STS Unit 1
STS Unit 1
STS Unit 1
Historical Antecedents
of Scienceand
Technology
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CHAPTER I
KEY POINTS
Three-age system- The system of classifying pre historic artifacts according to their
successive stages of technological development, divided into the Stone, Bronze and Iron
Age.
Scientific Revolution- is a drastic change in scientific thought that took place during the
16th and 17th centuries.
Industrial Revolution- the rapid development of industry that occurred in Britain in the late
18th and 19th centuries, brought about by the introduction of machinery. It was
characterized by the use of steam power, the growth of factories, and the mass production
of manufactured goods.
Information Age- the modern age regarded as a time in which information has become a
commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially
through the use of computer technology.
As defined by Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, Stone Age is the period of weapons made
out of stone, bones, woods and other materials. Pre-historic cultural stage, or level of human
development, characterized by the creation and use of stone tools. John Lubbock divided the
Stone Age into Palaeolithic Period and the Neolitihic Period, presenting the evolution of tools
from chip to polish. Transitional period suggested by De Mortillet in 1883, and the Late
Palaeolithic Period and early Neolitihic Period was called Neolithic Period by John Allen Brown.
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1. Palaeolithic (“Old Stone”) Period
The Palaeolithic period is the earliest amount of human development and therefore the
longest section of mankind's history. It's roughly commensurate with the Pleistocene earth
science epoch, starting concerning a pair of million years past and ending in varied places
between 40,000 and 10,000 years past, once it had been succeeded by the Mesolithic Period.
Out a the foremost outstanding feature of the Palaeolithic Period was the evolution of the
human species from an ape-like creature (Homo Sapiens), or close to human, to true man.
This development was extremely slow and continued through the three ordered
divisions of the Period, the Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic.The foremost abundant
remains of Palaeolithic cultures are a spread of stone tools whose distinct characteristics give
the idea for a system of classification containing many tool creating traditions or industries.
The oldest recognizable tools created by members of the family of man are
straightforward stone choppers, like those discovered at Olduvai Gorge in African nation.These
tools could revamp one million years past by Australopithecus, ancestors of modern humans.
Broken or flake stones known as neoliths are thought-about the earliest tools, however it's not
possible to tell apart synthetic from naturally made modifications in such stones. Stone tools of
this era are of the core sort, created by chip the stone to create an innovative, or of the flake
sort, designed from fragments affected off a stone. Hand axes were the standard tool of those
early hunters and food-gatherers.
The Middle Palaeolithic generally associated with Neanderthal, associate early form of
humans, living between 100,000 and 40,000 years past.Neanderthal remains are generally
found in caves with proof of the utilization of fireplace.Neanderthals were hunters, and their
cultural remains, though unearthed primarily in Europe, are found jointly in North Africa,
Palestine, and Stone tools of this era are of the flake types, and bone implements, like needles,
furs and skins were used as body. Since the dead were painted before burial, a variety of
primitive religion may practice during this period.
In this period, range of man like Homo sapiens man and Grimaldi man dominated. The
beginnings of communal searching and intensive fishing are found here, as is that the initial
conclusive proof of belief systems centering on magic and therefore the Pit houses, the primary
shelters created by humans, were built, stitched covering was worn, and sculpture and painting
originated.Tools were of nice selection, together with flint and volcanic glass blades and
projectile points
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2. Mesolithic (“Middle Stone”) Period
Known as the transitional period between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Period, many
important social and technological advances befell throughout this era. Flint technology
developed to the purpose wherever little, nearly standardized, geometrically formed items may
well be created. The fundamental tool and implement inventory of period man continued to be
used, albeit with a rise within the producing of bone and wood things. The introduction of the
bow and arrow and also the domestication of the animals rectifier to changes in searching
practices, notably the smaller size of searching.
The Neolithic Period was characterized by the event of agriculture and pottery
producing, the institution of inactive agriculturally primarily based settlements, the employment
of sharpening techniques for stone tools, the emergence of progressively complicated systems
of spiritual belief, and therefore the growth of social group social orders. This epoch was
conjointly marked by the existence of a larger diversity of cultures than in either the Palaeolithic
amount or Mesolithic amount.
