- Alphabet
First phonetic alphabet originated in Egypt.
In 1999, Yale Egyptologist John Darnell revealed to the world that the 4,000 year-old graffiti he had discovered at Wadi el Hol in Egypts western desert represented humankind's oldest phonetic alphabet. Incorporating elements of earlier hieroglyphs and later Semitic letters, Darnell's discovery contradicted the long-held belief that alphabetic writing originated in the area of Canaan (modern-day Israel and the West Bank) midway through the second millennium B.C.E.
Nevertheless, the writings-carved into soft limestone cliff-are thought to be the work of Canaanites, or rather Semitic-speaking mercenaries serving in the Egyptian army during the early Middle Kingdom (C. 2050 B.C.E-C. 1780 B.C.E.). Presumably developed as a simplified version of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the alphabet enabled those soldiers as well as ordinary people in general-to record their thoughts and to read those of others. Many of the Words are thought to be the names of people-the desire to record them stemming from the belief that your afterlife would improve if people read out your name after your death.
Today, the impact of the first phonetic writing system is still felt all over the world, since all Subsequent alphabets (with the exception of the Korean Hangul) have either directly, or indirectly, descended from it.
SEE ALSO: CUNEIFORM, SEMAPHORE, BRAILLE
- Anesthesia
Egyptians find ways to limit pain under surgery.
Many breakthroughs made in modern medicine, such as open heart surgery or joint replacements, would never have been possible in a world without pain control. But how did anesthesia develop?
As it turns out, early physicians never, to the best of our knowledge, resorted to knocking people out prior to performing surgery. Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian physicians compressed both carotid arteries at the same time, limiting blood flow to the brain and so inducing loss of consciousness in patients for the purpose of conducting a procedure. In addition, the Egyptians discovered that opium could help to ease pain, and the Assyrians used their own paintings mixtures of belladonna, cannabis, and mandrake root. The Greeks and Romans copied and developed these techniques, and medieval Arabs even developed a form of inhalational anesthesia.
The advent of modern anesthesia can be traced to the latter half of the eighteenth century, when Joseph Priestley isolated nitrous oxide. Sir Humphrey Davy realized that it had anesthetic and soporific qualities,but it was considered more of an amusing way to pass the afternoon than a medical breakthrough. All that changed when a U.S. dentist started using it to perform dental extractions painlessly. A few years later, diethyl ether became the anesthetic drug of choice, first for dental procedures, and subsequently for other operations. Chloroform, which had the benefit of being less flammable, but the caveat of being much more likely to cause complications, was used in lieu of ether in Some areas.
SEE ALSO: NITROUS OXIDE ANESTHESIA, ETHER ANESTHETIC, CHLOROFORM ANESTHETIC, MODERN GENERAL ANESTHETIC