Necessity certainly is the mother of invention! The Ancient Egyptians are credited with creating geometry (which I abhor) to create their pyramids, which had to be done precisely. But even then, the very first Egyptian "pyramid" was actually a mastaba (think of the bottom layer of a step pyramid):



The Egyptians got the idea from the Ancient Mesopotamian's ziggurat (a shrine). After the mastaba came the step pyramids and then the smooth-sided ones we typically think of as a pyramid.

And you mentioned the Romans and resurfacing, which reminds me of the fact that the Ancient Romans were the first to create an underground plumbing system. Their plumbing helped their society avoid a lot of a dysentery problems that -- because their invention was ignored/unknown for a LONG time -- caused innumerable deaths over the centuries.

Umm, not quite, although the general ideas are right. The pharaohs and royals of Egypt, along with their priests, were treated as gods among men because they were the only ones who were believed to be able to communicate (rather, get answers from) with their gods. (Side note: It doesn't always make sense to me because often the royals turned to the priests to better interpret the signs from their gods.) The royals stayed in power because it was passed down from father to son and a royal could only marry another royal to keep the bloodline pure... And, disturbingly, that often meant siblings marrying one another. (Example: Cleopatra married both of her younger brothers, killing each one when their decisions differed from her own.) After the Alexander the Great's reign, during which time there were no royal families, the last dynasty was established because when he died, his territory was divided amongst his trusted generals and Ptolemy, a general who claimed some blood relation to Alexander the Great, was given Egypt (including current day Sudan). As the Egyptians loved Alexander the Great, they accepted the Ptolemy dynasty... And so they reigned until Cleopatra's death, which, because she was married to a Roman, made the Romans think they were entitled to take control over Egypt.

Anyway.... Knowledge was very much considered power, which is why mundane people were strongly discouraged from becoming literate. Very few people were actually literate in Ancient Egypt: Scholars, scribes, and priests, obviously, but not all royals were literate. (Actually, if I remember right, very few royals were literate, hence the need for scribes.) Scribes were looked up to by the masses but not really given the full credit they deserved by the people dictating what to write. Scholars were seen as all-knowing and revered even by the royals. The Egyptians were seen as the hub of all knowledge as they had a university and the Library of Alexandria. When the Romans took control, they took away the Egyptians' knowledge/power by destroying the Library of Alexandria. So much knowledge was lost when they burned down the library; all historians agree the library's destruction was a tragedy.

As far as predicting floods, the scholars did the best that they could and they generally did a good job predicting the Nile's flooding but... Well, the closest equivalent I can think of is a meteorologist's prediction of the hourly weather in Florida. (We get a lot of comments like "It's raining? Give it 5 minutes and it'll stop.") Like I said, the scholars did the best they could and were pretty good with when the Nile would flood but predicting how much it would flood was a totally different question.



100% true. We are affected and/or limited by our language. I believe it's the Japanese and Swedish who have words for colors that we English speakers can't equate. I remember reading a news article (actually, I've read a few) about words in other languages that don't equate in English, single words that take multiple English sentences to explain.

Also, I'm fluent in American Sign Language (and quite familiar with Deaf culture) plus I have some hearing loss so the concept of language affecting our perception of reality has a whole different meaning for me. Talking and explaining things in 3D, sometimes drawing pictures in the air... When I'm signing, it's like it completely changes everything around me, I see things so differently. One technique I've learned to use when my mind is running 1000mph in all sorts of directions is to start signing what I'm thinking. I may look like a crazy person to people who don't recognize it as sign language but it helps a LOT. I'm forced to slow the thoughts and really be able to explain them. It's amazing how changing languages and perspectives (from a spoken to a visual language) affects you.



I know you meant this in a mathematical sense but I believe this is also true of human behavior.

People argue that there is no such thing as "normal" -- and if this assumes that there is one baseline that is considered "normal" then I agree. However! I know I'm guilty of this, and I know a lot of other people are too, but I use the word "normal" to mean typical or common. Regardless, it goes to show that there is a pattern, a commonality, amongst peoples' behavior.

I'm told I'm good at finding patterns and connections between things so I'm actually trying to use this pattern finding to help me improve my psychological issues. Heck, just the other day I flat out asked someone what their typical reaction to stress was so that I may be able to modify their coping skill to become useful for me.

So, yeah... Finding behavior patterns to figure out how "normal" people act... Maybe it'll allow me to blend in a bit better.

All units of measurement -- be it time, space, mass, whatever -- are all man-made constructs and affect our perception. Pretty much every country in the world except the US uses the metric system... We use our own measurement system. Calendars -- you have the Julian and the Gregorian calendars plus other religious ones. I'm not too familiar with religions but I know that the calendars used by Jewish people and Muslims cause their holidays to fall on different days every year. (When I was growing up, it drove me crazy that Hanukkah would sometimes overlap with Thanksgiving and sometimes with Christmas. As I got older and my mother adhered to her faith less, there were times where we wouldn't even realize it was Hanukkah until the 2nd day.) Anyway, all forms of measurement are human constructs and therefore variable.