Sts Reviewer 101
Sts Reviewer 101
Sts Reviewer 101
⚫ STONE AGE
-Paleolithic
-Mesolithic
-Neolithic
PALEOLITHIC PERIOD
*sub periods
Lower Paleolithic:
➢ The Oldowan Industry: pebble tools
➢ The Abevillian Industry: Hand Axe
➢ The Acheulean industry: Refined Hand- Axe T
➢ he Clactonian Industry: flake Industry
Middle Paleolithic:
➢ The Mousterian and The Aterian industries
THE NEANDERTHALS
1. Discovered in Germany, found through out Asia, Africa, and Europe 2. Believed 1
million lived on Earth at 1 time 3. Skilled hunters, used traps (pitfalls) to catch larger
prey 4. 1st to bury their dead.
Upper Paleolithic:
➢ Regional stone tool industries (The Perigordian, The Aurignacian, The Solutrean,
and The Magdalenian of Europe
-SPEARTHROWER
-BOLA
-NETS FOR FISHING
MESOLITHIC PERIOD
GENERAL CHARACTERISTCS
1. Second period in Human history
2. Based on the increased technology of “microlith”
3. The new technology allowed for an increase in leather work and basketry.
4. Tools were combined with other tools and refined for hunting
5. All these new tools were allowed for the domestication of plants and animals.
TOOLS (MICROLITHS)- tiny flints that were glued/fixed to wooden shafts to make
arrows or spears for hunting.
AXE HEAD-The axe heads were fixed into a wooden handle and used like axes today
FLINT CORE- raw material from which other tools could be made.
SCRAPERS- used for cleaning animal skins in the process of making leather
BURINS- used for carving or engraving wood and bone, like a chisel
TOOLS
➢ (Hammers and Chisels)- Hammers were mostly used with chisels in woodworking,
though the difference between a hammer and a war club is really only in the use.
➢ ADZES- A larger adze also makes an effective tool for digging, removing roots and
generally preparing land for planting.
➢ AXE- make the clearing of land much simpler, allowing the spread of agriculture.
Axes also make effective weapons, and it is thought that many Neolithic axes were
meant to be used on enemies rather than trees.
➢ THREE SIDED BLADE POINTS- can be inserted deeper into a carcass, or run
along a bone, and works better for the fruits and vegetables of a settled agricultural
life
BROZE AGE
-Bronze Age is a time period when bronze replaced stone as the preferred material for
making tools and weapons. This led to improvements in agriculture and brought with it
changes in the way people live.
-Some groups of Bronze Age people developed early writing and other important
advances included irrigation, the wheel and the potter’s wheel.
-Different societies entered the Bronze Age at differing times. Some of the best known
Bronze Age civilizations include those of the ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mycenae, the
Indus Valley and the Shang Dynasty in China.
WHAT IS THE HISTORICAL BRONZE AGE?
-Bronze Age is a period of chronological time that represents the ability of ancient
cultures to be able to manufacture weapons and artifacts made from copper and its
alloy, bronze. It falls between the Stone Age and the Iron Age. The significance of this
location is the Stone Age represented a time where there was no ability to smelt natural
ores and remove their metal content. The Bronze Age represented a time where there
was an ability to smelt copper and tin, and an ability to combine the two to manufacture
bronze. The iron age represented a time when there was an ability to not only smelt
copper and tin, but also iron, from naturally occuring ores in the Earth. The Bronze age
represents a significant achievement in the history of technology in terms of weapons
and artifacts manufacture. The earliest known bronze weapons and artifacts are from
the the third millenia, B.C.E.
HOW WAS BROZE FIRST DISCOVERED?
1. About 2500BC people in the Middle East discovered how to use metal.
2. The first metal they used was Copper.
3. But copper was too soft.
4. Then they realised that if you added tin to copper it made a harder metal called
Bronze
➢ FULACHTA FIADH- FIELD KITCHEN. The Irish word "fulacht" denotes a pit used
for cooking. "Fiadh or Fia" which means "of the wild",
➢ BURIAL CUSTOMS- Cist Graves . A cist is a small stone-built coffin-like box or
ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead.
