page_title: History of zoology through 1859
section_title: Pre-scientific zoology
hierarchical_section_title: History of zoology through 1859 / Pre-scientific zoology
context_page_description: The history of zoology before Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution traces the organized study of the animal kingdom from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of zoology as a single coherent field arose much later, systematic study of zoology is seen in the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This work was developed in the Middle Ages by Islamic medicine and scholarship, and in turn their work was extended by European scholars such as Albertus Magnus.
  During the European Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were the anatomist Vesalius and the physiologist William Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation, and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Microscopy revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory.
context_section_description: The earliest humans must have had and passed on knowledge about animals to increase their chances of survival. This may have included unsystematic knowledge of human and animal anatomy and aspects of animal behavior (such as migration patterns). People learnt more about animals with the Neolithic Revolution about 10,000 years ago. Humans domesticated animals as people became pastoralists and then farmers instead of hunter-gatherers in civilisations such as those of ancient Egypt.
caption: An ancient Egyptian plows his fields with a pair of oxen, used as beasts of burden and a source of food.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:03:13 18:26:35", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "0", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1337"}