Developed what we should now call algebra, and were therefore able to solve mathematical equations.

These equations, which were needed for solution of problems in building, in land surveying and in commerce, were written out in words and their solutions carried out step by step according to certain well-tried rules. They could solve not only simple equations but also quadratics and even cubic equations. Geometry was another mathematical discipline which the old Babylonian, if not the Sumerians, studied. They did not lay down a logically formal system as Euclid was to do about a thousand years later, but they were able to calculate the areas of plane figures and the volumes of many solid ones including pyramids, cylinder ad cones. They knew of isosceles triangles and were aware of the general relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle which, as we have seen, was not known to the Egyptians. On the other hand their value for was inferior to Egyptian one. Unfortunately the Sumerian and Babylonian mathematical achievements were not followed up in later times. Their algebra was forgotten, and, except for a period when, as we shall see, some Greeks took up the subject for a brief spell, it lay dormant until Islamic mathematicians revived it in the ninth century AD. The way the Mesopotamians extended the scale of numbers to fractions or sub-multiples of 10 and 6 was also lost, and had to wait until the sixteenth century AD for revival, while their adoption of a division by IOS as a basis for all official measurements was not in fact revived in the Western world until the advent of the metric system towards the close of the eighteenth century. Lastly, their use of the positions of number symbols to indicate their value was also lost and not regained in the West until the arrival in the tenth century of the HinduArabic numerals which we still use today. That the Sumerians and Babylonians made great advances in the mathematics may be an understatement; they seem to have laid the very foundations of the entire subject. Mesopotamians astronomy The caches of cuneiform tablets which have shown us the glories of Old Babylonians mathematics have also brought about a knowledge of Sumerian/ Babylonians astronomy and the Chaldean developments. They make it clear, for instance, that these people created the art of scientific astronomical observation. And even in so speculative a subjects as cosmology the nature of the universe - they managed to draw a picture which was not wholly an exercise in mythical imagination. The Sumerians universe was peopled with gods and goddess, the offspring of Apsu and Tiamat, whose union also begat mankind and the animal world. But their scheme of the universe was more materialistic and descriptive of Nature than was Egyptian. The earth was somewhat in the shape of an upturned gufa (a coracle-shaped boat), its shores leading down to a salty sea. Overhead spread the sky, a vast dome for

ever unreachable. What happened at the point where they met? To the Egyptians it would have seemed an irrelevant question, but to the Sumerian/Babylonians mind it was indeed legitimate; to begin with the thought of some structure such as a bank or ridge at the sea and imagined that the dome rested on this. Later, by Babylonian times, the ridge had become a range of mountains which not only supported the sky but also gave access to heaven. In both cases their explanation was a physical not a metaphysical one. The sun moved across the sky but day and back under the earth at night; so did the Moon. When they came to discuss the phases of the Moon, they were careful to tie these in with the positions of the sun and so, by implications, realized that the Moon shone only by reflecting sunlight. The stars themselves were thought of as fixed to the dome of heaven, but, characteristically, the Mesopotamians did not leave it at that. They not only organized the stars into constellations but, like the Egyptians, assigned to them seasonal appearances and, this time unlike the Egyptians, studied the motions of the planets in detail, observing that their paths lay close to the ecliptic (the Suns apparent seasonal path in the sky). This planetary work was to lead to important results later. The dome of heaven had its own color blue because it was made of blue gemstone, for in the Epic of Gilgamesh the whole of heaven was imagined as having three layers, each one made of a precious stone, and echoing the three-part constructions of the earth itself the mountains inhabited gods, the flat lands by man, and the underworld by the dead. The idea that the heavens were made of precious stone is, of course, echoed later in the Bible (in the books of exodus and revelation, for instance), as too is the idea that rain was stored in heaven and then released when holes in the sky were unplugged. There was, however, another view which claimed that rain came down from the clouds. Considering the general state of knowledge in the Old Babylonian times and earlier, their picture gave a very rational description of the cosmos. Observing was certainly carried out. Heliacal and settings were observed, and a particular interest was taken in the planets, whose positions were noted not only at times of rising and setting, but also at other specific times such as opposition (at which time a planets is at its highest point in the night sky at about midnight). Great interest was also taken in the movement of Jupiter, which is the brightest planet in the night sky, and as early as King Ammisadugas time (about 1921 to 1901 BC) in the Venus, which appears in evening or early morning skies and is then ever brighter than Jupiter. Although we do not know precisely what observing instruments were used, it is clear that these included sundials and waterclocks and, by the time of king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1260-1232 BC), some type of transit instrument for determining the moment when a celestial body is due south. Other celestial phenomena such as shooting stars and