Wide domestication of animals (e.g. sheep, pigs, goats, etc.) and plants (e.g. rice, corns, beans,
etc.) is characterized. This period is mark by the introduction of metal tools to use in these
cultures.
Bronze Age, amount within the development of technology once metals were initial
used frequently in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, Associate in
Nursing alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early amount is typically
known as the Copper Age.The earliest use of forged metal will be deduced from clay models of
weapons; casting was definitely established within the Mideast by 3500 before Christ Following
the Neolithic Period, the event of a science business coincided with the increase The organized
operations of mining, smelting, and casting beyond any doubt needed the specialization of labor
and therefore the production of surplus food to support a category of artisans, whereas the
explore for raw materials stirred the exploration and organizations of latest territories.
Iron Ages
Iron Age is the final technological and cultural stage within the Stone–Bronze–Iron Age
sequence. The date of the complete Iron Age, within which this metal for the foremost half
replaced bronze in implements and weapons, varied geographically, starting within the
geographic region and southeastern Europe concerning 1200 BCE however in China not till
about 600 BCE. Though within the geographic region iron had restricted use as a scarce and
valuable as early as 3000 BCE, there's no indication that individuals at that point recognized its
superior qualities over those of bronze.
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Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, the medieval Period of European history between the autumn of the Roman
Empire and also the starting of the Renaissance, are generally mentioned because the "Dark
Ages." it's divided into 2 smaller ages, Dark and High Middle Ages.
Pre-Columbian America
The Pre-Columbian America Civilization has three groups of people: The Incas, Mayans, and
Aztecs.
Mayans
Aztecs
Incas
The Incas farmed the highlands, wherever special care had to be taken to forestall
eroding on the hillsides. They practiced terraced farming, carving flat plots out of the incline in
an exceedingly stair step pattern. This greatly enlarged the quantity of land that was on the
market for cultivation, and helped stop the soil from running off thanks to wind and rain. They
extensively utilized subtle irrigation strategies. Mistreatment these techniques, mountain chain
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farmers cultivated potatoes. Corn was a vital crop during this region further as in geographical
area.
The heliocentric model proposes the Sun because the center of the system, instead of
Earth, as was believed consistent with the geocentric model. This development helped United
States of America meet up with to the $64000 image of our system and also the universe, and it
had been upon this that our bigger understanding of natural philosophy was developed.
In astronomy, Kepler's laws give a description of the motion of planets around the Sun.
This states that all planets revolve around the sun is elliptical, not circular, orbits, and that closer
planets to the sun move faster than the others.
This law involves the discovery of the relations among velocity, distance, law of inertia and
acceleration using a new scientific approach.
Newton’s laws of motion, relations between the forces functioning on a body and
therefore the motion of the body, 1st developed by English scientist and mathematician Sir
Mathematician.
Each object move the state of rest on uniform motion within the straight lines unless it's
compelled to vary that state by forces affected on that.
The second law states that the acceleration of associate degree object relies upon 2 variables
force acting upon the item and therefore the mass of the object.
This states that for every action, there is an equal and an opposite reaction.
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Law of Universal Gravitation (by Isaac Newton)
States that for any combine of objects, every object attracts the opposite object with a
force proportional to the merchandise of their lots and reciprocally proportional to the square
of the gap between the centers of mass of the objects.
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began within the eighteenth century, once agricultural
societies became additional industrial and concrete. The continental railroad, the machine,
electricity and different inventions for good modified society.
During this era science created nice progress. Chemist (1766-1844) printed his atomic
theory in 1808. Per the speculation matter is created of little, indiscrete particles. Dalton
conjointly same that atoms of various parts had different weight. Dalton conjointly studied
congenital abnormality.
In 1827 the German chemist Friedrich Wohler (1800-1882) isolated Al. In 1828 he made
carbamide, Associate in nursing chemical compound from inorganic chemicals. A Russian, Dmitri
Mendeleev (1834-1907) developed the table, that organized all the best-known parts per their
mass.
We finish the twentieth century with spaceships, computers, cell phones, and also the wireless
net all being technologies we are able to view as granted.
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Is the idea that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of
this current era in human civilization. Johannes Gutenberg is a German craftsman and inventor
who originated a method of printing from movable type.
