HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Science exist because humans have a natural curiosity and an ability to organize and record things. Curiosity is a characteristic shown by many other animals, but organizing and recording knowledge is a skill demonstrated by humans alone.

During prehistoric times, humans recorded information in a rudimentary way. They made paintings on the wall of caves, and they also carved numerical records on bones or stones. They may also have used other ways of recording numerical fipures, such as making knots in leather cords, but because these records were perishable no traces of them remain. But with the invention of writing about 6,000 years ago, a new and much more flexible system of recording knowledge appeared.

Because clay is durable, many of these ancient tablets still survive. They show that when writing first appeared, the Mesopotamians already had a basic knowledge of mathemathics, astronomy, and chemistry and that they used symptom to identify increasingly sophisticated