Pistol Wrote:
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> What I find to be a head scratcher; people come up
> with these esoteric concepts without explaining at
> all why the Egyptians were trying to prove the
> size of the planet, to what benefit were they
> engaged in such an enterprise? The Greeks you
> could say were prone to philosophical questions
> and perhaps would present such questions, who
> designed the Antikythera calculator? I have always
> squinted one eye when thinking about how just as
> Alexander conquered Egypt what followed was an
> immediate wealth of mathematics, astronomy and
> medicine attributed to the Greeks, are they
> imposters to this knowledge? we'll never know.
> However as mentioned above we have to ask to what
> end would knowing the circumference of the earth
> provide the Egyptians or the Greeks?
>
> B.A.Hokom

A cognitive artefact of curiosity, would be my guess. They liked to quantify the environment (eg, iteru), so when a shadow suggested something they looked into it. Et voila.