Oldie, but a goodie. Come spend a couple minutes with Carl Sagan as he explains how Eratosthenes figured out the circumference of the earth and that it truly was a sphere!
The pacing is a little slower than we're used to these days, but it's a relaxing five or so minutes. Rebel against the attention economy for a moment this Friday and indulge yourself.
Side note: Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene which was located in what is now northeast Libya near (wait for it) Benghazi. While the city was part of the Greek empire at the time, it is yet another example of how the concept of "western" culture has very much shifted over time. I don't need to say this here, but the contributions of Africa to science, history, and art cannot be overstated!
Am I wrong to think the concept of “Western Culture” is complete fucking bullshit? If you took the average fashoid to ancient Greece they would be like “what in the fuck are you blabbering about?”
Modern day Chuds walking around Athens 7th millennium BC: "Where all the white people at?"
Yeah, there would be quite the language barrier.
I mean, the ancient Greeks were pretty mean about other races, just in the name of Greekness rather than whiteness
Eratosthenes is also the person thank for the fundamental properties, to this day, of prime-sieving algorithms. His algorithm generates all the prime numbers, albeit very slowly. Nowadays there are some improvements for finding all primes up to a certain size (algorithms that run more quickly), but they are fundamentally just fancier versions of Eratosthenes’ method, with the same core idea that’s at least 2200 years old.
The original sieving method to generate primes is so straightforward that 7/8 year olds could do it, it’s nice
:hillgasm: