Laboratory work 2. Evolutionary ideas

The first knowledge about nature was gathered in ancient Egypt, India and China: plants were sown, animals domesticated and medicinal plants studied. In Central Asia the worldview is reflected in ancient written sources (including the “Avesta”): rules on cleanliness, water, soil and livestock. In ancient Greece Aristotle (384–322 BC) classified living things, knew about 500 animal species, divided animals into “blooded” (vertebrates) and “bloodless” (invertebrates) and described embryo development; his pupil Theophrastus described over 400 plant species. The Roman writer Lucretius tried to explain nature by natural causes. Medieval Central Asian scholars – al-Farabi, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Babur – made large contributions to natural science and medicine: al-Biruni reflected on struggle among living things and the influence of the environment (these ideas cannot be called the modern theory of evolution), Ibn Sina in the “Canon of Medicine” suggested that infectious diseases spread by invisible creatures, and Babur observed and described plants and animals in the “Baburnama”. In medieval Europe the view that species are unchangeable was widespread. In the 15th–18th centuries the Great Geographic Discoveries revealed new species, and the microscope and classification developed, preparing ground for studying the diversity and history of life.