c. 1000
Science
Cairo
Optics as experiment
Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics establishes controlled experiment on light and vision.
Why it mattered
An early, explicit statement of the scientific method.
Middle Ages
1000
4 recorded milestones at this point in the record.
c. 1000
Technology
Southern Africa
Great Zimbabwe stone architecture
Shona builders raised mortarless granite enclosures at the centre of a gold trading state.
Why it mattered
A monumental southern African city built without imported technique.
c. 1000
Exploration
North America
Norse landfall at L'Anse aux Meadows
Greenlandic Norse built a timber and turf outpost in Newfoundland.
Why it mattered
The first documented European presence in the Americas.
c. 1000
Medicine
China
Variolation against smallpox
Chinese and later Ottoman practitioners inoculated healthy people with mild smallpox material.
Why it mattered
The direct ancestor of vaccination and of immunology.
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