When and Where did the Atomic Theory Come From?

[Rev. Rye]

Honestly, the more I'm looking into the history of atomic theory, I'm beginning to suspect that, between Aristotle and Dalton, atomic theory didn't so much go out of vogue, as much as morphed beyond recognition; even though Aristotle rejected Democritus' atomism, the natura minimalia he mentioned in the Physics and Meteorology still sounds quite a bit like it (if in an admittedly unusually cruder version for Aristotle.)

How would you describe this morphing?

The natural philosophy by which the ancients gained knowledge is a far cry from the scientific observation that informs modern knowledge. With thousands of years of ignorance and the rejection of all kinds of knowledge from B.C.E. and well into C.E. I guess I can see why they made the jump because it was the observation of the discoverers (the Earth is round, the Earth orbits the sun, etc.) that dispelled the ignorance of the Church, whereas mere thinkers fell victim to it.

Sort of like how atomic theory changed in the 200 years since Dalton's discovery, only the deviations are sometimes a lot more questionable.