“In a way [my undertaking] is an entirely original science. In fact, I have not come across a discussion along these lines anywhere. I do not know if this is because people have been unaware of it...[but] perhaps [people] have written exhaustively on this topic, and their work did not reach us... The knowledge that has not come down to us is, after all, larger than the knowledge that has. Where are the sciences of the Persians...the Chaldaeans, the Syrians, the Babylonians...the Copts and their predecessors? The sciences of only one people, the Greeks, have come down to us...as for the sciences of others, nothing remains.”

Ibn Khaldun, 1332-1406 (as translated by Rosenthal)