➢ WEDGE TOMB- Glantane East Wedge Tomb,
➢ -County Cork, Ireland
➢ STONE CIRCLE DROMBEG, CO CORK
CULTURE:
➢ Arts and Architecture
➢ Three types of Columns (D, I, C)
➢ Greek Philosophy (reason, ethics, natural law)
➢ Greek language and Alphabet
TIMELINE OF DECLINE
➢ Alexander the Great
➢ Greece Divided
➢ Hellenistic Greece
➢ The Rise of Rome
PRIMARY CAUSES
➢ Greece was divided into city-states. Constant warring between the city states
weakened Greece and made it difficult to unite against a common enemy like Rome.
➢ The poorer classes in Greece began to rebel against the aristocracy and the
wealthy.
➢ The city-states of Ancient Greece had different governments and were constantly
changing alliances.
➢ Greek colonies had a similar culture, but were not strong allies to Greece or any of
the Greek city-states.
FUN FACTS ABOUT ANCIENT GREECE
1. The Greeks often ate dinner while lying on their sides.
2. They invented the yo-yo which is considered the 2nd oldest toy in the world after the
doll.
3. About one third of the population of some city-states were slaves.
4. There were more city-states than just Sparta and Athens, Ancient Greece had around
100 city-states.
5. The Romans copied much of the Greek culture including their gods, architecture,
language, and even how they ate!
6. Pheidippides was a Greek hero who ran 150 miles from Marathon to Sparta to get
help against the Persians. After the Greeks won the war, he ran 25 miles from Marathon
to Athens to announce the victory. This is where the marathon running race gets its
name.
7. When law trials were held in the city of Athens, they used large juries of 500 citizens.
That's a lot more than the 12 we use today
ANCIENT GREECE INVENTIONS
⚫ WATER MILL:
USES:
➢ metal shaping
➢ agriculture
➢ milling.
ORIGIN: Perachora wheel (created in the third century BC in Greece, invented by the
contemporary Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium)
⚫ ODOMETER
USES:
➢ measures the distance traveled by a vehicle such as a bicycle or automobile.
➢ Mechanical slowly evolving into electro-mechanical with the rise of technology
ORIGIN:
➢ Vitruvius first described the odometer as being used for measuring distance around
27 BC
➢ Archimedes of Syracuse as its inventor sometime around the First Punic War.
➢ Some historians also attribute its invention to Heron of Alexandria.
➢ SPEEDOMETER VS. ODOMETER
➢ speedometer measures the speed at which you are traveling (how fast)
➢ odometer measures the distance that you have travelled (how far)
⚫ ALARM CLOCK
ORIGIN: The Hellenistic engineer and inventor Ctesibius (285–222 BC).
FUNCTION: Fitted clepsydras or water clock with a dial and pointer to indicate the time.
➢ Added an elaborate alarm system involving pebbles dropping on to a gong
➢ the blowing of a trumpet by forcing bell jars down into water and taking the
compressed air through a beating reed at pre-set times.
⚫ CARTOGRAPHY
ORIGIN: Anaximander was one of the first pioneer cartographers to create a map of the
world.
He included all inhabited areas of the world in his map.
The map appeared in tablet form and featured Ionia in the center. It was bounded on
the east by the Caspian Sea and stretched to the Pillars of Hercules in the west.
Middle Europe borders the map in the north while Ethiopia and the Nile feature at the
southern end.
USES: travel and navigation
⚫ OLYMPICS
PURPOSE:
➢ It was dedicated to the Olympian gods
➢ The game was for young men to show their physical qualities and to enforce the
relationship between the various Greek cities.
