belonging to times long past especially of the historical period before the fall of the Western Roman Empire; "ancient history"; "ancient civilizations such as those of the Etruscans and Sumerians"; "ancient Greece"
not dependent on or conditioned by or relative to anything else
not contingent
free from external control and constraint; "an independent mind"; "a series of independent judgments"; "fiercely independent individualism"; "an independent republic"
(of a clause) capable of standing syntactically alone as a complete sentence; "the main (or independent) clause in a complex sentence has at least a subject and a verb"