In the world before the introduction of the machine it absolutely was out of the
question to distribute precise replicable info to an outsized variety of individuals. Information
may be captured, within the grueling and time overwhelming method of hand-produced books,
scrolls or tablets, however access to the current info was restricted to a tiny low elite.
Transmission {of knowledge of information thenceforth had to consider strictly spoken channels
and therefore sort of information that was current was therefore the story, this being the shape
best tailored to extant the method of ‘Chinese whispers’ that mass communication concerned.
Institutional development was restricted and society cared-for be dominated by faith and social
organization political systems, establishments that were well tailored to the utilization of
narrative or hierarchy as suggests that of propagation or management.
It is wide acknowledged that the introduction of the press was revolutionary in its
impact. It had been attributable as being the catalyst for the Renaissance, the event of science
and making the pressures that forced power to slide from the hands of monarchs and spiritual
orders and become shared across a way broader section of However, there's a temptation to
check all of those shifts as history and fail to see the extent to that, what could be referred to as
the Johannes Gutenberg principle, continues to play a lively role within the form and operation
of society and establishments.
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The Post-Gutenberg World
The emergence of the web and also the World Wide internet within the Nineteen
Nineties was at the start hailed by several as introduction new democratic age, driven by
abundant bigger access to info. In reality, whereas the web had a dramatic impact, the
revolutionary shifts expected failed to occur. This can be as a result of, in its earliest days, the
globe Wide internet still conformed to the Gutenberg principle. Building an internet web site,
accessing server area and business enterprise info needed each cash and technical experience
and was thus still the preserve of establishments instead of people. The fact of abundant bigger
access to info wasn't matched by a greater ability to publish it.
Speed of access conjointly restricted the power of the web to be a channel for all sorts
of media, limiting its use to text primarily based and transactional forms. As a result, abundant
of the initial investment within the internet went into union and making institutional
opportunities, with e-commerce rising because the major new web-based phenomena.
With the rise of the digital age, people are more connected than they ever have been.
Communication is fast and fluid. Most of the U.S. population owns some form of a smart phone.
Computers.
Internet.
The internet may be a globally connected network system that uses TCP/IP to transmit
knowledge via numerous styles of media. The net may be a network of world exchanges – as
well as non-public, public, business, educational and government networks.
In 1989, once Berners-Lee initial projected the concept that might become the globe Wide
net, exciting things were happening within the realm of computing. A replacement set of
standards known as TCP/IP were permitting antecedently isolated pc networks to speak to every
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different. These standards had become fashionable, notably within the Yankee scientific
community. By 1989, TCP/IP was conjointly simply commencing to be adopted by industrial
service suppliers like CompuServe.
Facebook.
Facebook may be a free social networking internet platform that promotes and facilitates
interaction between friends, family and colleagues. Facebook was based in 2004 by Mark
Zuckerberg and a number of other university classmates. Facebook may be a standard free
social networking web site that enables registered users to make profiles, transfer photos and
video, send messages and confine bit with friends, family and colleagues. The site, that is
obtainable in thirty-seven totally different languages.
Twitter.
Twitter could be a free social networking microblogging service that enables registered
members to broadcast short posts referred to as tweets. Twitter members will broadcast
tweets and follow alternative users' tweets by victimization multiple platforms and devices.
Twitter passed off out as a results of each a perceived would like and temporal arrangement.
Smartphones were comparatively new once Twitter was initial planned of by creator Jack
Dorsey, United Nations agency wished to use his mobile phone to send text messages to a
service and have the message distributed to any or all his friends. At the time, most of Dorsey's
friend's didn't have text-enabled cell phones and spent loads of your time on their home
computers. Twitter was born of a desire to change text electronic messaging to own a cross-
platform capability, work on phone, computers, and alternative devices.
Messenger.
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Permits users to attach, chat, and continue to this point in additional ways that than simply
causation straightforward text messages and emoji’s to 1 another: there are choices to possess
cluster chats, the flexibility to form 'phone' calls, probabilities to play video games.
YouTube.
YouTube could be a standard video sharing web site wherever registered users will transfer
and share videos with anyone ready to access the location. These videos can even be embedded
and shared on different sites. YouTube was developed by former PayPal workers in 2005 and
was non-heritable by Google in 2006. It had a profound impact on media and advertising.