➢ Only Greek men were allowed to participate in the Olympics but not women
STAGES
➢ The Isthmian Games: two years at the Isthmus of Corinth
➢ Pythian Games: four years near Delphi
➢ Olympia: southwest of Greece took place every four years
⚫ BASIS OF GEOMETRY
PURPOSE:
➢ The Greeks insisted that geometric facts must be established by deductive
reasoning
ORIGIN:
➢ Thales of Miletus, regarded as the father of geometry, proposed a number of
axioms and rules that were truly based on reasoning (called mathematical truths) in
the sixth century BC
➢ Then Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes whose geometrical axioms and rules are
still taught in schools today.
⚫ EARLIEST PRACTICE OF MEDICINE
ORIGIN:
➢ Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician of the Classical age
➢ He was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine.
➢ father of Western medicine
➢ Hippocratic oath
➢ disease was a natural process; that the signs and symptoms of a disease were
caused by the natural reactions of the body to the disease process
⚫ CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY
DESCRIPTION:
➢ In Ancient Athens around 508 BC. Athens is regarded as the birthplace of
democracy. This transition from exploitation by the aristocracy to a political system
where all members of society have an equal share of formal political power had a
significant impact on future civilizations
⚫ DISCOVERIES IN MODERN SCIENCE
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The Ancient Greeks made some astounding discoveries in the fields of astronomy,
biology, and physics
➢ Many ancient Greek intellectuals excelled in mathematics, physics, and astronomy.
➢ Aristotle introduced the idea of the earth as a globe and classified animals to as the
father of zoology.
➢ Theophrastus was the first botanist.
➢ The Pythagoreans proposed the heliocentric hypothesis of the earth revolving
around the sun.
➢ Archimedes discovered that submerging a solid object in water would displace the
same amount of liquid as the object’s weight.
⚫ MODERN PHILOSOPHY
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Greek philosophers were also scientists who observed and studied the known world,
the earth, seas, mountains, solar system, planetary motion, and astral phenomena.
➢ Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were such influential philosophers
that their studies were used to teach subsequent ages of Romans and other
Western cultures.
ROME
LOCATION: Central Italy's TIBER RIVER. From North of Atlantic to the Persian Gulf.
POLITICAL: Lifespan of Ancient Rome (R, R, I) Characterized by slow and Steady
Expansion
Examples: Latium: Latin Language (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian)
Etruscans: Religion, Alphabet, gladiator combat.
FUN FACTS ABOUT ROMAN ENGINEERING
1. The Romans built over 400,000 km of roads including 29 highways that lead to the
city of Rome.
2. The Latin word for road is via. The plural of via is viae. Roman roads generally had
the name via in them, like the Via Appia or the Via Flaminia.
3. All the aqueducts in the city of Rome together totaled around 500 miles in length.
4. The Romans were among the first civilizations to harness water power.
5. It is estimated that the Romans built over 900 bridges in their empire.
ANCIENT ROME INVENTIONS
⚫ ARCHES
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Romans who first found a way to set an arch on top of two tall pedestals such that it
would span a walkway (and in many cases, even highways).
➢ These arches went on to become pivotal engineering constructions that laid the
foundation for many of the subsequent structural highlights of ancient Rome.
➢ Many bridges were built upon these arches, and so were the aqueducts, sewers,
amphitheaters, and even the great Colosseum.
⚫ GRID-BASED CITIES
DESCRIPTION:
➢ characterized by a rectangle or a square in a nearly perfect orthogonal layout of
streets. The two main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, would cross each
other at a right angle in the center of the grid.
➢ This grid was an ideal structure to organize the different components of a city such
as housing, theaters, and stores into particular blocks.
➢ To avoid the city becoming a monotonous series of blocks, the Romans
incorporated various items such as open theaters, public baths, markets, and other
recreational facilities within the city grid.
⚫ SEWERS AND SANITATION
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The Romans established a number of public baths, latrines, and an interlinked
sewage line binding them all together in a complex and efficient feat of engineering.
➢ Rome and other major cities had an extensive network of sewers and drains that
ran along the sides of the streets.
