ABSTRACT
Ancient Greece lay at the intersection of three continents Asia, Africa and Europe. From the earliest part of the Mycenaean Era to the end of the Hellenistic period 2,000 years later, Greek civilization was largely based on the sea and the connections it provided to the lands and people of the region. Beginning in the 19th century, western historians routinely held that true science began with the Greeks, starting in the 6th century B.C. Central to this interpretation has been the idea that pretty much all earlier understanding of nature was deeply stained by religious supernaturalism. The enormous prestige granted the Greeks, their importance to medieval European science and to the Scientific Revolution. Greek science achievements were immense, by any measure. But they were neither wholly unique nor without considerable debt to scientific cultures that had spent millennia developing reliable knowledge about the physical world. The truth is that the Greeks came late in the world of ancient science.
