): Mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, engineer, and poet from Nishapur"
[1]
Abu al-Rahman al-Khazini (d. c.1130 CE): "Astronomer and polymath whose Book of the Balance of Wisdom, written in Merv, has been called ’the most comprehensive work on [weighing] in the Middle Ages, from any cultural area.’"
[1]
e.g. The Aḡrāż al-ṭebb, "one of the first medical treatises in Persian literature"
[2]
Science and mathematics genius Omar Khayyam (1048-1131 CE) who was also a poet.
[1]
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. [2]: Daniela Meneghini ’SALJUQS v. SALJUQID LITERATURE’ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/saljuqs-v |
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|
’A primary aspect of those beliefs and attitudes is found in the Sukuyodo, "Way of Lodgings and Planetoids," a complex system resulting from a crossing of astronomy with astrology that had occurred in India, but that had been enriched in China before it reached Japan. Almost all Indian science reaching Japan was brought by Buddhist monks, so that astronomy became a primarily Buddhist matter. Monks were not only specialists of metaphysics and philosophy, they also tended to be healers, thaumaturgists, diviners, and astrologers. During the Heian period almost all astronomy and astrology developments that had taken place in various milieus in China were transmitted to Japan by monks of Shingon and Tendai Esoteric Buddhism, so that that form of Buddhism was heavily laden with notions and rituals that belonged originally either to Indian ritual science or to Chinese Taoist and other practices.
[1]
[1]: Shively, Donald H. and McCullough, William H. 2008. The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 2: Heian Japan. Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge University Press.p.553-554 |
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|
Nicola Cusano’s writings on mathematics and astronomy are examples of scientific literature.
|
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|
"A school of medical studies that was active from the early sixth century into the seventh produced translations of and commentaries on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, especially by a certain Angellus iatrosofista (’medical scholar,’ not the historian) who worked between 550 and 700."
[1]
Early 8th CE anonymous geographer "wrote a cosmography, or catalog of world geography, that includes regions, bodies of water, and an exhaustive list of cities from India to Britain."
[2]
[1]: (Deliyannis 2010, 289) Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf. 2010. Ravenna in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. [2]: (Deliyannis 2010, 290) Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf. 2010. Ravenna in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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|
Galen (129 - 199CE). Vitruvius Pollio (born 64 BCE), wrote ten books on architecture and engineering. "From it we gain almost all our knowledge of the Roman canons of architecture in temples, acqeducts and houses, and of the military engines of the period." Cornelis Celsus, included work on farming, medicine and surgery.
[1]
Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 CE), Historia Naturalis (77 CE) "20,000 facts from 500 authors", index to scientific knowledge. Also wrote two histories.
[2]
[1]: (Allcroft and Haydon 1902, 224-230) [2]: (Allcroft and Haydon 1902, 240) |
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|
In Latin Christendom, this was the era of Alcuin who was based in Carolingian France and Leo the Mathematician who was the archbishop of Thessalonica, and the Irish churchman Vergilius of Salzburg (a geographer). Adelberger of Lombardy (daughter of the last king of the Lombards) was a known medical women who was a student of Paul the Deacon.
|
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|
"In the late sixteenth century, Padua was the official university of the Venetian republic".
[1]
[1]: (Harrison 2006, 213) Peter Harrison. The natural philosopher and the virtues. Conal Condren. Stephen Gaukroger. Ian Hunter. eds. The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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‘In medieval and early modern Japan, the natural sciences—including such disciplines as medicine, mathematics, and astronomy—were largely influenced by Chinese systems of science and classification of the natural world.’
[1]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.231. |
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|
The first university (Daigaku-ryō) was founded at the end of the 7th century CE,
[1]
but sources consulted do not say whether its students were able to access texts containing scientific knowledge.
[1]: Brown, Delmer M. 1993. The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 1: Ancient Japan. Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge University Press.p.212-213. |
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|
’Moreover, Japanese envoys were then less interested in territorial and military matters than in such cultural activity as acquiring Buddhist and Confucian texts, gathering information on Chinese science and art, and becoming familiar with T’ang methods of political and social control. They seem to have been especially fascinated with Chinese techniques and ideas that would reinforce the foundations of a Nara state headed by an emperor whose authority was both secular and religious.’
[1]
[1]: Brown, Delmer M. 1993. The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 1: Ancient Japan. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press.p.227 |
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|
‘In medieval and early modern Japan, the natural sciences—including such disciplines as medicine, mathematics, and astronomy—were largely influenced by Chinese systems of science and classification of the natural world.’
