The scientific discoveries made prior to the Iron Age, or about 2000 B. C., were not numerous. The struggle for life was so intense that few had opportunity for contemplation and philosophic reflection. It was subsequent to the discovery of the basic principles of metallurgy, in the Iron Age, that science began rapidly to advance. The benefits bestowed upon mankind by the employment of metals reduced the sharpness of life's struggles, permitted and instigated reflection, and provided means for experimentation.

Modern history begins with the peoples of Mesopotamia. There were cultured peoples east of the Tigris and Euphrates, in Persia, India, Mongolia, Tartary, and China before the founding of Babylon. But we are more instructed about the Babylonians and Assyrians than about earlier Asiatic races.

The Babylonians and Assyrians appear to have originated in central Asia and to have migrated to Arabia about 10,000 B. C., and perhaps earlier. They were well settled in Arabia before the Egyptian pyramids and other Semitic memorials were planned. They brought with them from the farthest Orient many important contributions to civilization and culture, and developed many others.

These were religious, philosophical and keen commercial peoples. They shaped the organization of modern religions. The Babylonians reduced the world of gods to a single system with classifications distinguishing between major and minor deities, and between those of heavenly, or stellar, and earthly habitats, and those of time and space. They developed many religious myths of the Creation, the Flood, Paradise, and others which were subsequently embraced by other religions.

Both the Babylonians and Assyrians composed beautiful hymns, prayers, parables, and religious tales, and had numerous elaborate religious customs, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals conducted by priests, nuns, and acolytes.

Anu, or Anum, the God of Heaven, was the principal Babylonian deity, while Ashur was the leading god of the Assyrians.

Religious studies and rites occupied a large portion of the time of these peoples and, consequently, their temples, monasteries, schools, and other religious buildings were large and numerous. Their architecture was elaborately artistic. This was one of their incentives to scientific invention. They made important discoveries in all the basic physical sciences, like chemistry, physics, metallurgy, and mathematics, to enable them to improve their buildings and to embellish them with paintings, pictorial tiles, and fancy metals and textiles. They had excellent professional men, artists, jurists, bankers, contractors, and scientists. They were fond of literature and founded extensive libraries. Music and musical instruments were very popular with them. Their cuneiform writings, as disclosed by numerous beautiful stone and porcelain tablets which have come down to us, were excellently done.

The fragments of literature, laws, and religious policies that we are acquainted with indicate that the numerous Babylonian and Assyrian settlements in each great empire possessed social and political conditions similar to those of our days. Science and art were then sufficiently advanced to enable these ancient people to live as agreeable, moral, and legally secure lives as those of any subsequent peoples.

The Chinese appear to have been making similar progress to that of the Babylonians about the same period. It would seem that both these peoples were in contact with a similar but earlier cultured race in central Asia. Although the early Chinese were a religious people, they appear to have been more philosophical than the Babylonians. This enabled them to make further progress in the abstract sciences. In subsequent years they made rapid strides in the physical sciences, as will be shown later.

The Egyptians came into prominence toward the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, and for many centuries played a great rôle in developing civilization. The numerous benefits which they bestowed upon the world by their researches in science and art are not fully appreciated.

Early history pictures two great Asiatic races struggling for supremacy in India. They were the Aryans, a fair-skinned people, and the Dravidians, a colored people. The Aryans succeeded in displacing the Dravidians in the great plains, upon which they settled and developed large cities, important world commerce, and contributed great art works and scientific and philosophical discoveries to the world's stores. The Dravidians retired to the hill country, where their representatives still live.

The minds of the various Indian peoples have always been strongly philosophical. This led them to the development of numerous religious sects and philosophical systems, and they made important mathematical discoveries. While the scientific bent of the ancient Greeks was of a concrete nature, which tended toward geometrical proofs for scientific problems, that of the ancient peoples of India was toward numerical symbolism and arithmetical proofs. We find that when the Greeks were developing geometry the Indians were contributing to arithmetic and algebra.

The Chinese closely resembled the ancient Indians in the philosophical tendency of their minds; but, owing perhaps to the different conditions under which they lived, they were more concrete in their ideas. They also made progress in mathematics and developed medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, and many of the sciences which were applied to commercial and industrial uses. The progress made in mathematics in China was transmitted to Egypt, and therefore to Europe, through India. Among early Chinese discoveries in mathematics were methods of solving numerical equations and the development of magic squares and circles, which gave a great stimulus to studies in geometry and astronomy.

The Arabs, Greeks, and Romans took up the discoveries of the Asiatic peoples, and the Egyptians enlarged them and passed them forward to us. The Arabs solved cubic equations by geometrical means, perfected the basic principles of trigonometry, and made great advances in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy.

A survey of the early history of science indicates that from the remotest period man was engaged in grappling with the great principle of causation. Progress was necessarily slow at first on account of the scarcity of tested data. Then it became more rapid. Soon after the founding of the great city of Babylon we find that the Babylonians were possessed of enough knowledge of the arts and sciences to enable them to become world traders and great industrial undertakers. They built many cities and lived highly civilized lives. The history of modern science may very properly be dated from the building of Babylon.