Monuments raised on loft pillars in Ancient Greece, the giant pyramids in Egypt and the rock carvings in Petra have inspired awe and amazement since the day they were first discovered. How were these structures built? Who lived there? What kinds of lives did they lead? The answers to these questions are obvious. They were people with needs, aesthetic conceptions, religious beliefs, feelings, ideas and social lives just like ours.  They therefore constructed such delightful and impressive buildings, decorated them with gold and precious stones and built pleasant houses, dams, water channels and places of worship. The remains of these cities show that these people had far richer social lives than has ever been imagined. 

They also possessed astonishing knowledge in the scientific sphere. They used an engineering knowledge that has still not been explained today in the construction of the pyramids. The Sumerians studied space from their Ziggurat towers and established a 12-month calendar. The Mayans were capable of such flawless mathematical calculations as to realize that a year is slightly longer than 365 days. This means these people never had a primitive level of understanding. The fact they needed and applied, at a most flawless level, religion, art and science shows that these people were no different to us.

These are facts that increasing numbers of archaeological findings are revealing every day. But Allah also tells us in the Qur’an that peoples in the past also produced very lofty achievements.
 

Have they not travelled in the earth and seen the final fate of those before them? They had greater strength than them and cultivated the land and inhabited it in far greater numbers than they do. Their Messengers also came to them with the Clear Signs. Allah would never have wronged them; but they wronged themselves. (Sura ar-Rum, 9)

Jan 01, 2009

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