He wasn’t in two places at the same time, carnivorousplant. As matt_mcl stated, he was in Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice, since he already knew that the sun was directly above Aswan (wasn’t it called Syene then?) at that time.
2sense Since, as I understand it, the sense and meaning of an Arabic word is entirely dependent on the sequence of vowels inserted into the radical consonant cluster, I’d hazard a guess that the Arabic writing system used a vocalic notational system from the beginning.
Kimstu makes a very important point here:
The Egyptians had existed as a civilization for a couple thousand years before the Greeks even got organized. They almost certainly made a number of basic discoveries in any number of fields that the Greeks, given their geographical proximity, couldn’t help but absorb. They were then able to build upon and expand those ideas into more or less complete philosophical systems that served pretty well until others came along to revise or debunk them.
I think the major factor in spotlighting the Greeks as the founders of Western thought is the fact that the ability to read hieroglyphics was lost until the Rosetta Stone was discovered. If people had still known how to do that they probably would have found the roots of Greek thought in the writings of the Egyptians.
This one seriously stretches my credibility. Silk, even when worn loosely, does not seem to me to be an effective barrier to a speeding arrow. Armor could be pierced by the Norman longbow’s shafts, as well as shots by a crossbow, but if the shot deviated at all from a head on impact, the armor(talking plate here, not mail) would deflect the shot away. In either case, I always have seen Arabs depicted as using short bows, which were fairly ineffective against most armor. All of this also ignores the fact that most of the Crusaders weren’t knights, but peasantry in common hardened leather if that.
As to the OP, the Greeks have the advantage of having all their stuff written down and preserved. No mention has been made of the fact that the Incas and Aztecs had some pretty advanced astronomy and math as evidenced by the structures they left behind. But, since they didn’t leave us a library full of scrolls, we can never know what other discoveries they made.
For which we can thank the good Bishop Landis and his book-burning. We do know that the lost books covered a wide range of subjects, including detailed histories, astronomical texts, ‘natural histories’, etc. I have often wondered what Aristotle or Herodotus we might have lost in those flames.