Introduction

The word geometry  is the greek for:
geos- meaning Earth

metron- meaning measurements

 Geometry was extremely important to ancient societies and was used for surveying, astronomy, navigation, and building. Geometry, as we know it is actually known as Euclidean geometry which was written well over 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece by Euclid, Pythagoras, Thales, Plato and Aristotle just to mention a few. The most fascinating and accurate geometry text was written by Euclid, and was called Elements. Euclid's text has been used for over 2000 years!

Source: http://math.about.com/library/weekly/aa031503a.htm