Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1891 — Science of the Ancients. [ARTICLE]

Science of the Ancients.

A\ e pride ourselves on living in an age of discovery and invention, anc pity our ancestors for being born too soon. Yet much of this is misplaced, says William. Alva. The real truth seems to be that the ancients knew about everything we know, only the knowledge was not generallv diffused. The learned man 2,000 or 3,000 years ago was so far superior to the majority that he was regarded as a wizard, and. prudently kept his learning to himself. In our schools at the present day we use “Euclid’s Elements of Geometry ” written by Euclid 2,200 years ago. Euclid also wrote on music and optics, antedating much which we think we discovered. The ancients were wonderful glassworkers and discovered a method of making it malleable, which we have not been able to do. They could spin glass into garments, dye it in every shade of the rainbow, and etch it with marvelous skill. Electricity derives its name from the Greek word for amber, electron, because Thales, about 600 B. C., discovered that amber, when rubbed, attracts light and dry bodies, and in the twelfth century the scientific priests of Etruria drew lightning from the clouds with iron rods. All the mechanicalppo r ers, the screw, lever, pulley, incline plane, wedge, wheel, and axle, were known to the ancients and used in everyday life. They were expert builders, as existing relics testify. Natural gas conveyed in bamboo tubes was utilized in China centuries ago, and one of the Mongolian authors writes of boxes which repeated the sound of voices of men long since dead —an approximation to the phonograph of Edison.

In medical skill the Oriental physicians of India practiced vaccination 1,000 years ago. Anaesthetics were known in the days of Homer, and the Chinese 2,009 years ago had'a preparation of hemp, known as “Una yo.” to deaden pain—something similar to the modern cocaine. In all that pertains to sculpture and painting, the ancients knew so much that their superiority has never been questioned, and their work remains as unsurpassed models. We may say with truth that much of our boasted light and mechanical wisdom is but the match put once again to the old candle of our ancestors. The old times w r ere days of war and oppression, and the inventor hid his invention for fear of being robbed. The vast majority had no money to buy a laboring device, even if they had brains to use it. It was not a practical age, and the knowledge, as well as wealth, was confined to the few. Nowadays an invention of value spreads over this world like a flash of gunpowder, and in the light of modern common sense the invention of the common friction match has doubtless done more for the good of mankind than all the discoveries of antiquity.