⚫ ROADS AND HIGHWAYS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Used for the rise of the Roman state, expanding all across the Roman Republic and
then the Roman Empire.
➢ In a period of about 700 years, they built about 55,000 miles of paved highways
around the Mediterranean basin and across Europe.
➢ It ensured the fast and efficient movement of goods, soldiers, and information
across the entire empire.
➢ Roman roads usually followed a straight route across the countryside, making travel
efficient and fast.
⚫ AQUEDUCTS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Used to transport water from rivers, springs, and reservoirs.
➢ The first Roman aqueducts were built around 312 BC
➢ It uses the downhill flow of water to supply the city centers.
➢ Once the water reached bigger cities like Rome, large reservoirs would then contain
it.
➢ The public baths, fountains, toilets, and private villas could then all tap into the
network and access the water.
⚫ ROMAN NUMERALS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ At present they are used in movie titles, books, and many other popular and cultural
spheres today shows the long-lasting legacy of this ancient numerical notation.
SURGERY TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
DESCRIPTION:
➢ invented procedures such as the cesarean section.
➢ During the reign of Augustus, a military medical corps was established to assist
injured soldiers in battle.
➢ They also invented tools like bronze scalpels, obstetric hooks, bone drills, and
forceps, and also the rather frighteningly named vaginal speculum.
➢ pioneered the earliest form of antiseptic surgery since they used to dip medical tools
in hot water to disinfect them before surgery.
⚫ JULIAN CALENDAR
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Instituted the 12 months of the year. It is clear from the name that the calendar was
named after Julius Caesar himself, and some Eastern orthodox churches use it to
calculate holidays even today.
NEWSPAPERS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Used for official announcements and developments.
➢ Rome was the first empire to establish a sophisticated system of circulating written
news
➢ It published the Acta Diurna which translates as “Daily Events.” It is comprised of
political news, trials, military campaigns, executions, major scandals, and other
similar subjects
➢ These handwritten news sheets were published daily and posted by the government
in the Roman Forum from the year 59 BC to somewhere around 222 AD.
➢ The Romans also published the Acta Senatus that recorded the proceedings in the
Roman Senate.
⚫ CONCRETE
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The Romans used to combine their cement with volcanic rock popularly known as
“tuff,” enabling the resulting concrete to endure possible chemical decay.
➢ It is not much of a surprise that many ancient Roman structures such as the
Pantheon, the Colosseum and the Roman Forum having been standing for more
than two millennia.
MAYAN CIVILIZATION
What country did they live in?
➢ The ancient Mayans lived in what is now known as southern Mexico and northern
Central America including Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Yucatán Peninsula and El
Salvador.
What did their buildings look like?
➢ Mayan pyramids were made of stone. The stone was carved to create a stair step
design. On the top of each pyramid was a shrine dedicated to a particular deity.
Rituals thought to influence the Gods were held in these shrines.
What did they eat?
➢ The Mayans grew a wide variety of crops, including corn (maize), Amaranth, manioc,
and sunflower seeds. These crops were grown in permanent raised fields, terraces,
forest gardens, and managed fallows. There was also harvesting of wild crops. The
Mayans ground cacao and mixed it with water to make the first chocolate.
What did they wear?
➢ When the king appeared in public, he wore white robes and a gold crown on top of
his head, decorated with Quetzal (a type of bird) plumes. During wartime, the
Mayans wore masks, while commanders wore robes made of silver and gold. Some
Mayan clothes were made of deer skin. Usually women made the clothes.
What did their writing look like?
➢ The Mayans wrote using a series of glyphs (symbolic pictures), which were painted
on ceramics, walls, or bark-paper codices (books), carved in wood or stone, or
molded in stucco. Each glyph represented a word. Mayans wrote numbers vertically.
What did they believe?
