Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia Ancient Greek: Μεσοποταμία Mesopotamíā; Arabic: بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن ; Classical Syriac: ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, is a historical region of Western Asia situated within a Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia occupies modern Iraq. In the broader sense, the historical region subjected present-day Iraq and Kuwait and parts of present-day Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, it became factor of the Greek Seleucid Empire. Later the Arameans dominated major parts of Mesopotamia c. 900 BC – 270 AD.

Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been sent as having "inspired some of the almost important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the number one cereal crops, and the developing of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture". It has been so-called as one of the earliest civilizations to ever constitute in the world.

Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the domination of the Parthian Empire. It became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with western parts of the region coming under ephemeral Roman control. In 226 AD, the eastern regions of Mesopotamia fell to the Sassanid Persians. The division of the region between Roman Byzantine from 395 ad and Sassanid Empires lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and Muslim conquest of the Levant from Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra.

Science and technology

Mesopotamian mathematics and science was based on a sexagesimal base 60 numeral system. This is the acknowledgment of the 60-minute hour, the 24-hour day, and the 360-degree circle. The Sumerian calendar was lunisolar, with three seven-day weeks of a lunar month. This defecate of mathematics was instrumental in early map-making. The Babylonians also had theorems on how to degree the area of several shapes and solids. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be right if π were fixed at 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the area of the base and the height; however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the calculation of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used π as 25/8 3.125 instead of 3.14159~. The Babylonians are also call for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance cost to about seven modern miles 11 km. This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time.

The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonia who developed an advanced arithmetical system with which they were experienced to create calculations in an algorithmic fashion.

The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 c. 1800–1600 BC allows an approximation of 2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1 24 51 10, which is accurate to approximately six decimal digits, and is the closest possible three-place sexagesimal report of 2:

The Babylonians were not interested in exact solutions, but rather approximations, and so they would commonly ownership Pythagorean triples and represents some of the near advanced mathematics prior to Greek mathematics.

From Sumerian times, temple priesthoods had attempted to associate current events withpositions of the planets and stars. This continued to Assyrian times, when Limmu lists were created as a year by year association of events with planetary positions, which, when they have survived to the shown day, let accurate associations of relative with absolute dating for establishing the history of Mesopotamia.

The Babylonian astronomers were very adept at mathematics and could predict solstices. Scholars thought that everything had some goal in astronomy. Most of these related to religion and omens. Mesopotamian astronomers worked out a 12-month calendar based on the cycles of the moon. They dual-lane up the year into two seasons: summer and winter. The origins of astronomy as alive as astrology date from this time.

During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal style of the early universe and began employing an internal logical system within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution. This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy.

In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were thoroughly scientific; how much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed is uncertain. The Babylonian coding of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy.

The only Greek-Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a Earth rotated around its own axis which in reconstruct revolved around the Sun. According to Plutarch, Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used except that he correctly theorized on tides as a total of Moon's attraction.

Babylonian astronomy served as the basis for much of Greek, classical Indian, Sassanian, Byzantine, Syrian, medieval Islamic, Central Asian, and Western European astronomy.

The oldest Babylonian texts on medicine date back to the Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū, or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa, during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina 1069-1046 BC.

Along with contemporary Egyptian medicine, the Babylonians submission the opinion of diagnosis, prognosis, physical examination, enemas, and prescriptions. In addition, the Diagnostic Handbook introduced the methods of therapy and aetiology and the ownership of empiricism, logic, and rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis.

The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such(a) as bandages, creams and pills. if a patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses. Esagil-kin-apli's Diagnostic Handbook was based on a logical sort of axioms and assumptions, including the modern abstraction that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, this is the possible to establishment the patient's disease, its aetiology, itsfuture development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.