Perseus is an evolving digital library, engineering interactions through time, space, and language. Our primary goal is to bring a wide range of source materials to as large an audience as possible. We anticipate that greater accessibility to the sources for the study of the humanities will strengthen the quality of questions, lead to new avenues of research, and connect more people through the connection of ideas.
We are a source of peer-reviewed scientific and editorial materials in archaeoastronomy, ethnoastronomy, archaeology and the history of science. We have published these materials in our journal, Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture and in our Archaeoastronomy & Ethnoastronomy Newsletter, essays from which are now available to read on this website.
Commission on History of Science & Technology in Islamic Civilization
Jiuzhang suanshu is a very influential book in the history of Chinese mathematics. It is the earliest specialized mathematical work in China that survives to the present day. It is available in German (K. Vogel 1968), in Russian (R. I. Berezkina 1957), and in English (D. B. Wagner 1978). It is unclear when this book was produced. However it is estimated that the book was first assembled at the Han dynasty (during the first century).
About 287 BC in Syracuse, Sicily. At the time Syracuse was an independent Greek city-state with a 500-year history.
Energy is the basis of modern civilization; it dominates the headlines, makes and breaks the economy of nations, determines their foreign policy. Yet it is relatively a newcomer to history. It began to occupy men's minds only during the Middle Ages, not before. Egypt, Assyria, Persia, all fashioned their empires without it, Greece achieved her glory and Rome her splendor without it. Very possibly the glory and the splendor would have been still greater, had Greeks and Romans turned their attention to utilizing sources of power other than the muscles of man or beast. For some reason they did not.
The Online Register of Scientific Instruments is an international database of historic scientific instruments and related objects available via the Internet. It is developed and supported by the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford in association with the Scientific Instrument Commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science
Nowadays, we usually write non-integer numbers either as fractions (2/7) or decimals (0.285714). The floating point representation used in computers is another representation very similar to decimals. But the ancient Egyptians (as far as we can tell from the documents now surviving) used a number system based on unit fractions: fractions with one in the numerator. This idea let them represent numbers like 1/7 easily enough; other numbers such as 2/7 were represented as sums of unit fractions (e.g. 2/7 = 1/4 +1/28). Further, the same fraction could not be used twice (so 2/7 = 1/7 + 1/7 is not allowed). We call a formula representing a sum of distinct unit fractions an Egyptian fraction.
Archaeological surveys at the site of Bir Umm Fawakhir in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt have clarified its role as a 5th-6th century gold-mining town. To date, 152 out of an estimated 216 buildings in the main settlement have been mapped in detail, eight outlying clusters of ruins have been identified, and four ancient mines have been inspected. In conjunction with Diodorus Siculus' first century B.C. account of Egyptian gold mining, the recent archaeological discoveries permit new insights into ancient Egyptian mining towns and techniques. Some evidence of activity at Bir Umm Fawakhir in earlier Roman, Ptolemaic, and pharaonic times has also been found
I came to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and his Companions were sitting as if they had birds on their heads. I saluted and sat down. The desert Arabs then came from here and there. They asked: Apostle of Allah, should we make use of medical treatment? He replied: Make use of medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease, namely old age.