comets were observed and recorded, as well as eclipse of the sun and the moon. Observation were often made from the top of ziggurat. The stars and planets, sun and moon, were all looked on as placed there by the gods for benefit of mankind. Their purpose was to shower down their influences, to give an indication of the nations fortunes, and to provide a basic guide for a calendar by which the people could regulate their agriculture and arrange for celebrations at the proper time of religious festivals to Marduk and their other deities. To begin with, the Sumerians thought, as the Egyptians did, that the length of the year was 36 days a glorious confirmation of their sexagesimal system and they divided each day into six watches, three for the day and three for the night. These were unequal periods because they varied with seasons which, of course, brought different lengths of day and night. They proved inconvenient for astronomical use, and finally the whole day was divided into 12 equal periods of 30 gesh each: this was another division which gave a total of 36 units. The divisions into 360 was applied also to sectors of the sky, giving us the 360-degree circle. The 360-day year therefore had mathematical to overtones as far as the Sumerians were concerned, but it was also tied into lunar calendar, having a regular series of months of 30 days and 29 days to fit in with the lunar cycle of phases. There were 12 months giving a total of 354 days, and then an extra (intercalary month was added when necessary to keep year in step with the seasons. The intercalary month must have been introduced very early on, for it Ur during the period 2294 to 2187 BC it was already recognized that the introduction of intercalary months followed an eight year cycle. This Babylonian calendar formed the basis of the Hebrew one and of the first Greek and roman calendars as well. We come now to the last period of Mesopotamian astronomy. It is called Chaldean because it was a Chaldean dynasty which ruled the Neo-Babylonian kingdom in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, and they were Chaldean priests in the temples who observed and carried on their scientific work both then and later, after the Persian conquest (sixth to four centuries BC) and the conquest by Alexander the great, which occurred in 332-323 BC. In post-Alexandrian times the Chaldeans made a great stride forward by applying mathematical analysis to astronomy in a way quite different from their contemporaries, the Greeks. The Chaldeans inherited the zodiac from their predecessors, the Old Babylonians, and then they made a long series of observations, especially of the moon and the planets. Unlike the Greeks, they formulated no planetary theory, but instead they drew up detailed tables of past planetary theory, but instead they drew up detailed tables of past planetary motions so that they could predict or anticipate future motions in the fresh tables. This they achieved by using arithmetic to express the changing

speeds with which shows how they plotted the way in which the movement would vary with time. Their first attempts at predicting the movements of the sun, for example, worked on the assumption that it had two speeds faster in the winter and slower in summer. Later between 181 and 49 BC, with more observational experience to go on, they realized that they had over-simplified the sky; this is shown in the lower figure. Here a zig-zag line represents the velocity changes and it was such zig-zag functions that they worked out mathematically, using their arithmetic, for the sun, moon and planets. This was something new and truly scientific, which was not to be followed up in this kind of way until very much later in Western Europe. It was also the Chaldeans who helped introduce astrology in a form in which it is still known today. This was the degenerate form in which the arrangement of the heavens at birth was thought to indicate not only personal characteristics but also the future fate of an individual. In the days when there was a general belief in two worlds the world of governing gods and spirits and the physical world- the idea that the heavens should depict on the large scale the attitudes of the gods of the well-being of a people was acceptable enough. Applying such major indications to every person was an extension of this idea, but its further extrapolation to laying down the course of that persons future life was doubtful validity. Indeed, one can term it degeneration because it led to much baseless superstition. Nevertheless by 4I0 BC horoscopes setting out the positions the whole apparatus of predictive astrology was there. But although the bible and Greek source look on the Chaldeans as magicians and astrologers, diviners and soothsayers, much of the development of astrology using horoscopes was not in fact carried out until the third century BC and later, and was done in Egypt, often by GreekEgyptians. It is a distortion of the situations to lay on the Chaldeans the blame for all the superstitious practices that arose out of the extension of astrology to the personal level. It is more of a distortion still to ignore the very real scientific contribution to astronomy that the Chaldeans made, yet this is what happened. Their true achievement was forgotten until the astronomical and mathematical cuneiform tablets were discovered and analysed in our own times. Astronomy in Western Europe It has long been thought that the first development of scientific astronomy took place in Babylonia, and this seems generally to be true. But there were developments elsewhere, perhaps helped along by information which had filtered through, either along trade routers or by way of reports by travelers and explorers. A known recipient was china, where there developed a great civilization interested in science, while there were also some astronomical achievements in some parts of Europe. Perhaps these early Europeans achieved something in other branches of science as well, but there seems to be no surviving evidence for it.