Google.
One in all the latest social networks, launched by Google in Gregorian calendar month
twenty-eight, 2011. The server presents itself as a service which will assist you keep involved
together with your friends and acquaintances, and see new fascinating individuals. Once you
may register to Google+, you'll be able to fill in your personal info, transfer your profile image,
add exposure albums from Google Picasa internet Albums, and connect your Google+ profile
together with your Twitter profile and far a lot Moreover, you'll be able to communicate either
simply with one in all your friends, teams of individuals, otherwise you will speak to the “whole
world.” betting on your privacy settings you'll be able to permit anyone to ascertain your
standing updates or comments. You furthermore may have the choice of reading standing
updates of others albeit they're not one in all your friends.
Instagram.
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CHAPTER I
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II. Identification
___________________3. States that for any combine of objects, every object attracts the
opposite object with a force proportional to the merchandise of their lots and reciprocally
proportional to the square of the gap between the centers of mass of the objects.
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CHAPTER II
KEY POINTS
Colonization-The action or process of settling among and establishing control over the
indigenous people of an area.
Barangay- Type of early Filipino settlement, the word is derived from balangay, the name
for the sailboats that originally brought settlers of Malay stock to the Philippines from
Borneo.
Pre-Colonial Period
The spreading and development of science and technology within the Philippines
throughout the pre-colonization was slow pacing as a result of the various hindrances that the
Philippine had a bit like the Scattered land areas, totally different dialects that shows no unity,
less interaction of some areas to Philippines to foreign trade, not open minded to new ideas in
terms of fishing and agriculture, and basic cognitive process an excessive amount of irrational.
Scattered Land Areas- Trade and business before are too vivid in areas close to the open ocean
however not like those places within the Philippines that are in distant places the spreading of
technology in terms of trade and industry wasn't thus visible. Therefore, the methodology of
trade different places within the Philippines was too primitive.
Differences in Dialects- if the Filipinos before had a tough time in commerce with different
nationalities as a result of roadblock, we have a tendency to conjointly Filipinos tend to own
lesser development in trade and business within our country as a result of our variations in
dialects.
Less Interaction to different Countries- not like China, European nation and Europe they need an
interaction with different countries that's why the event is speedy and too vivid. not like within
the Philippines, we have a tendency to are simply self-satisfied with the resources we had that's
why we tend to forget to explore new things and adopt new ideas which ends up to "late
technology development".
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Not Open Minded in several Techniques in Fishing and Agriculture- Filipinos before are self-
satisfied with the Primitive manner of fishing and in agriculture. Once the Spaniards inhabited
the Philippines that's the sole time Filipinos develop the natural resources. That's one in all the
rationale why the Spaniards referred to as the Filipino as "indio".
Spanish colonial motives weren't, however, strictly industrial. The Spanish initially
viewed the Philippines as a stepping-stone to the material resource of the archipelago (Spice
Islands), but, even once the Portuguese and Dutch had foreclosed that chance, the Spanish still
maintained their presence within the dry land.
The Portuguese navigator and soul FernaoMagalhaes headed the primary Spanish foray
to the Philippines once he created landfall on Cebu in March 1521; a brief time later he met an
untimely death on the close island of once King Prince Philip II (for whom the islands are
named) had sent 3 any expeditions that resulted in disaster, he sent out Miguel López Diamond
State Legazpi, World Health Organization established the primary permanent Spanish
settlement, in Cebu, The Spanish town of Manila was supported in 1571, and by the tip of the
sixteenth century most of the coastal and lowland areas from island to northern Mindanao were
below Friars marched with troopers and shortly accomplished the nominal conversion to
Catholicism of all the native folks below Spanish administration however the Muslims of
Mindanao and Sulu, whom the Spanish known as Moros, were ne'er utterly subdued by Spain.
American Regime
The history of the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 describes the period of American
colonization of the Philippines. It began with the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April
1898, when the Philippines was still a colony of the Spanish East Indies , and concluded when
the United States formally recognised the independence of the Republic of the Philippines on
July 4, 1946.Inflation and shortages of food and different merchandise. Numerous trade and
security problems with the us additionally remained to be settled before July 4. The Allied
leaders needed to purge officers UN agency collaborated with the Japanese throughout the war
and to deny them the proper to select the primary post-war Commonwealth President Osmeña,
however, countered that every case ought to be tried on its own deserves. The palmy political
party presidential candidate, Manuel Roxas, was among those collaborationists. Independence
from the us came on Fourth of July, 1946, and Roxas was sworn in because the 1st president.
