Beginning of the Christian Era
(Black Magic) * 1700 BC King Hammurabi's reign over Babylon
In ancient Babylon King Hammmurabbi began to classify metals such as gold , iron, and copper. He also gave certain materials higher value than others, depending on the potential of the material.
Known metals were recorded and listed in conjunction with heavenly bodies.
430 BC Democritus of ancient Greece
Democritus and the atom: c.420 BC
In the late 5th century BC Democritus sets out an interesting theory of elemental physics. Notions of a similar kind have been hinted at by other Greek thinkers, but never so fully elaborated.
He states that all matter is composed of eternal, indivisible, indestructible and infinitely small substances which cling together in different combinations to form the objects perceptible to us. The Greek word for indivisible is atomos. This theory gives birth to the atom. Democritus was a Greek philosopher who lived between 470-380 BC
He is the Greek to whom the conception of the Atomic theory is attributed.
Democritus proclaims the atom to be the simplest unit of matter. All matter was composed of atoms.
300 BC
Aristotle's variable atoms: 4th century BC
Aristotle, practical as ever in his determination to get things worked out in detail, proposes a new theory to explain how the four elements of Empedocles and the atoms of Democritus produce the wide range of substances apprehended by our senses.
He declares the existence of only four elements: fire, air, water and earth. All matter is made up of these four elements and matter had four properties: hot, cold, dry and wet.
Greek science in Alexandria: from the 3rd century BC
Classical Greece has produced a brilliant tradition of theorists, the dreamers of science. Attracted by the intellectual appeal of good theories, they are disinclined to engage in the manual labour of the laboratory where those theories might be tested.
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