➢ The Mayans believed that time was cyclical, that is, it goes in circles. The Mayan
shaman interpreted these cycles by looking at the number relations of all their
calendars. If the interpretations of the shaman showed bad times ahead, human
sacrifices would be performed to make the gods happy
MAYAN INVENTIONS
⚫ ASTRONOMY
DESCRIPTION:
➢ recorded information on the development of the sun, the moon, Venus, and the
stars
➢ Calculated the days to be 365.2420 days (the true approximation is 365.2422).
⚫ BALL COURTS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Frequently played during religious celebrations, lasting for up to 20 days.
➢ The courts were situated at the foot of sanctuaries to pay tribute to the gods and
goddesses.
⚫ CHOCOLATE
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The first to discover the many uses of the cacao bean between 250 and 900 AD.
They mixed the cacao bean with pepper and cornmeal to make a fiery chocolate
drink.
⚫ HALLUCINOGEN
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Every occasion was feted in a grand way, and people with special powers known as
shamans conducted rituals for the gods.
➢ The shamans took stimulating drugs to induce trance-like states during these rituals
in order to make contact with the spiritual world.
➢ These substances affected the body in such a way that pain was not felt, and
energy was increased.
⚫ LAW AND ORDER
DESCRIPTION:
➢ laws were standardized across every state and were applicable to all levels of
society. If someone broke the law, they would go to court where punishments were
meted out according to the crime. Victims of theft were personally involved in the
process of justice.
⚫ MATHEMATICS
DESCRIPTION:
➢ used a base 20 or vigesimal numbering system and to some extent base 5.
➢ built the concept of 0 into their numbering system by 36 BC.
⚫ MAYAN ART
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The Maya created artwork from a variety of materials including wood, jade, obsidian,
and earthenware, and decorated stone landmarks, stucco, and walls.
➢ Woodcuts were common but only a few examples still survive. Stone sculptures are
much more common today, the most celebrated among them, from Copan and
Quirigua, are remarkable for their complexity of detail.
⚫ MAYAN CALENDAR
DESCRIPTION:
➢ It was made up of a year and a half with 20 days in each month, and five additional
days which were known as Wayeb and were considered to represent a dangerous
time.
⚫ MAYAN WRITING
DESCRIPTION:
➢ Glyphs are used to describe or represent a word, sound or even a syllable through
pictures or symbols. History suggests that the Maya used around 700 different
glyphs, and astonishingly 80 percent of the language is still understood today.
⚫ RUBBER
DESCRIPTION:
➢ The fundamental staples of the Mayan diet were maize, beans, and squashes.
Crops also included amaranth, bean stew peppers, sweet potatoes, manioc,
tobacco, chaya, cotton, cacao, vanilla, and of course latex.
➢ The Maya took the latex from trees and blended it with the juice from vines to make
elastic.
CHINESE CIVILIZATION
ANCIENT INDIA
-The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and
northwest India today, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity.
-Evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BCE.
Farming settlements began around 4000 BCE and around 3000 BCE there appeared
the first signs of urbanization.
-By 2600 BCE, dozens of towns and cities had been established, and between 2500
and 2000 BCE the Indus Valley Civilization was at its peak.
Why is it also called Harappan Civilization?
-The Indus Valley civilization is also known as the Harappan civilization because the
first site of the archaeological remains of the Indus Valley civilization was found at the
modern site of Harappa, West Punjab, Pakistan.
INDUS INVENTIONS
ANCIENT DENTISTRY
-According to historians, the Indus Valley Civilization has revealed
evidence of dentistry being practiced as far back as 7000 BC.
One dig site in Mehrgarh even showed evidence of healers curing
tooth disorders with bow drills.
-Dentistry was also practiced in Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome but
odontology and dental appliances arose only by Etruscans.
AYURVEDA
-Ayurveda is commonly referred as 'science of life' because
the Sanskrit meaning of Ayu is life and Veda is science or
knowledge. Ayurveda is also a person-centered medicine (PCM),
which deals with healthy lifestyle, health promotion and sustenance,
disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
-Ayurveda came from the Indian subcontinent, having been tracked
as far back as 5000 BC. Therapies generally include complex
herbal compounds, minerals and metal substances.