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CHAPTER III
INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS THAT DEFINED SOCIETY
Objectives
5. Compare the different civilizations and identify their greatest contributions to the
society
Key Concepts
Intellectual Revolution
The term "Intellectual Revolution" is used to refer to Greek speculation about the "nature" in
the period before Socrates (roughly 600 to 400 BCE). Hence, the alternative, technical terms are
"pre Socratic" or "non-theological" or "first philosophy". Bear in mind that the "philosophy" in
question has little to do with ethics, and much more to do with what we would call physics or
logic.
There are three characteristic features of this form of speculation. First, the world is a natural
whole (that is, supernatural forces do not make things 'happen'). Second, there is a natural
'order' (that is, there are 'laws of nature'). Third, humans can 'discover' those laws. I will develop
these concepts more fully in class.
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Copernican
Born on Feb. 19, 1473, in Toruń, Poland, MikolajKopernik (Copernicus is the Latinized
form of his name) traveled to Italy at the age of 18 to attend college, where he was supposed to
study the laws and regulations of the Catholic Church and return home to become a canon.
However, he spent most of his time studying mathematics and astronomy.
In the early 1500s, when virtually everyone believed Earth was the center of the
universe, Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus proposed that the planets instead revolved
around the sun. Although his model wasn't completely correct, it formed a strong foundation for
future scientists to build on and improve mankind's understanding of the motion of heavenly
bodies
Darwinian
The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the
Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of
changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better
adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring. Evolution by natural
selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by
evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics
and developmental biology. The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of
human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "All life on Earth is
connected and related to each other," and this diversity of life is a product of "modifications of
populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over
others," he said. More simply put, the theory can be described as "descent with modification,"
said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National
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Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins.
The theory is sometimes described as "Survival of the fittest," but that can be misleading,
Pobiner said. Here, "fitness" refers not to an organism's strength or athletic ability, but rather
the ability to survive and reproduce.(Than, 2018)
Freudian
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result
of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. This
theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of personality, places great emphasis on the role of
unconscious psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and personality. Dynamic interactions
among these fundamental parts of the mind are thought to progress through five distinct
psychosexual stages of development. Over the last century, however, Freud’s ideas have since
been met with criticism, in part because of his singular focus on sexuality as the main driver of
human personality development.
According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among what he proposed as
the three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. Conflicts
among these three structures, and our efforts to find balance among what each of them
“desires,” determines how we behave and approach the world. What balance we strike in any
given situation determines how we will resolve the conflict between two overarching behavioral
tendencies: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives vs. our socialized internal
control over those drives.
Id. The id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with instant gratification of
basic physical needs and urges. It operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious
thought). For example, if your id walked past a stranger eating ice cream, it would most likely
take the ice cream for itself. It doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take something belonging
to someone else; it would care only that you wanted the ice cream
Superego. The superego is concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many
people call their ” conscience ” or their “moral compass.” It develops as a child learns what their
culture considers right and wrong. If your superego walked past the same stranger, it would not
take their ice cream because it would know that that would be rude. However, if both your
id and your superego were involved, and your id was strong enough to override your superego’s
concern, you would still take the ice cream, but afterward you would most likely feel guilt and
shame over your actions.
Ego. In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego, the ego is the rational, pragmatic
part of our personality. It is less primitive than the id and is partly conscious and partly
unconscious. It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its job is to balance the demands
of the id and superego in the practical context of reality. So, if you walked past the stranger with
ice cream one more time, your ego would mediate the conflict between your id (“I want that ice
cream right now”) and superego (“It’s wrong to take someone else’s ice cream”) and decide to
go buy your own ice cream. While this may mean you have to wait 10 more minutes, which
would frustrate your id, your ego decides to make that sacrifice as part of the compromise–
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satisfying your desire for ice cream while also avoiding an unpleasant social situation and
potential feelings of shame.
