The constellation Orion What did Mesopotamians invent? From the Stone Age through the Islamic empires, great scientific discoveries have streamed out of West Asia. West Asia is one of the places where farming got started, [...]
Assurbanipal in the garden (see his enemy's head hanging in the tree?) One of the Seven Wonders Nobody knows for sure when or where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were [...]
Iranian science: A Safavid astrolabe from the 1600s AD New ideas come to Iran Iranian scientists in the Safavid Empire, and then in the country of Iran, were well placed to hear [...]
Taqi al-Din in his observatory Ottoman scholars built many libraries in Istanbul and in other cities of the Ottoman Empire. They translated many earlier books into Turkish or Arabic, like [...]
A rubber ball made by the Olmec people (about 1000 BC) Invention of rubber With different natural resources available to them, the people of South America and Central America invented different things than [...]
History of coca leaves: Coca farming in the Andes Mountains When did coca plants evolve? Like potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco, coca plants grow wild in the Andes Mountains of South America. They probably evolved [...]
Egyptian sundial (Valley of the Kings, Egypt, ca. 1300 BC). It's on a small chip of limestone so you could carry it around. Using the sun to tell time During [...]
Damascus steel sword from the 1200s AD Soon after 300 BC, with the rise of the Silk Road, people were all looking for new ideas for things they could sell. Thanks to Buddhist [...]
A big rubber tree in Mexico Olmec people, living in southern Mexico, invented rubber about 1600 BC. It was just as they were beginning to build their empire. Rubber starts out as [...]
A pontoon bridge from the Column of Marcus Aurelius, in Rome A pontoon bridge is a temporary bridge that you make by lining up a lot of boats crossways across the river, [...]
