The statue of Anania Shirakatsi

The Armenian thinker and scholar Anania Shirakatsi, who lived nine centuries before Copernicus, reached remarkable scientific conclusions. He wrote that the Milky Way is a multitude of stars, although in his time there were neither telescopes nor spyglasses. Shirakatsi also maintained that the light of the Moon is the reflected light of the Sun, and he compiled eclipse tables covering the entire 19-year lunar cycle. Without technical means or scientific instruments he arrived at ideas that were centuries ahead of the achievements of other scholars.

The photograph shows a statue of a bearded man holding a spherical object, standing in front of a stone wall.