[1]
‘The seclusion policy only permitted contact with Dutch and Chinese traders, so it was largely through Dutch that the Japanese gained knowledge of Western science and medicine.’
[2]
‘the Ishimpo (Methods at the heart of medicine), composed in 982 by Tamba Yasuyori (912-995), is Japan’s oldest extant medical text and displays the influence of Chinese medicine and medical treatises on Japan’s understanding of medicine.’
[3]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.231. [2]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.232 [3]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.233. |
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|
"no great astronomer, mathematician, chemist, or doctor appeared in the Karakhanid lands or found support from their rulers."
[1]
However, this was the age of Ibn Sina and Al-Biruni and text of this sort must have existed even if the great minds to read or build on them did not.
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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|
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17) |
||||||
|
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17) |
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|
“Although monastic Shaivism declined in importance after the abandonment of Angkor and soon disappeared altogether, Indianized cults, including the use of linga, continued into modern times, and officials calling themselves brahmans continued to work at the Cambodian court, where they were entrusted with the performance of royal rituals and with maintaining astronomical tables.”
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, 84) |
||||||
|
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17) |
||||||
|
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17) |
||||||
|
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’
[1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17) |
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|
Written records were introduced by colonial authorities and missions.
|
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|
"Muley Ahmad was a ‘modern’ monarch with an interest in novelties, from whatever source. In both European and Moroccan chronicles, he emerges as a man with an interest in knowledge, intellectually curious and with a well-trained memory. He received an extensive education in Islamic religious and secular sciences, including theology, law, poetry, grammar, lexicography, exegesis, geometry, arithmetics and algebra, and astronomy. "
[1]
[1]: (García-Arenal 2008, 35) |
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|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
||||||
|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
Scholars use oral tradition to help reconstruct life in the Segou kingdom.
[1]
The polity may not have used written documents but there were written documents in the semi-autonomous, Islamic ’marka’ towns, populated by Soninke and other Mande-speakers.
[1]: (Monroe and Ogundiran 2012) J Cameron Monroe. Akinwumi Ogundiran. Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa. J Cameron Monroe. Akinwumi Ogundiran. eds. 2012. Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives.Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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|
"The Khitan now began to loot the capital thoroughly. It was decided to take back to Manchuria the entire body of Chin officials. This proved impossible, but in the third month of 947 they began shipping off to the Supreme Capital the personnel of the main ministries, the palace women, eunuchs, diviners, and artisans in their thousands; books, maps; astronomical charts, instruments, and astronomers; musical treatises and ceremonial musical instruments; the imperial carriages and ritual impedimenta; the weapons and armor from the arsenals; and even the copies of the Confucian classics engraved on stone slabs."
[1]
[1]: (Twitchett, D.C. and K. Tietze. 1994. The Liao. In Franke, H. and D.C. Twitchett (eds) The Cambridge History of China Volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368 pp. 43-153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P. 73-74) |
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|
"According to the Sanguo zhi [Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms], because Kebineng’s lands were near the Chinese border, many Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人) fled the warlord depredations of late Han and Three Kingdoms China to join Kebineng, teaching the Xianbei how to make Chinese-style arms and armor, and even introducing some literacy."
[1]
[1]: (Holcombe 2013, 7-8) |
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|
"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Genealogical registers of noble ancestry (including important marriages, and sometimes important life events of individuals) were recorded in stone during this period. Also carved glyphs denoting calendrical dates. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Detailed documentation of life in the Valley of Oaxaca were written only after the Spanish conquest in the 1520s.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Spencer, C. S. and E. M. Redmond (2004). "Primary state formation in Mesoamerica." Annual Review of Anthropology: 173-199, p179 [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London, p130 |
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|
The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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|
’In “Alfræði íslenzk” there are some texts that may be called of a scientific nature. Some were from this period.’
[1]
Durrenberger notes the presence of legal and grammatical literature: ’According to most authors writing was introduced to Iceland when the country was Christianized in the year 1000. In the two centuries that followed, writing was used for many purposes: religious works, a grammar, a law book and a short history. Most of the family sagas were written in the thirteenth century. The saga with which I am concerned, Eyrbyggja saga (ÍF 4), is commonly believed to have been written between 1230-1250 (Schach & Hollander 1959:xx). I shall deal only with a part of this saga, which I have called the Þórgunna story (ÍF 4, ch. 49-55). I consider the Þórgunna story a myth. Anthropologists believe that myths contain hidden messages in symbolic forms. According to Malinowski (1926) myths are social charters. Lévi-Strauss (1963) argues that myths have a binary structure and that their oppositions explore contradictions in social and other relations.’
