Agora

I finally saw the movie Agora and would definitely recommend it to anyone who cares about the history of science, empirical thinking, and how religion has stopped the expansion of human knowledge.

It deals with the murder of philosopher Hypatia by a mob of Christians in Alexandria during the fourth century of Common Era, and with the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria which held all the scientific knowledge that people had accumulated up until that time.

It was actually in Alexandria where scientist and philosopher Eratosthenes had speculated about the Earth being round and orbited around the sun. Eratosthenes worked at the Great Library of Alexandria and successfully calculated the circumference of the Earth two centuries before Common Era!

Another reason why we know that Egyptian scientists knew that the Earth was round is because they have found coca (the plant that cocaine of made from) in Egyptiam mummies from 4,000 years ago, but coca only grows in the Andes region of South America, which means that the Incas or their predecessors had traded with Ancient Egyptians long before Colombus sailed to the New World.

In other words, the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria held humanity back for about 1,500 years: it wasn't until the Renaissance that we would be able to finally question Christianity again enough to reacquaint ourselves again with all these ideas.

Please watch Agora. It is a very important history lesson for all of us.