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by ChrisDG on April 4th, 2007
The ancient Eqyptians for me stand out. They pioneered the art of writing, using papyrus reeds to contruct a rudimentary form of parchment to write on and the system of hieroglyphs used forms the world's first known writing system.
They built amazing buildings with very distinctive and ornate architecture and decoration. They coupled the architecture of their buildings with amazing mathematical skills that surpass many buildings even today, depsite being built in an age without calculators or even mass produced rulers. For example, the Great Pyramid of Giza is an immense building, thirty times larger than the Empire State buulding, yet the legnths of the sides of the bases deviate by just 0.0009%. Furthermore, they were aware of the value of pi - the total length of the base sides equal the circumference of a circle that could be drawn if the height was used as the radius. This length is also almost exactly equal to half a minute of a geographical arc at the equator, suggesting that they knew not only that the Earth was a sphere, but that they had calculated the radius of the Earth to 0.004%.
The sides of the pyramid are actually concave, not straight, and exactly match the curvature of the Earth. And finally, the sides of the Great Pyramid are aligned to within 0.058 degrees with north, south, east and west. This wasn't based on a rudimentary compass either, because they face in the directions towards the true poles, not the magnetic poles, displaying an amazing amount of knowledge about this planet.
Their religious culture fascinates people the world over to this day, despite it's use being thousands of years ago and has become for the most part obsolete.
How many years did the punic wars last?
by Answerbag Staff on April 20th, 2011
| 1 person likes this
How was Arabian bows , arrows and swords in the past? How many kind of arrows did they have?
by New Elian on December 3rd, 2011
| 1 person likes this
Who was the ruler from Babylon who created a code of conduct?
by Answerbag Staff on May 28th, 2010
| 1 person likes this
How many years did the punic wars last?
by Answerbag Staff on May 18th, 2010
| 1 person likes this
Do you still name all your files with underscores because you like to impress techies?
by Mister_Bromide on December 8th, 2011
| 1 person likes this
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Comments
I like answers that teach stuff. This time I knew most of it but you picked out the coolest details. ++++
by overeducated on August 2nd, 2009
Great.++
by royal77 says hello friend on August 2nd, 2009