"The Conjunction of the Whole World"

While we collectively marvel at the increasing globalization of cultures and economies in the early 21st century, consider the incredible loss of human knowledge and advancement some 1,600 years ago:

--More than two centuries before the time of Christ, scientists in this city knew that the earth orbited around the sun and proved that the earth was round (not flat), accurately calculating its circumference within 198 miles. It took Europeans 1,500 years to rediscover this fact.

--Geometry, astronomy and geography were invented here. Latitude and longitude were invented here, with the first prime meridian drawn through the city. Accurate maps and commentary (translated into Arabic, then Latin) miraculously survived the city's destruction, directly influencing European leaders and Christopher Columbus in the discovery of the New World some 1,400 years later.

--The modern research university-style library and independent schools first appeared here.

--The nearly evangelical spread of Judaism throughout the Mediterranean in 100 BCE began here with the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament text into Greek, exposing ancient Hebrew thought to an entirely new audience outside Palestine. That exposure produced an entirely new group of "God-fearers" (including the mother of Nero, who subsequently kept a seventh-day Sabbath) throughout the known world.

--The western Christian doctrine of the Trinity, developed some four centuries after Christ, has its origins here.

--The steam engine and possibly the first working computer were developed here, as well as the first working clock to measure time.

--More than 1,000 years of recorded human knowledge and advancement was lost with the destruction of more than 5,000 volumes of irreplaceable parchment, first by politically motivated Christians, then completely by Islamic conquerors in AD 646.

--The city's 40-story lighthouse -- considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world -- stood watch on the Mediterranean for more than 1,000 years.

How could all of this rich knowledge have been lost? Consider this commentary:

"Most of us take for granted that two cities, Athens and Rome, completely dominated the classical world...but this is, in fact, a distorted view of history, fueled by generations awed by the might of Rome and the ingenuity of Athens, and perhaps a little too keen to take the native historians of both cities at their word.

"In fact there was a third city that, at its height, dwarfed both of these in wealth and population as well as in scientific and artistic achievement..while Greece and Rome spread their their influence through trade and war, this city set out on another adventure, not at the point of a sword but on the tip of a pen. Its triumph was to be a conquest of the mind -- led not by legions of soldiers but by dynasties of scholars navigating on a sea of books.

"The city was Alexandria...the greatest mental crucible the world has ever known, the place where ideas originating in obscure antiquity were forged into intellectual constructs that far outlasted the city itself. If the Renaissance was the 'rebirth' of learning that led to our modern world, then Alexandria was its original birthplace."

For more information, run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore or library and pick up a copy of "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria -- the Birthplace of the Modern Mind" (authors Justin Pollard and Howard Reid produce a read that you will never forget).