Abstract
The second epoch in our sequence is the Classical Period of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This period spans about 1200 years, from the eighth century bce (the founding of Rome took place in 753 bce) up to the fifth century ce (the fall of the Western Roman Empire occurred in 476 ce). You will notice that there is a gap from the end of prehistory to the start of this period. There were, of course, many inventions in this gap: the Egyptians invented the spoked-wheel chariot and the saw; the Chinese invented the umbrella and inoculation; the Minoans invented the aqueduct; East Africans invented steel. I omitted this pre-Classical Era only because space did not permit.
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Notes
- 1.
This copper alloy Roman military buckle was found in Britain, and it is thought to date from the late fourth or early fifth century ce. Image Credit: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum, Creative Commons 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode.
- 2.
The surviving pieces of the Antikythera Mechanism are held in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Image Credit: Tilemahos Efthimiadis. Original image in colour. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en.
- 3.
This is the period after the death of Alexander the Great (323 bce) and the emergence of the Roman Empire (after the Battle of Actium in 31 bce).
- 4.
The vernal equinox is the date when the Sun crosses the equator, moving north. This traditionally marks the beginning of Spring in the northern hemisphere and is the date where night and day are equal in length.
- 5.
As many readers may know, alchemists were, in effect, early chemists. Alchemists practised alchemy, and that word derives from a Greek term meaning “art of transmuting metals”. The alchemists were renowned for trying to change—transmute—base metals into gold. While they do not appear to have succeeded, they did develop many tools and techniques important in the science of chemistry.
- 6.
If you did science at high school, you may well have conducted an experiment to observe this. You heat water in a flask and monitor its temperature. The more you heat it, the more the temperature rises. However, at 100 °C, the temperature stops rising, even though you are continuing to heat the water. The heat you are adding is now not being used to raise the water’s temperature, but instead is freeing the water molecules from their liquid state and giving them enough energy to allow them to boil away. Provided you don’t boil away all of the water in the flask, its temperature will remain steady, giving you a stable, controllable heat source.
- 7.
Image Credit: From Coelum philosophorum, seu De secretis naturae liber/ Philippo Ulstadio Patricio nierebergensi authore by Philippus Ulstadius. Argentorati: Arte et impensa Joannis Grienynger, 1528. Science History Institute, Philadelphia. Public Domain.
- 8.
The precursor to natural science, i.e. the study of nature and the physical world.
- 9.
Fans of Harry Potter will be familiar with this.
- 10.
Distillation involves purifying a liquid through a process of heating and cooling and uses specially designed apparatus to achieve the necessary stages.
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Cropley, D.H. (2020). The Classical Period (753 bce to 476 ce): Creative Civilisations. In: Femina Problematis Solvendis—Problem solving Woman. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3967-1_4
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