[2]
The Grágás legal code is one example: ’It is impossible to say how much of this book is represented in Grágás. Grágás has been preserved in two manuscripts which date to about 1260 and 1280. It is not possible to assign dates to individual provisions within it. The provenance of the manuscripts is unknown and neither is an official compilation (Miller 1990: 42).’
[3]
[1]: Árni Daniel Júlíusson and Axel Kristissen 2017, pers. comm. to E. Brandl and D. Mullins [2]: Odner, Knut 1992. “Þógunna’S Testament: A Myth For Moral Contemplation And Social Apathy”, 125 [3]: Durrenberger, E. Paul 1992. “Dynamics Of Medieval Iceland: Political Economy And Literature”, 80 |
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|
SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’
|
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|
Possehl states that there was no writing before the urban phase in the Indus valley.
[1]
While seals have been found in Mehrgarh III layers, these show no evidence of script or writing.
[2]
[1]: Gregory L. Possehl. The Indus Civilization. A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, Altamira, 2002, p. 51. [2]: , C. A. (in press) Chapter 11, Case Study: Mehrgarh. In, Barker, G and Goucher, C (eds.) Cambridge World History, Volume 2: A World with Agriculture, 12,000 BCE - 500 CE. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. |
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"The Indus civilization flourished for around five hundred to seven hundred years, and in the early second millennium it disintegrated. This collapse was marked by the disappearance of the features that had distinguished the Indus civilization from its predecessors: writing, city dwelling, some kind of central control, international trade, occupational specialization, and widely distributed standardized artifacts. [...] Writing was no longer used, though occasionally signs were scratched as graffiti on pottery."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2008, 91-92) Jane McIntosh. 2008. The Ancient Indus Civilization. Oxford; Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. |
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|
Mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences text from Arabic sources abroad.
|
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|
Only eight texts longer than fifteen signs have been found.
[1]
However, "The layout of Harappan towns and cities provides evidence that the Harappans had a good knowledge of astronomy. The orientation of the main streets in cities and towns followed the cardinal directions. ... Holger Wanzke’s study (1987) of the orientation of Mohenjo-jaro’s streets demonstrated that they deviated from the north-south line by 1-2 degrees. A slight divergence was also observed at other Harappan sites. Wanzke therefore proposed that the Harappans were establishing the cardinal directions by sighting on the stars ... A star calendar based on an intimate knowledge of the movements of the heavens is recorded in later Indian literature."
[2]
[1]: Burjor Avari. India: The Ancient Past. A history of the Indian sub-continent from c.7000 BC to AD 1200. Oxon, 2007, p.51 [2]: (McIntosh 2008, 346) Jane McIntosh. 2008. The Ancient Indus Valley. Santa Barbara; Denver; Oxford: ABC-CLIO. |
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|
Only eight texts longer than fifteen signs have been found.
[1]
However, "The layout of Harappan towns and cities provides evidence that the Harappans had a good knowledge of astronomy. The orientation of the main streets in cities and towns followed the cardinal directions. ... Holger Wanzke’s study (1987) of the orientation of Mohenjo-jaro’s streets demonstrated that they deviated from the north-south line by 1-2 degrees. A slight divergence was also observed at other Harappan sites. Wanzke therefore proposed that the Harappans were establishing the cardinal directions by sighting on the stars ... A star calendar based on an intimate knowledge of the movements of the heavens is recorded in later Indian literature."
[2]
[1]: Burjor Avari. India: The Ancient Past. A history of the Indian sub-continent from c.7000 BC to AD 1200. Oxon, 2007, p.51 [2]: (McIntosh 2008, 346) Jane McIntosh. 2008. The Ancient Indus Valley. Santa Barbara; Denver; Oxford: ABC-CLIO. |
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|
"As the records of astrologers, the chotmaihet hon display an overriding interest in the movements of the planets, and in significant, as well as unusual or unpredictable celestial and earthly events. Entries in the chotmaihet hon are always preceded by a set of numbers indicating the day, lunar date and year of occurrence. The regular motions of the planets were used by the astrologers to establish a system of time-keeping that has been regarded as Siam’s most sophisticated form of temporal measurement. Those responsible for the crafting of the chotmaihet hon were the inheritors and custodians of this complex system. Reflecting their concern with the timing of events, the chotmaihet hon have been known as both calendars and as diaries of the Court Astrologers"
[1]
"During his restoration of Wat Phrachettuphon (Wat Pho), started in the year of the python, 1832, King Rama III ensured this continuity for many generations to come, by having all available knowledge of the finest quality in the fields of art, letters, technical skills, medicine, and other disciplines engraved on stone plaques and fixed to the walls of the buildings of this Royal wat (temple), so that it would be accessible to all. The inscriptions on medicine at Wat Pho include hundreds of ancient texts as well as dozens of illustrated diagrams of the human body showing the points on the body used in the practice of Thai massage, and verses describing exercises demonstrated by statues of yogis performing them."
