In her groundbreaking book How the World Made the West, historian Josephine Quinn argues that much of what we’ve been taught about "Western civilization" is not only incomplete, but deeply misleading. Rather than seeing history as a linear march from Ancient Greece to modern Europe, Quinn invites us to look at how the so-called West was forged through centuries of exchange, migration, empire, and influence from across the ancient world — especially the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. Just as modern genetic science has debunked the idea of biologically distinct “races,” Quinn challenges the idea of a pure, self-contained “civilization,” showing that this concept only emerged in the 19th century, often tied to colonial and racial ideologies.
Modern Alphabet
One striking example she gives is the origin of the modern alphabet. While we trace it from Latin back through Greek and Phoenician scripts. Modern English—arguably the global language of the 21st century—can trace its written form even further back Semitic-speaking levant workers in turquoise mines in ancient Egypt around 1800–2000 BCE. These miners borrowed Egyptian hieroglyphs to create a simpler system — a proto-alphabet using pictograms to represent sounds in their own language. This eventually evolved into the scripts used by the Phoenicians, Greeks, and ultimately, modern English.
At first glance, it might seem counterintuitive. After all, the earliest writing system we know of is cuneiform, developed in Sumer (modern-day Iraq) around 3200 BCE. Cuneiform was highly complex, made up of hundreds of wedge-shaped marks representing words, sounds, and ideas. It was a powerful administrative and literary tool, but it remained the domain of scribes and elites—an elite system for elite purposes. Egyptian hieroglyphs followed soon after, blending pictorial beauty with symbolic and phonetic meaning. These scripts were monumental in scale and complexity, used for royal inscriptions and religious texts. And yet, these sophisticated systems did not lead directly to the alphabet we use today.
Instead, the true origin of the modern alphabet came from something much more accessible and unassuming. Around 1800 BCE, Semitic-speaking workers in Egyptian-controlled mines in the Sinai Peninsula began adapting Egyptian hieroglyphs into a simpler set of symbols. These were not full pictorial representations, but rather crude sketches with phonetic intent. An ox head (aleph) represented the “A” sound; a house (beth) stood for “B.” These early symbols formed a proto-alphabetic system, one based not on recording entire ideas or words but on representing sounds. This shift—from symbols for concepts to symbols for phonemes—was revolutionary.
The Phoenicians, master traders and communicators of the ancient Mediterranean, adopted and refined this system around 1050 BCE. They stripped away most of the pictorial elements and created the first widely used phonetic alphabet. Crucially, this system was far simpler than cuneiform or hieroglyphs: it had only a few dozen characters and could be learned by ordinary people. The Greek alphabet, which added vowels, emerged from this Phoenician base. From Greek came Latin, and from Latin, the writing system of English and many other modern languages.
The irony is profound: while the earliest writing systems were monumental, elite, and often inaccessible, the writing system that became truly global was born from the crude pictographs scratched by migrant laborers in a desert. These workers were not priests, kings, or poets—they were miners and builders—but their need for practical communication gave rise to a tool more enduring than the monuments they helped build. Modern English, and indeed the entire alphabetic tradition, owes its existence to this humble, utilitarian act of invention.
That the modern world’s dominant script can trace its roots not
through the polished corridors of palaces or temples, but through the
rough inscriptions of miners, is a testament to the power of
simplicity. The most basic form of writing—pictographs—proved to
be the most adaptable, democratizing literacy across time and space.
It reminds us that history is not only shaped by the powerful, but
also by the practical, the ordinary, and the overlooked.
Zero
By around 700 BCE, Babylonian scribes began using a placeholder symbol — usually two small wedges — to indicate an empty space in a number. This allowed them to distinguish between values like 204 and 24, helping clarify large numbers in written records. However, this was not zero as we know it today. It was not treated as a number, only as an indicator of missing value — a practical fix, not a conceptual leap.
While ancient civilizations achieved remarkable mathematical innovations, the concept of zero — as a number in its own right — was not one of them.
The idea of using a placeholder to show empty positions in numbers began to emerge around 700 BCE, when scribes started using a symbol (often a pair of small marks) to indicate a missing digit in a sequence — for example, to distinguish between 204 and 24. But this was a visual aid, not a number. It had no value, carried no arithmetic function, and wasn’t part of their number system in the way we understand zero today.
The true mathematical zero — the symbol that represents “nothing,” that makes positional notation work, and that allows for complex calculations — was first developed much later in India, around the 5th century CE. Indian mathematicians like Brahmagupta didn’t just use zero as a placeholder; they treated it as a number with properties, capable of being added to, subtracted from, and used in equations. This concept then spread through the Islamic world, where scholars translated and expanded on Indian mathematics, before eventually reaching Europe in the Middle Ages.
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Science & Medical Breakthroughs in the Medieval Middle East
Between the 8th and 13th centuries, during what is known as the Islamic Golden Age, the Middle East became a global hub of medical science. Scholars across the Arab world, Persia, and North Africa didn’t just preserve Greek and Roman knowledge — they expanded and improved it, laying the foundation for modern medicine.
Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 721–815 CE), known in the West as Geber, is regarded as the father of chemistry. He introduced experimental techniques and systematic laboratory methods. Jabir discovered numerous chemical substances, including several acids such as hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acids. His work laid a scientific foundation for alchemy’s transformation into modern chemistry.
Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850 CE) was a Persian mathematician whose works introduced algebra as an abstract mathematical discipline. His book "Al-Kitab al-Mukhtasar fi Hisab al-Jabr wal-Muqabala" laid the foundation of algebra. He also developed computational procedures known as algorithms, a term derived from his name, revolutionizing mathematics, astronomy, and computer science.
Al-Razi (Rhazes) (865–925 CE) was a pioneering physician and chemist who advanced medicine through experimental observation and clinical practice. He distinguished smallpox from measles and produced influential medical encyclopedias that shaped both Eastern and Western traditions. As head of Baghdad’s hospitals, he emphasized ethical care and observation. This era also saw the rise of public hospitals (bimaristans): state-funded, open to all faiths, and organized with disease-specific wards, pharmacies, surgical areas, medical schools, licensing, practical training, and even early mental health care.
From surgical instruments to eye surgery, and from drug testing to clinical diagnosis, the innovations of Arab and Persian physicians not only pushed medicine forward in their own time but also influenced European practices after being translated and absorbed during the later medieval period. These breakthroughs marked a turning point in medicine — from superstition to science.
Ibn al-Haitham (965–1040 CE), often called the father of optics, made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of light and vision. He invented the scientific camera obscura principle, explaining how light enters the eye and produces an image. Ibn al-Haitham also advanced the development of reading glasses and magnifying lenses, laying foundations for later optical instruments. His work profoundly influenced medieval science and formed a basis for modern optics.
Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (980–1037 CE), was a Persian polymath wrote The Canon of Medicine (1025 CE), which became the standard medical textbook in both the Islamic world and Europe for centuries. It organized medical knowledge systematically and covered everything from diagnosis and disease prevention to pharmacology and surgery. Avicenna introduced systematic clinical observation, detailed pharmacology, and emphasized the contagious nature of diseases. His work earned him the title "father of early modern medicine."
Sumeria: The First Civilization and the Blueprint of Society
Long before the pyramids of Egypt or the philosophy of Greece, the world’s first true civilization arose in southern Mesopotamia: Sumeria. Rather than a single empire, it was a collection of city-states like Ur, Uruk, and Lagash, each ruled by its own king and devoted to its own patron deity. Despite rivalries, these cities shared a common culture that laid the foundations of urban life.
The Sumerians developed some of the earliest known laws, pioneered cuneiform writing, and engineered large-scale irrigation and dam systems to support stable agriculture. Their society was highly organized, with kings and priests at the top of a structured class system. Later civilizations — including the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians — would inherit and build upon this legacy.
In the following sections, we’ll explore how the Sumerians shaped the world through their revolutionary ideas in religion, timekeeping, and the mathematics of space and measurement — systems still influencing us today.
Weights and measurements
One of the lesser-known but most transformative innovations of ancient Mesopotamia was the development of standard weights and measures, first formalized in the city of Uruk. As agriculture expanded and cities grew, the need arose for consistent systems to measure grain, labor, land, and goods. Early Mesopotamians introduced standardized units like the “cubit” (based on the length of a forearm) for construction, and the “talent” — a unit of weight roughly representing the maximum load a person could carry — for use in trade, taxation, and administration. These measures weren’t symbolic or arbitrary; they were practical tools for managing increasingly complex urban economies, especially in cities that depended on large-scale irrigation, seasonal harvests, and the redistribution of surplus resources.
This system of measurement marked the rise of early bureaucracy — a defining feature of the first cities. With temple complexes functioning as central economic hubs, responsible for everything from food storage to land allocation, these standard units enabled consistent record-keeping, contract enforcement, and fair trade. They also laid the groundwork for the earliest forms of written accounting using cuneiform, helping to establish a stable, organized society. Far from being primitive, Uruk’s system of weights and measures reflects a highly advanced and rational approach to governance — one that would shape statecraft and commerce across the ancient Near East for centuries.
Maths
Ancient Sumerians—and later the Babylonians—laid the foundational mathematics for many aspects of modern timekeeping, geometry, and even navigation. One of their most important contributions was the invention of the base-60 (sexagesimal) number system, which still defines how we measure time and angles today. Thanks to this system, we have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle. These divisions are not Roman or modern inventions—they come directly from Mesopotamian mathematics, developed over 4,000 years ago.
The Sumerians didn’t have clocks or compasses, but they developed a sophisticated mathematical framework rooted in practical needs like agriculture, temple building, and astronomy. In their schools, called É-dubba or “houses of tablets,” students were trained in complex calculations involving multiplication, division, geometry, and the use of fractions. This education prepared scribes to handle land surveying, resource management, and celestial observation—all of which were essential in a society that depended on precise timing for harvests and religious festivals.
Their fascination with the heavens also led to early forms of astronomical tracking. The Babylonians, inheriting and expanding Sumerian knowledge, divided the sky into 360 degrees, likely because it was close to the number of days in a year and fit well with their base-60 system. This angular system became vital for charting the movements of stars and planets, and it directly influenced later Greek, Islamic, and European astronomy. Greek thinkers such as Ptolemy adopted the Babylonian system, and it eventually made its way into Western science and navigation.
So while the Sumerians themselves didn’t build clocks or sail the seas using sextants, they created the numerical and conceptual tools that underpin modern timekeeping and sea navigation. Every time we check a clock, read a compass, or calculate an angle, we are using ideas first developed in ancient Mesopotamia—making the Sumerians and Babylonians true pioneers of the systems we still rely on today.
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