Freud believed that the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict and that adult personality
and behavior are rooted in the results of these internal struggles throughout childhood. He
believed that a person who has a strong ego has a healthy personality and that imbalances in
this system can lead to neurosis (what we now think of as anxiety and depression) and
unhealthy behaviors.
Information Revolution
Today, as we enter the 21st Century, the Information Revolution is making a difference
to more and more people. Nowadays, a nation's economic success and even survival are based
on the control of ideas, words and images. Information on scientific discoveries and
technological developments are as important to nations in the year 2000 as colonial possessions
were 200 years ago.
Information revolution triggers profound changes both in the way we conduct our lives
and in the way we perceive ourselves as human beings.
Mesoamerican Civilization
Asian Civilization
Asian Civilizations - Ancient to 1800 AD - History Express / Features the empires and
civilizations that sprang out of the five regions of Asia - West Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Central
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Asia and Southeast Asia Asia, which means 'land of the sunrise' in ancient Assyrian language, has
witnessed the rise and fall of many great and ancient civilizations. One of the world's oldest
civilizations - the Mesopotamian civilization - prospered 5,000 years ago on the land between
the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in West Asia. Other great civilizations include the Chinese,
Japanese and Korean civilizations that arose in East Asia In this book, we feature the empires
and civilizations that sprang out of the five regions of Asia - West Asia, East Asia, South Asia,
Central Asia and Southeast Asia Let's take a journey through time and space to the five Asian
regions and discover the great conquerors of the ancient land. Explore how these civilizations
have influenced the world we live in today and thus, gain a better understanding of Asian history
and culture /// This is a great product sourced from BIML - Bible In My Language, the leader in
foreign language Bibles and outreach materials from Baltimore, Maryland in the USA. BIML
stocks Bibles in more than 600 languages.
Also known as "The cradle of civilization”. Throughout the centuries, historians have
used these powerful words to describe the Middle East.
In the ancient Middle East, many great civilizations rose and fell. The religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each trace their origins back to this part of the world.
All of these civilizations arose in the area known as the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile
Crescent stretches from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east.
It is bordered in the north by the Taurus Mountains and in the south by the Persian Gulf and the
Arabian Desert. Its shape resembles a crescent moon.
One area within the Fertile Crescent gave rise to the region's most powerful empires
and grandest cities. This area was Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers.
The Fertile Crescent is the region in which humans first began farming and herding
around 8,000 B.C.E. This dramatic change from nomadic hunting and gathering allowed early
humans to settle into permanent villages and to begin accumulating a surplus of food.
With such a surplus, early villagers could begin to focus on developing the skills
associated with civilization. Some of them became priests, scribes, merchants, artists, teachers,
and government officials. They began to build cities, and before long, they were establishing
empires. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, and Phoenicians all built great
empires, each of which rose to glory in the Middle East.
African Civilization
Africa has made many outstanding contributions to world civilization, of which the following are
a few selected examples:
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…. are much more than a century old; yet the range of invention found in their work far
outdistances that of court arts of much longer periods - even millennia of Ancient Egypt after the
Old Kingdom." (William Rubin, Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the
Modern, 1984).
African art also demonstrates extraordinary levels of technical skill. The bronze castings
discovered in a tenth-century burial site at Igbo-Ukwu (eastern Nigeria) are considered to be
among “the most technically accomplished and daring castings ever undertaken”. (P. T.
Craddock, “Man and Metal in Ancient Nigeria”, British Museum Magazine, Vol.6, 1991). Because
of their astonishing technical sophistication, Western experts initially doubted the accuracy of
such an early dating for the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes. Those doubts were dispelled when the mines
that supplied the metal ore used in the castings revealed that they were worked between A.D.
895-1000.
In the early years of the 20th century, progressive European artists were seeking
alternatives to an art style whose possibilities for development they felt had been exhausted,
leaving them little or no scope for originality. That felt need coincided with a growing interest in
new ways of combining the ideal and the real and of synthesizing the conceptual and
perceptual. African art came to their rescue. Where Western art was narrative in content, tribal
African art was iconographic; where Western art was perceptual and representational in style,
African art was conceptual and ideographic; where Western art was naturalistic in its
proportions, African art eschewed naturalism. It was the "discovery" of African art that provided
the springboard which permitted young European artists to make the leap of imagination that
freed them from the aesthetic constraints of the classical tradition. With cubism and, to some
extent, surrealism Western art acquired a magical, spiritual quality - one that is quintessentially
African.