[2]
[1]: (Hodges 1999, p. 34) [2]: (Mulholland 1979, pp. 82-83) |
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|
"During his restoration of Wat Phrachettuphon (Wat Pho), started in the year of the python, 1832, King Rama III ensured this continuity for many generations to come, by having all available knowledge of the finest quality in the fields of art, letters, technical skills, medicine, and other disciplines engraved on stone plaques and fixed to the walls of the buildings of this Royal wat (temple), so that it would be accessible to all. The inscriptions on medicine at Wat Pho include hundreds of ancient texts as well as dozens of illustrated diagrams of the human body showing the points on the body used in the practice of Thai massage, and verses describing exercises demonstrated by statues of yogis performing them."
[1]
[1]: (Mulholland 1979, pp. 82-83) |
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|
Essays on astronomy. Alchemical research.
[1]
Astronomical tables called Hakimi Zij
[2]
of Ali b. Yunus (d. 1009 CE). Optical studies of mathematician and physicist Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1039 CE). Medcine flourished, co-written "medical-philosophical polemic" of Ibn Ridwan (d. 1061 CE) and Ibn Butlan (d. 1066 CE).
[3]
[1]: (Raymond 2000, 47) [2]: (Qutbuddin 2011, 38) Qutbuddin, Tahera. Fatimids. Ramsamy, Edward. ed. 2011. Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Volume 2. Africa. Sage. Los Angeles. [3]: (Oliver 1977, 21) |
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|
Preiser-Kapeller says present.
[1]
"Surgeons and their assistants followed Byzantine troops on campaigns. ... Small bands of medical corpsmen were recruited to bring the injured to field hospitals."
[2]
"Leo the Mathematician, a leading court scholar and inventor of the ninth century".
[3]
[1]: (Johannes Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Rautman 2006, 226) Rautman, M L. 2006. Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group. [3]: (Rautman 2006, 217) Rautman, M L. 2006. Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group. |
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|
Preiser-Kapeller says present.
[1]
Tenth century: "Enyclopedias of agriculture, medicine and veterinary medicine."
[2]
Michael Psellus (1018-?1078 CE): "Commentaries on Plato and Aristotle. Treatises on scientific problems. Letters, orations, legal works. Contemporary history (976-1077)."
[2]
Leo the Mathematician had an international reputation for his knowledge of geometry, mechanics and medicine and he "devised a warning system of watch fires linking the Arab frontier with the capital, which was capable of transmitting twelve different messages."
[3]
[1]: (Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Haussig 1971, Chronological Table) Haussig, H W.trans Hussey, J M. 1971. History of Byzantine Civilization. Thames and Hudson. [3]: (Treadgold 1997, 561) Treadgold, Warren. 1997. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford University Press. Stanford. |
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Mathematics. From the Aegean region, which includes Greek cities of Lydia on the coast of Western Asia Minor: "By the 6th century BC, writing was widespread there and, thanks to the later reverence for Greek culture, huge amounts survive in transmission beyond that on archaeologically durable media. In addition to poetry, dedications, laws, mathematics and philosophy ... historians"
[1]
Writings on mathematics, philsophy and the ordering of celestial and earthly space"
[2]
[1]: (Broodbank 2015, 536) Broodbank, Cyprian. 2015. The Making of the Middle Sea. Thames & Hudson. London. [2]: (Broodbank 2015, 545) Broodbank, Cyprian. 2015. The Making of the Middle Sea. Thames & Hudson. London. |
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|
Literate society: "The first Ottoman college was established in Iznik in 1331, when scholars were invited from Iran and Egypt to augment Muslim instruction in the new territories."
[1]
The Ottomans integrated the traditions of classical Arabic and Persian literature - but original own works start mostly in the later period.
