Most of the knowledge we have about Mesopotamia comes from clay or stone tablets with cuneiform writing, although the first ones were written before the year 3000 a. C., most come from the year 2500 a. C. onwards. These documents include: carts, narratives, business contracts and memoranda, as well as religious and scientific records. They are so well preserved and so numerous that they potentially offer us detailed knowledge of the environment in which they were written, sometimes providing us with greater detail than the knowledge available for more recent periods of world history. That is why we want to bring you the knowledge that in different branches of science ancient civilizations had, especially in Mesopotamia.
Science in Mesopotamia | First signs
Evidence of the use of characteristic record systems in the form of raw, unbaked clay tablets, marked with primitive numerals, which constituted administrative records prior to the introduction of writing itself. These evidences were found both in northern Mesopotamia and on the Iranian plateau.
It is unknown precisely where the system was developedbut it is apparent that it was imposed in a generalized way, prevailing over local cultural differences.
The different nations that populated the region in successive periods maintained trade with other areas, exchanging species, jewels and silks from the east, for minerals or wood from the west. This international trade it depended on everyone’s recognition of units of weight, volume, area, and length.
The concept of currency as an element of exchange may have arisen in Mesopotamia, where metal bars with a mark indicating their weight were used.
Of all his titles of glory, Mesopotamia can take pride in being the country where writing was born. The Mesopotamian script, known as cuneiformwas made on clay tablets.
The symbols were inscribed by pressing a square-tipped awl into the fresh clay.however, at the beginning of sumerian writing (c. 3000 BC) the numerals were engraved with a different instrument, with rounded ends, one long and the other small, probably a piece of wood or cane, which was widely used due to its abundance.
Science in Mesopotamia | Math
The Sumerians used the sexagesimal system, which is based on the number 60but there were individual symbols for 36,000, 3,600, 600, 60, and 10. In the late Sumerian period (c. 2500-2000 BC), the numeralsas well as other written symbols, were made with a square instrument, so that they had to change the original rounded graphic representation for some numerals by the rhomboid shape.
In the Babylonian script, c. 2000 BC C.-75, we find a different system of representation of numbers, both the old sexagesimal system, still used in astronomy and mathematics, What the decimal system, used on a daily basis for commerce and accounting.
From the point of view of writing there was actually two numbering systems, the one that was used normally and that had special signs for each order of units and the “learned” system that he was the only one, that was used in mathematical texts, which was only sexagesimal and positional like our decimal system. And just like in this one, it It allowed great flexibility in the writing of numbers, which was highly favorable for the development of mathematics.
It is worth mentioning that with this system they could add and subtract, but not multiply and divide, but in order to do so they invented the first multiplication and division tables. Later, they also developed tables for square and cube roots.
The use of number 0 speaks of an important development in the mathematics abstract, something that not all ancient civilizations knew. His numerical notation was quite flexible, because the figures that appeared inside the same number could take value according to their position.
By very empirical methods they had managed to make extensive tables that should allow the solution of different operations today very simplified, such as multiplications and divisions, square and cube elevations, or make conversions according to the units of measurement used. They could even develop quadratic equations.
math school texts that have come down to us are of two types: tables and problemsthe former include tabulations of reciprocals, multiplications, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, the sums of squares and cubes necessary for the numerical solution of certain types of equations, exponential functions, coefficients giving numbers for practical computations, and numerous metrological calculations. giving the area of rectangles, circles and others.
The problem texts deal with Pythagorean numbers, cube roots, equations and practical problems, such as digging or widening canals, counting bricks used in construction, etc. We must point out the fact that most of the problem texts that have been discovered are of Akkadian origin, however, they must rely on prototype texts from the Sumerians, since almost all the technical terms used are Sumerian.
Science in Mesopotamia | The astronomy
the babylonians they sat the mathematical foundations, without which there can be no scientific astronomy, and began the long series of observations, without which further generalizations would have been impossible, using for this purpose the lofty constructions known as Ziggurats. They were familiar with a simple form of sundial, with a kind of clepsydra and used the poles, which were “a specifically Mesopotamian instrument that they used to know precisely the movements of the Sun”.
Astronomers were priests totally linked to political power. The observations were an act of religiosity, of reverence for the divinities that inhabited the sky, for this reason the care and rigorous methodology with which they kept their records is explained- The preservation of astronomical records was almost a sacred duty. Assyrian culture made rational speculation so developed in Greece by natural philosophers impossible in Babylon.
They studied the path that the Moon describes in the sky and detailed its cyclical movement with the objective of predict the fearsome eclipsesthose events that had the power to make the moon disappear, and that, according to their beliefs, they could make their entire empire disappear along with her. This is the practical importance of knowing how to accurately predict these astronomical events.
the babylonians they had no idea why these events were happening, they didn’t really care why, for their purposes they only needed to predict the moment in which the phenomenon would occur.
They also recorded methodologically the dates and the duration of earthquakes, locust infestations and other natural disasters in order to determine if there was in these events any repeated cycle or any analogy, as observed in the sky with the regularities of astronomical events so that diviners could predict them, just as they did they had learned to predict with lunar eclipses.
paths in the sky
But one of his most amazing achievements was, the invention of zodiac. For a long time and with absolute regularity, They observed the path that the Sun, the Moon and the planets traveled in the firmament, on the background of “fixed star” They divided that road into 12 equal parts of an extension of 30º each, calling them constellations.
Each constellation is a sign or house inhabited by animals with their own characteristics and power to influence people, their property and their lives.
That influence is determined by the position that the Sun, the Moon and the planets occupy at a certain moment on their way around the constellations, wrongly considered “fixed stars”so that If a person is born when the Sun “passes” through Aries, their life will be marked by the typical characteristics generated by that astronomical event.
Also, looking at the sky, elaborated numerous celestial catalogs, where the stars were listed with their relative distances.
But it was in order to obtain a determination and measurement of time that more important observations based on the movements of the Earth were gradually made. Moon and of the planets.
They related the Moon’s calendar with its phases and cycles with the course of the seasons, regulated according to the course of the Sunthe determination of the ecliptic (that is, the apparent orbit of the Sun).
Thus, they were able to determine the duration of the solar year four minutes apart; that is, the time required for the Sun (its apparent motion) to move along the ecliptic and return to a given point.
The Mesopotamians, They also established an exact relationship between the eclipses Moon and knew that these belonged to a system whose periodicity He was about 18 years old. In addition, they calculated the positions of Mercury for all times, whether or not their “appearances” were visible.
They represented the Land like a disk that had a large mountain massif in the center. Around the Earth there was an ocean, surrounded on the outside by a system of mountains that supported the celestial vault.
Science in Mesopotamia | Medicine
Established judgments about the value of the mesopotamian medicine many times they are determined by the fact that this discipline was sometimes confused with the techniques and practices of the Magic.
According to the traditionall disease was an effect of the divine will to hurt the sinner. Therefore, to find out what evil it was and identify the god that had produced it, they turned to the doctor, who expelled the demons that caused all the evil.
However, few diseases were considered of this type or of supernatural origin (for example, headaches, nervous diseases and paralysis). The doctors were able to observe the symptoms of most other diseases, formulate a diagnosis, predict the evolution, and administer a therapeutic solution based on dissolved or crushed mineral substances.
In these disciplines, the most developed by the Mesopotamiansthe efforts used to propose no more than effective results, without formulating overly abstract principles.
Whatever the phenomena that could concern man mesopotamianI was always convinced that the gods manifested themselves through these appearances and that it was these gods who caused the patient to suffer.
For this culture, the true science was made up of enormous divinatory complications that established the correspondences between the divine will and its symbolic expression in the world…