SANITATION
CATARACT SURGERY
-Indian physicians were known to practice a different kind of
cataract surgery that known to the Greeks in about 200 BC.
-It was performed with a tool called the Jabamukhi Salaka, a
curved needle used to loosen the lens and push the cataract out
of the field of vision.
-Greek scientists of the time travelled to India to see these surgeries,
and the technique was even introduced into China from our country.
SPINNING WHEEL
-This mechanized method of spinning yarn was invented
in India, between 500 and 1000 AD, eventually replacing
hand spinning across the world. The Charkha, as it came
to be called, eventually went on to become the symbol of
India’s independence movement.
ARAB CIVILIZATION
LOCATION
-The Arabian culture developed in Arabia, a peninsula situated between the Red Sea
and the Persian Gulf, in southwestern Asia. Due to its arid climate, Arabia is a desert
where agriculture is only possible in some coastal locations and inner oases.
-The Arabian Peninsula was isolated from the great historical centers until the 7th
century. It was merely a place where caravans would pass through from the East
bringing spices, silks, and other goods.
-The Arab world of the seventh to the thirteenth centuries was a great cosmopolitan
civilization.
-It was an enormous unifying enterprise, one which joined the peoples of Spain and
North Africa in the west with the peoples of the ancient lands of Egypt, Syria and
Mesopotamia in the east.
-It was the rapid expansion of Islam that initially brought this empire together.
-Alliances were made, trade routes were opened, lands and peoples were welded into a
new force. Islam provided the dynamism, but it was the Arabic language, which
provided the bond that held it together.
-Islam spread to lands more distant than North Africa and the Fertile Crescent, but it
was in this area that a common Arab culture emerged.
ARAB INVENTIONS
SURGERY
-Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published
a 1,500-page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe
as a medical reference for the next 500 years.
-Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat
gut to stitch wounds -- beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to
remove sutures.
-He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the
first pair of forceps.
COFFEE
-Coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century.
-In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late
nights of devotion.
-Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon
caught on around the empire.
-By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century
did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.
FLYING MACHINE
-Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt
to construct a flying machine and fly.
-In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly
resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba
in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to
the ground and partially breaking his back.
-His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed
Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later.
UNIVERSITY
-In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the
first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco.
-Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together
the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University.
-Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes
the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the
Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire
young Muslim women around the world today.
ALGEBRA
-The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian
mathematician's famous 9th century treatise
"Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which
translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing."
-Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic
order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers
and geometrical magnitudes.
-The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first
to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.
OPTICS
-Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans
see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye,
dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted
from the eye itself.
-This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura
phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due
to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.
MUSIC
-These artists, al-Kindi in particular, used musical notation:
the system of writing down music.
-They also named the notes of a musical scale with syllables instead
of letters, called solmization.
-These syllables make up the basic scale in music today and we are all
familiar with doh, ray, me, far, so, la, tee. The Arabic alphabet for these
notes is Dal, Ra, Mim, Fa, Sad, Lam, Sin. The phonetic similarity between
today’s scale and the Arabic alphabet used in the 9th century is astonishing.
Muslims were also developing musical instruments.
TOOTHBRUSH
-The Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in
around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and
freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.
CAMERA
-Ibn al-Haitham revolutionized optics, taking the subject from
one being discussed philosophically to an actual science based
on experiments.
-He rejected the Greek idea that an invisible light emitting from
the eye caused sight, and instead rightly stated that vision was
caused by light reflecting off an object and entering the eye.
-By using a dark room with a pinhole on one side and a white sheet
on the other, he provided the evidence for his theory.
-Light came through the hole and projected an inverted image of the
objects outside the room on the sheet opposite.
-He called this the “qamara”. It was the world’s first camera obscura.
HOSPITALS
-The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn
Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo.
-Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed
it -- a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all
who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the
Muslim world.