[2]
[1]: (Lapidus 2012, 440) [2]: Personal communication. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller. 2016. Institute for Medieval Research. Division of Byzantine Research. Austrian Academy of Sciences. |
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|
[1]
Ali Kuscu 1403-1474 CE. Samarkand tradition. Twelve works on mathematics and astronomy. Kadizade-i Rumî 1337-1437 CE. Mirim Celebi (d. 1525) mathematics and astronomy. Musa b. Hamun (d. 1554) Jewish physician. Nasuh al-Silahi al-Matraki (d. 1564) mathematics and geography. Taki al-Din al-Rasid (d. 1585) "wrote more than thirty books in Arabic on the subjects of mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and medicine."
[2]
Piri Reis (d. 1553 CE) - maps.
[1]: (Agoston and Masters 2009, 338) [2]: (http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/science.asp) |
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|
[1]
Ali Kuscu 1403-1474 CE. Samarkand tradition. Twelve works on mathematics and astronomy. Kadizade-i Rumî 1337-1437 CE. Mirim Celebi (d. 1525) mathematics and astronomy. Musa b. Hamun (d. 1554) Jewish physician. Nasuh al-Silahi al-Matraki (d. 1564) mathematics and geography. Taki al-Din al-Rasid (d. 1585) "wrote more than thirty books in Arabic on the subjects of mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and medicine."
[2]
Piri Reis (d. 1553 CE) - maps.
[1]: (Agoston and Masters 2009, 338) Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters. 2009. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Facts On File, Inc. [2]: (http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/science.asp) |
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|
Ali Qushji (1402-1474 CE): "Son of Ulughbeg’s falconer and later a renowned astronomer, founder of Ottoman astronomy, and author of a ringing defense of astronomy’s autonomy from philosophy."
[1]
"Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274 CE). "Polymath native of Tus in Khurasan and founder of the Maragha observatory under the Mongols. He challenged Aristotle’s notion that all motion is either linear or circular."
[1]
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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"Subhan Quli reigned at Bukhara from 1680 to 1702, and by and large, kept the inherited dominions under his authority. He was able to resist an invasion by Anusha Khan of Khiva in 1685. Himself the author of a large work on medicine, he built a hospital (dar al-shifa’) at Balkh after he had become the khan of Bukhara."
[1]
[1]: (Mukminova 2003, 50) |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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Bede wrote several scientific treatise including De Temporum Ratione (On the Nature of Time).
[1]
[1]: (Roberts et al 2014: 35) Roberts, Clayton, Roberts, F. David, and Bisson, Douglas. 2014. ‘Anglo-Saxon England: 450–1066’, in A History of England, Volume 1, 6th ed. Routledge. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/P2IHD9U3 |
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Abul-Wafa Buzjani (940-998 CE): "Afghan-born pioneering researcher at Baghdad and Gurganj. His method of developing sine and tangent tables produced results accurate to the eighth decimal point. By applying sine theorems to spherical triangles, Buzjani opened the way to new methods of navigating on open water."
[1]
Abu Ali al-Husayn Ibn Sina (980-1037 CE): "Philosopher, theologian, polymath, and author of the Canon of Medicine, which remained for half a millennium the classic medical text throughout the Muslim world and Europe."
[1]
Abu Mahmud Khujandi (945-1000 CE): " A native of Khujand, Tajikistan, and designer of astronomical instruments"
[1]
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865-925 CE): "From Rayy near modern Tehran, but educated in Merv by Central Asian teachers ... the first true experimentalist in medicine and the most learned medical practitioner before Ibn Sina."
[1]
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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|
Mathematics and astronomy encouraged by Ulugh Beg.
[1]
Treatises on medicine.
[2]
[1]: (Khan 2003, 35) Khan, A. 2003. A Historical Atlas of Uzbekistan. The Rosen Publishing Group. [2]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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|
"Notably, none of these documents is a poem, a hymn, a collection of sayings, a mythological narration, a chronicle, a manual, or indeed any other sort of literary or technical composition."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 92) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.001.0001/acprof-9780199654529-chapter-3. |
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|
"Notably, none of these documents is a poem, a hymn, a collection of sayings, a mythological narration, a chronicle, a manual, or indeed any other sort of literary or technical composition."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 92) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.001.0001/acprof-9780199654529-chapter-3. |
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|
Mathematics and anatomy etc. Account from 1472 AD ‘Then after the Qur’an I studied the Quranic readings, individually and collectively, under my maternal uncle ... Then I studied Arabic under my maternal uncle and others. I studied also in particular under him arithmetic, algebra, anatomy, surveying, God’s ordinances and fiqb with the result that I derived benefit from all these disciplines’
[1]
[1]: G. REX SMITH, ‘THE TAHIRID SULTANS OF THE YEMEN (858-923/1454-1517) AND THEIR HISTORIAN IBN AL-DAYBA’, ‘’Journal of Semitic Studies’’, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 1 March 1984, p. 151 |
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|
"In the field of religion and culture, the nineteenth century is said to have witnessed the golden age of Islam in the Futa Jalon. It was the century of great scholars and the growth of Islamic culture. All the disciplines of the Quran were known and taught: translation, the hadiths, law, apologetics, the ancillary sciences such as grammar, rhetoric, literature, astronomy, local works in Pular and Arabic, and mysticism. Nineteenth-century European visitors were highly impressed by the extent of the Islamization, which was visible in the large number of mosques and schools at all levels, the degree of scholarship, the richness of the libraries, and the widespread practice of Islamic worship. All this seems to have been facilitated by the use of the local language, Pular, as a medium of teaching and popularization of Islamic rules and doctrine."