The best known example of this Megalithic period, so-called because huge stone blocks were used in construction, is Stonehenge. Though build in stages over the centuries, the basic construction was made as early as 2800 BC, in Neolithic times. The last stages of its development were not finished until 1100 BC, in the Early Bronze Age. It is clear that the building techniques, using carefully dressed stones up to 9 meters (30 feet) long and weighing 50 tones, as well as the practices of entasis, were derived independently, but in recent years it has also become clear that Stonehenge was far from unique; it was only one of a host of megalithic structures, spread over Great Britain (with a preponderance in the West of Scotland), and Brittany. The old idea that Stonehenge was a Druid temple has long been shown to be without foundation, but archaeologists are still of the opinion that it was a religious building. A hypothesis less often accepted is that it was also an astronomical observatory designed to give calendar information and probably to warn of forthcoming eclipses as well. Yet the evidence is impressive. Careful surveys of Stonehenge and other stone circles, or stone rings, and detailed statistical analysis of the result leave little doubt that they were indeed astronomical observations, designed and built on the basic of experience and the need to watch for rising and settings of the Sun and Moon for the purpose of determining a seasonal calendar. They were needed because in the kind of latitudes in which they are to be found heliacal risings and settings cannot be observed as satisfactorily as they can in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the higher latitudes neither the Sun nor the Moon sink so rapidly to the horizon, nor do they rise so swiftly. Their apparent paths as they set and rise are more oblique, with the result that turbulence of the air and other factors make it more difficulty to detect the moment when they disappear or reappear a difficulty increased by the longer twilight in these latitudes. Twilight does not, of course, affect observation of the risings and settings of the Sun and Moon, but it does make horizon observations of stars and planets virtually impossible. The stones ring overcomes the problem by using Sun and Moon alone as calendar indicators and observing the most and least easterly point of rising, and the equivalent westerly points for their settings. In the summer the days lengthen and the Sun rises at more northerly points along the eastern horizon, and sets at more northerly points along the western horizon. At midsummer, on the longest day of the year, the Sun has reached its most southerly. These extreme points can be observed by using markers fixed vertically in the ground, so that the position of the most northerly or southerly points of rising or setting can be determined by the positions of the two markers. A natural feature on the horizon _ a dip between two crags, for instance _ was sometimes used as one marker, so that only one stone marker had to be set up. Plenty of such cases are known. Stone were, of course, mainly used because they would survive the damp climate better than other natural materials.

There can be no doubt that long experience lay behind the idea of setting up stonering observatories, and it was certainly long experience which led to the establishment of special markers for the Moon, since it would become evident after centuries of watching that eclipses occurred only when the Moon and Sun were in certain positions with respect to one another. The complex arrangement of one of the stone rings at Stonehenge makes it a distinct possibility that this was, among other things, an eclipse computer, though build by a people with virtually no written language. We must, however, be careful about making statements of too definite a kind about how little - or, indeed, how much -the stone-ring builders knew. Some undeciphered signs have been found on some stones and there is evidence that they may have had a 365-day seasonal calendar divided into 16 solar months. Certainly the stone rings, tombs and pottery which they have left behind make it clear that this was a civilization that would repay further study. It has also been claimed that in constructing all the stone circles over what is quite a large area they used a standard measurement the megalithic yard. These is at present some argument about whether there ever was such a standard, which is claimed to be 0,829 meters (2 feet 8 inches) but statistical and other arguments make it appear increasingly likely that it did exist. Thus it may well be that we have here a civilization which had at least reached the stage of having an organized system of standards for measurement.