Agriculture
The World Bank has called traditional plantain and banana production in West Africa,
which utilizes no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides, “one of the most productive food
production systems known.” (David Seckler, "Agricultural Potential of ‘Mid-Africa’: A
Technological Assessment", in Susan Gnaegy& Jock R. Anderson (eds), Agricultural Technology in
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1991).
The West African rice zone contains a greater diversity of production systems and
agronomic practices than rice zones in Asia, the only other region where rice was domesticated.
Rice production in areas inundated by seawater in Senegambia's rainfed-marine ecosystem, is
attuned to a precise knowledge of soils, marine tides and techniques to reclaim land from the
sea. It requires the manipulation and regulation of several types of water regimes in order to
permit year-around cropping. This highly complex, sophisticated system, which sustains
continuous cultivation and high yields that require neither fallowing nor crop rotation, has won
the admiration of Western experts. “By integrating variation in soil type, topography and
moisture regimes with food production objectives, West African farmers have managed to
evolve an agricultural system that minimises the impact of production constraints. The first
Portuguese to reach the Senegambian littoral in 1444 marvelled at the human ingenuity that
had crafted this food production system - just as do those who study its operation more than five
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hundred years later." (Judith Carney, "Indigenous Soil and Water Management in Senegambian
Rice Farming Systems." Agriculture and Human Values, Winter-Spring, 1991).
Iron Technology
On the assumption that there had been a single centre (the Middle East) from which
iron metallurgy had spread, most historians thought that ironworking had been introduced into
Africa from western Asia, first into ancient Egypt and then into West Africa, in the third century
B.C. via Carthage or Nubia. They were mistaken: "Copper smelting had been going on in the
West African Sahara and Sahel since at least 2,000 B.C. That could have been the precursor to an
independent African discovery of iron metallurgy. Strengthening that hypothesis, the iron-
smelting techniques of smiths in Sub-Saharan Africa were so different from those of the
Mediterranean as to suggest independent development: African smiths discovered how to
produce high temperatures in their village furnaces over 2,000 years before the Bessemer
furnaces of 19th-century Europe and America". (Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The
Fates of Human Societies, 1997).
A subsequent UNESCO scientific study confirmed Diamond's hypothesis. The study concluded
that iron technology did not reach Africa from western Asia but that Africa had independently
invented its own iron technology 5,000 years ago. Tests conducted on iron residues, excavated
in the 1980s, show that iron was worked at least as long ago as 1500 BC at Termit, in eastern
Niger. Material excavated at Egaro, west of Termit, has been dated to 3000-2500 BC
(Christopher Ehret, "The Civilizations of Africa", 2002). It would suggest that African iron
technology is as ancient as that of the Middle East, the region from which Europe acquired its
irontechnology much later - circa 1000 B.C.
Moreover, indigenous African iron technology is not only very ancient but its inventiveness and
the range of metallurgical practices displayed are unequalled anywhere in the world. "In fact,
only in Africa do you find such a range of practices in the process of direct reduction [a method in
which metal is obtained in a single operation without smelting], and metal workers who were so
inventive that they could extract iron in furnaces made out of the trunks of banana
trees." (Unesco, "Iron in Africa: Revisiting History", 2002).
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CHAPTER III
INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS THAT DEFINED SOCIETY
Name: Date:
Directions: Write the best word/s that is/are the best described by the following statements.
2. It is the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt
to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for
food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of
their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding
generations.
7. It refers to Greek speculation about the "nature" in the period before Socrates
(roughly 600 to 400 BCE).
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UNIT 1
HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Direction: Answer the the following questions and/or identify what is being described.
___________________3. States that for any combine of objects, every object attracts the
opposite object with a force proportional to the merchandise of their lots and reciprocally
proportional to the square of the gap between the centers of mass of the objects.
____________________10. It is the process by which forms of life having traits that better
enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate,
or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers
than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in
succeeding generations.
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____________________11. It is the quality of being a person; existence as a self-conscious
human being; personal identity.
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