[1]
[1]: (Barry 2005: 539) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/SU25S5BX/items/6TXWGHAX/item-list |
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|
"It was not only through shipping but also thanks to the development of the microscope and the telescope that completely new worlds were discovered. The Republic, and in particular Amsterdam, was at the centre of the relatively free art of book printing, and as such was the international showcase for all these new discoveries."
[1]
[1]: (Emmer and Gommans 2020: 12) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AI9PPN7Q/collection. |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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|
“In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”).”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
||||||
|
The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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|
“The last category is what I have termed "secular" writing, not because it is in any sense neutral towards the discourse of religion, but because the disciplines treated in this literature do not belong to the religious sciences of Islam. The disciplines concerned are the cognitive sciences, logic, and history. In the sciences, while there has been a little writing on mathematical calculation, especially as it relates to the horology (lilm al-mawaqit), and a few works of astronomy or astrology,26 there has been more interest in, and knowledge about, medicine. The earliest work in this category is a small work on the treatment of hemorrhoids by al-Tahir b. Ibrahim al-Fallati of Bornu (fl. 1745), a medical problem also discussed by Muhammad Bello, who wrote as well on the treatment of intestinal worms and on the use of senna as a purgative.”
[1]
[1]: Hunwick, John. “The Arabic Literary Tradition of Nigeria.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 28, no. 3, 1997, pp. 210–23: 217. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/XKK8AVBT/collection |
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“The question as to the manner in which a record of the age of these children was kept by a people who had no writing, poses itself here.”
[1]
[1]: HERSKOVITS, M. J. (1932). POPULATION STATISTICS IN THE KINGDOM OF DAHOMEY. Human Biology, 4(2), 252–261: 258. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/8T74FM7D/collection |
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|
"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Karagwe formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[2]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. [2]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which the Fipa formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Buhaya formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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“In his Maratha Rule in the Carnatic, C.K. Srinivasan lists the various famous writers who enriched literature and philosophy with their works. There was an enormous literary output in Sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil, and it embraced every form of composition: epics, drama, romantic pieces, burlesques, treatise on medicine, astrology and music.
[1]
[1]: (Appasamy 1980, 11) Appasamy, Jaya. 1980. Thanjavur Painting of the Maratha Period. Vol. 1. New Delhi. Abhinav Publications. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/35BU75NG/collection |
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No references found in the consulted literature to a written form of Nri that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet. “If these are the problems to be faced in languages that have written form hundreds of years ago one cannot imagine what problems there are in dealing with languages whose written forms are yet to be established.”
[1]
[1]: Onwuejeogwu, M. A. (1975). Some Fundamental Problems in the Application of Lexicostatistics in the Study of African Languages. Paideuma, 21, 6–17: 10. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/IISK3KCM/collection |
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The following quote suggests that there were Arabic books present that discussed mathematics. “Two conditions are indispensably necessary to procure admission into the class of marabouts, an irreproachable character, and an acquaintance with Arabic language. The candidate ought to know several chapters of the Koran by heart, and to combine with these acquirements a knowledge of certain Arabic books, which treat of the history of the world and of arithmetic.”
[1]
[1]: (Mollien 1820, 61) Mollien, Gaspard Theodore. 1820, Travels in the Interior of Africa to the Sources of the Senegal and Gambia Performed by Command of the French Government in 1818. Edited by T.E. Bowdich. London: Henry Colburn and Company. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/W3PWMURF/collection |
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The following quote suggests that scientific literature was likely present within the Carnatic Sultanate. “The most significant aspect of South Indian Islam, however, is that it was predominantly influenced by Sufi mysticism. The Sufis were not as bound by doctrinal formalism as the Sunnis or the Shi’ites but were concerned with an individual, mystic devotionalism which made it easy to adapt to the existing religious environment of South India. Sufi mysticism was characterized on the one hand by centres of learning, poetry, science, and on the other hand by the centrality of the pir or saint. The saint’s devotees assembled at his shrine to partake in the sacred power which abounded in the area, thus falling into the existing tradition of sacred places and the importance of pilgrimage.”
