Transcript: We tend to think of the Renaissance in terms of developments in art and sculpture in the 15th century, mostly in Italy. But the Renaissance had its start several hundred years earlier in the 13th century, and it really started in Spain with the rediscovery of ancient Greek manuscripts and the Greek philosophers’ knowledge. Renaissance in fact means rebirth or rediscovery. In Toledo, in Spain, around 1100 AD translators working in large schools were recovering the Greek knowledge that had been lost for over a millennium. In addition to a rebirth in art and culture new ways of looking at the natural world, epitomized by Leonardo da Vinci in his natural way of drawing the human form, scientists were beginning to look anew at the natural world and see things that they had not seen before. The Renaissance marks the birth in a new phase of astronomy.