section_path: History/Ancient precursors/Greece
section_name: Greece
paragraph_text: Greece
  
  Laying the foundations for integral calculus and foreshadowing the concept of the limit, ancient Greek mathematician Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390 – 337 BC) developed the method of exhaustion to prove the formulas for cone and pyramid volumes.
  
  During the Hellenistic period, this method was further developed by Archimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC), who combined it with a concept of the indivisibles —a precursor to infinitesimals —allowing him to solve several problems now treated by integral calculus. In The Method of Mechanical Theorems he describes, for example, calculating the center of gravity of a solid hemisphere, the center of gravity of a frustum of a circular paraboloid, and the area of a region bounded by a parabola and one of its secant lines.