African map project: Al-Idrisi's map of the world (1100s AD) What's new about al Idrisi's map? Check out this copy of al-Idrisi's map of the world, created in the 1100s AD. Who was [...]
An eclipse of the moon. You can see the curved shadow of the Earth. Logic tells you the earth is round. Making predictions Once people have seen that something happens [...]
A starry sky with the Milky Way galaxy(thanks to Bernd Nies) Early astronomy The very earliest people, as early as six million years ago, knew much more about the moon and the planets and the stars than most [...]
A copy of Ptolemy's map of the world Ptolemy was born in Egypt in about 90 AD, when the Romans were ruling Egypt. He was a Roman citizen. Probably he was the son or grandson of [...]
Roman medicine: Galen used surgical instruments like these What do we mean by Roman medicine? Roman medicine is really West Asian and African medicine. That's because most of the great [...]
Copernicus, a Renaissance astronomer Starting in the 1200s AD, as Europe got richer, great universities got started there. In the later Middle Ages, West Asia and India suffered from the Mongol invasions. West Asian people were too poor to [...]
Roger Bacon's diagram of a human eye When did Roger Bacon live? Roger Bacon was born in England maybe about 1210 AD. It was late in the reign of King John. (That's the one [...]
Astrolabe in Hebrew, probably from Spain (1300s AD) In the early Middle Ages, most people in Europe were too poor to have much time for astronomy. But some people were still interested in [...]
Diagram of an eye, by Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 1000 AD) Who was ibn al-Haytham? Ibn al-Haytham was born about 965 AD in Basra, near the Persian Gulf (modern Iraq), and when he grew [...]
Islamic astronomers taking observations West Asian astronomy before Islam West Asian astronomers had been world leaders in astronomy for thousands of years before the Islamic conquests in the 600s AD. In the last centuries BC, [...]
