of medicinal potions and practices. Interest has been kindled in the traditional science of these lands. One of the direct results is the burgeoning discipline of ethnopharmacology, which is bringing to light potent drugs and antidotes to various poisons.
Fetish from Central Africa, Sankuru-Huana
Figurines representing healers carrying medicine bags, dolls, herbs and utensils reveal the deep link between medicine and artistic representation.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Ancestral know-how may be of use in a number of other areas, not the least of which are agriculture and environmental practices. Ironically, hi-tech computer analysis is now employed to record whatever remains of this body of knowledge.
Célèbes, Max Ernst, 1921
The contribution of African art to modern Western art movements such as Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealism is immense. Picasso considered the link between modern and tribal art, discovered at the dawn of the twentieth century, to be comparable to that between the Renaissance and Antiquity. Max Ernst seems to have been inspired by a granary shape when he painted this elephant.
Tate Modern, London
African granary
Less than one century after the death of Muhammad (570–632), the Arabs conquered a great expanse of land from central Asia to Spain, passing through North Africa. In this way, they brought about a synthesis of Eastern and Greek culture. The works of authors such as Euclid and Ptolemy were abundantly translated by the Arabs, who also studied Indian mathematics.
In Spain, the Cordoba Mosque and the Alhambra Palace were masterpieces of geometrical harmony that had a strong influence on Christian architects: the reverse had occurred in Constantinople years earlier, when the Hagia Sophia church had become the model for builders of mosques.
Fragment of Euclid’s Elements, Latin translation based on an Arab version
European languages are sprinkled with words that have Arabic roots: zero, cipher, hazard, almanac, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, etc. Arabic numerals allowed for written calculations which were impossible with the Roman system. Euclidean geometry was translated by the Arabs and formed the basis of one-point perspective. The Elements became almost as well known as the Bible.
Arab palaces were surrounded by magnificent gardens. Plant motifs were used in decoration containing flowers, fruit trees and medicinal herbs—botanical textbooks were plentiful. The Arabs designed precision instruments, glass mirrors and lenses, and excelled in astronomy. They began structured chemical studies as distinct from alchemy; they knew the principles of distillation and experimented with acids and oil paint. Pharmacology was becoming a field in its own right, related to but separate from medicine. (In Baghdad, for example, there were over 1,000 licensed physicians practicing around the tenth century.)
Persian miniature, fifteenth century
These physicians are shown having a clinical consultation; they carry a small book of diagnostic information on a belt around the waist. Taught in Salerno, Montpellier and Padua, medicine was the cornerstone of some of the early and most prestigious universities.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Mezquita, Cordoba, Maurits Cornelis Escher
Forbidden by their religion to represent the human figure, the Arabs developed an alternative art form based on mathematics. In the Cordoba Mosque, arches are aligned in a captivating manner as in Romanesque architecture. Around the twelfth century, there were more than 100 mosques in Cordoba.
Muslims, Christians and Jews co-habited more or less harmoniously for hundreds of years. When Christians reconquered Spain, the fall of cities such as Toledo (1085) with its huge library, contributed enormously to the cultural revival of the West. It was Ancient Greek knowledge, transmitted by the Arabs, that persuaded philosophers such as the Jew Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Christian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) to reconcile their faith with Aristotelian logic. This bold and potentially heretical step was the first to allow the separation of the religious and secular realms. Science has established itself ever since as an integral part of cultural values.
The Arabs probably learned much from the Far East, although how much, and by what means, is difficult to determine. In many areas, the Chinese were centuries ahead of the rest of the world. Agricultural inventions, the mining of coal and the development of materials such as iron, were evident in China long before they became known in Europe.
Huge wooden constructions were built thanks to hard metal tools. The Chinese designed metal bridges and excavated underground wells 1,000 meters deep. They even knew of natural gas and oil as combustible and lighting materials.
Why were some of their inventions never adopted by the Arabs? Why did it take so long to pass them on to Europe? Which ones were reinvented ex nihilo? And, in particular, why weren’t they used more to stimulate development of Chinese society itself?
One answer, among others, is that Asian philosophy emphasized meditation rather than interrogation, which is familiar in Western thinking. Chinese innovations tended to be isolated events rather than catalysts for a chain reaction. Deeply impregnated by Confucian thinking—which dated back to the sixth century B.C. and commanded respect for ancient values—the Chinese took pride in continuity, an attitude reflected both in their science and their art.
Bronze seismograph, copy of a second-century Chinese original
This artistic masterpiece is a scientific instrument. Vibration causes a bronze ball to fall from the dragon’s teeth into the toad’s mouth beneath. A deep sound is produced at the slightest earth tremor. Even a distant earthquake is registered and the direction of its epicenter is also indicated.
Science Museum, London
Architectural canons were fixed at an early stage and buildings were reconstructed in a similar style every couple of decades. Thus construction did not evolve substantially either. Nevertheless, across Asia independent styles flourished.
Art of all kinds was formally codified, leaving little room for subjective expression. Still, within its tight framework, it announced itself subtly and—judging from the impulsive nature of that untidy concept called “creativity”—probably ineluctably.
Far Eastern inventions rarely found widespread applications as they were created for the rulers’ amusement. As imagined by the Italian writer Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities, the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan (1215–1294), who founded the capital of Beijing, says: “I have neither desires nor fears and my dreams are composed either by mind or by chance.”
Marco Polo (1254–1324), again according to Calvino, replies: “Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city’s Seven Wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
Meanwhile, curiosity about the material world and its place