[1]
[1]: (Bugge, 2020) Bugge, Henriette. 2020. Mission and Tamil preSociety: Social and Religious Change in South India (1840-1900). London: Routledge Curzon. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/9SKWNUF4/collection |
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“The rule of the nayaka in Thanjavur came to an end in the second half of the seventeenth century. Vijayaraghava Nayak (1634-73), son of Raghunatha Nayak, was the last ruler of the nayaka dynasty. On the whole, this period shaped the country both economically and culturally since most of these Hindu (Vaishnava) rulers had cultural, literary, and scientific interests and were comparatively tolerant and open in religious matters.”
[1]
[1]: (Lieban 2018, 54) Lieban, Heike. 2018. Cultural Encounters in India: The Local Co-workers of Tranquebar Mission, 18th to 19th Centuries. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/32CRNR7U/collection |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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No writing system in Allada the year before Whydah became independent, so likely the same in Whydah: “Another question arising from the incidence of credit in both the local economy and the overseas trade is the nature of the indigenous system of recordkeeping. In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”). Several later accounts allude to other mechanical devices for keeping financial (and fiscal) records in Dahomey.”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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“Since the end of the 15th century, a great deal of material about Benin has been supplied by sailors, traders, etc., returning to Europe. However, information on the Edo people before this date is very difficult to obtain, as there was no written record and the oral record is at best rather fragmentary.”
[1]
“The theme of this study presses the sources for the reconstruction of Benin military history to its limits because written documents scarcely exist, except for the reports and accounts of European visitors.”
[2]
[1]: Bondarenko, Dmitri M., and Peter M. Roese. ‘Benin Prehistory: The Origin and Settling down of the Edo’. Anthropos 94, no. 4/6 (1999): 542–52: 542. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/Y4V3D623/collection [2]: Osadolor, O. B. (2001). The Military System of Benin Kingdom, c.1440–1897. University of Hamburg, Germany: 27–28. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4RZF5H5/collection |
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The following quote suggests that this era has left behind few written texts. "Historical information on those emerging years of the empire is dim and has to be carefully extracted from the accounts of Arab writers (Levtzion and Hopkins 1981), the scanty internal evidence in the Kanem-Borno king lists (Lange 1977), and the few fragments of internal scripts that have been recorded by the German traveler Heinrich Barth (1857-59; Lange 1987) and the British colonial officer Richmond Palmer (1967; 1970)."
[1]
[1]: (Gronenborn 2002: 103) |
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Climate was of particular interest in this period. A cleric, William Merle, kept a detailed record of the weather between 1337-1344. As an agricultural polity, recording and analysing weather patterns was important for crops.
[1]
[1]: (Prestwich 2005: 4) Prestwich, Michael. 2005. Plantagenet England 1225-1360. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XTBKFDCI |
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The scientific revolution took place in Europe through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and with it came a surge of scientific literature particularly in astronomy, physics, medicine, botany and mathematics.
[1]
[1]: (Marshall 2006: 170, 231-244) Marshall, P. J. ed. 2006. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II The Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2, 5 vols. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/HGG2PPQQ |
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“Men of science and letters took it upon themselves to construct a permanent image of the nation, to draw and set its boundaries, and to name and place its principal geographic and hydrographic features, by setting the nation down on paper. They also sought to articulate, in their writing, a genuine Mexican voice that would characterize a national— and nationalist— literature. It was a grandiose task in which, despite its profoundly political nature, men of all ideological inclinations participated, by presenting their research and lectures before learned societies such as the Ateneo, the literary society of San Juan de Letrán Academy, or the Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística. In 1857, the geographer Antonio García Cubas drew on this Society’s previous work to draw up and publish the first general map of the Republic (Craib). These men also collaborated in extensive editorial projects that they felt would contribute to on the one hand consolidating Mexico as a natural entity, and on the other to validating its rightful place among civilized nations. Thus, geographers, historians and philologists who often stood in opposite political trenches, wrote erudite articles on the nation’s demography, its mountainous ranges and its indigenous dialects for the Diccionario Universal de Historia y Geografía, published in Mexico City between 1853 and 1856.”
[1]
[1]: (Pani 2011: 279) Pani, Erika. 2009. “Republicans and Monarchists, 1848–1867,” in A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, ed. William H. Beezley. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 273–87. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/3I4GPWQG |
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“Bartoloměj of Chlumec, known as Klaret, along with several assistants and most likely supported by the Emperor, concentrated on lexicographical works which throw light on the scientific terminology of the time, which up to this employed mostly Latin.”
[1]
[1]: (Pánek and Oldřich 2009: 149) Pánek, Jaroslav and Oldřich, Tůma. 2009. A History of the Czech Lands. University of Chicago Press. 2009. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/4NAX9KBJ |
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Scientists in the US were generally focussed on invention, mechanics, technology and medicine (in comparison to European theory). Drawings and explanations for inventions were submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. Findings on biological studies, such as Jeffries Wyman’s study of apes and gorillas were published. This study in particular contributed to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Universities taught and published on a variety of sciences such as geology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and natural philosophy.
[1]
[1]: Volo and Volo 2004: 43, 54, 96-97. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/SIB5XSW97. |
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“Although the ancient people of the Southwest didn’t have a written language, they had effective ways to communicate.”
[1]
[1]: (“Chaco Culture - Communication”) “Chaco Culture” NPS Museum Collections, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/chcu/index6.html. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/NMRVDA5I |
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Scientists in the US were generally focussed on invention, mechanics, technology and medicine (in comparison to European theory). Drawings and explanations for inventions were submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. Findings on biological studies, such as Jeffries Wyman’s study of apes and gorillas were published. This study in particular contributed to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Universities taught and published on a variety of sciences such as geology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and natural philosophy.
[1]
[1]: Volo and Volo 2004: 43, 54, 96-97. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/SIB5XSW97. |
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Science was increasingly popular from the Stuart period, most notably with Charles II being a patron of the sciences. Laboratories and The Royal Society published many scientific papers and books. Sir Francis Bacon wrote Advancement of Learning (1605) which laid the groundwork for scientific method among many other scientific volumes. In 1687 Newton alongside the Royal Society published Principa Mathematica: or the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
[1]
“In order to measure and predict these forces, Newton developed (in parallel with the German scholar Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz [1646–1716]) a whole branch of mathematics – calculus. The result was a series of mathematical formulae, supported by observation and experiment, which explained and could be used to predict the movements both of objects on earth, and of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies. In 1687, with the assistance of the Royal Society, Newton published his findings in Principia Mathematica: or the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.”
[2]
[1]: (Bucholz et al 2013: 171, 283, 373, 375) Bucholz, Robert, Newton Key, and R.O. Bucholz. 2013. Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=1166775. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XQGJH96U [2]: (Bucholz et al 2013: 375) Bucholz, Robert, Newton Key, and R.O. Bucholz. 2013. Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=1166775. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XQGJH96U |
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“The eighteenth century saw a veritable explosion of published works of literature, science, history, religion, and philosophy in the territories ruled by the Habsburgs.”
[1]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 29) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW |
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Astronomy, mathematics, zoology, and botony were particularly popular during this period.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Beller 2006: 55) Beller, Steven. 2006. A Concise History of Austria (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. http://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof00stev. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/3ZFP3F7X [2]: (Curtis 2013: 142) Curtis, Benjamin. 2013. The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. London; New York: Bloomsbury. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/TRKUBP92 |
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The were many scientists and scientific scholars in the golden Horde. There was a disruption of literary works in the Turkic languages following the Black Death. After 1360 there appear to be no literary or religious works written in the Golden Horde language until the fifteenth century in Central Asia.
[1]
[1]: Schamiloglu 2017: 337. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YI8W94QB |
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Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) was a polymath who made significant contributions across various fields, including chemistry, physics, and astronomy. He is known for his works in natural science, the establishment of Moscow University, and his advocacy for the development of Russian science.
[1]
Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905), often considered the father of Russian physiology, published "Reflexes of the Brain" in 1863, introducing electrophysiology and neurophysiology to Russian science. [2] [1]: “Научное Наследие — Электронная Библиотека ГНПБУ.” Accessed December 18, 2023. http://elib.gnpbu.ru/sections/0100/lomonosov/. Zotero link: 43PKCEWE [2]: F. Volgyesi, “[SECHENOV’S The Reflexes of the Brain (1863)],” Orvosi Hetilap 104 (July 21, 1963): 1381–1382. Zotero link: RKFSKT6C |
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