Technology in the Ancient World

Introduction

Technology is knowledge applied to achieve a goal. Technology consists both of tools and the use of tools, from the smallest devices such as tweezers to enormous construction cranes. Technology encompasses every facet of human existence: How people feed, clothe, house, and protect themselves all depend on the use of technology. Technologies reflect the resources available and the problems people confront in the environment in which they live. For example, in ancient times, cultures such as the Chavín de Huántar of South America that developed in areas where ores such as copper or gold were readily available became skilled at working with metals, while cultures with other resources may have become skilled at woodworking, pottery, or weaving. The Chinese had access to a fine quality kaolin, a type of clay, and developed porcelain; the Harappāns of the Indus River region lived where cotton grew naturally and became proficient weavers.

Although the first uses of technology undoubtedly involved basic survival—tools used for hunting, for example, or digging sticks and irrigation systems for farming—as civilizations evolved, ancient engineers began to use technology to make life easier for humanity. City sewer systems, public baths and water supply systems, central heating in houses, and other mundane aspects of urban infrastructure were common in many parts of the ancient world. At the same time, many of the earliest examples of engineering (applied technology) involved sacred spaces and religious practices: tombs and temples. Before people established permanent settlements and made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, they began burying their dead and building religious structures. Architects also developed public spaces for recreation, entertainment, and trade: the ball courts of the Olmecs of Central America, the theaters of the Greeks and Romans, and the central market spaces found in towns and cities around the world.

Tools and applications

Ancient peoples used the tools they devised to construct an impressive variety of temples, palaces, cities, roads, irrigation systems, dams, and bridges even before they developed systems of written language and permanent records. Although the hand tools they employed seem simple by modern standards—axes, rollers, levers, chisels, and so on—artisans had both time and their societies’ support for their efforts. The origins of the block and tackle, a device that allows a person to easily lift and move objects weighing more than his or her own body weight, is lost in antiquity, but its use was known in a wide variety of cultures: The Egyptians, Sumerians, Romans, and others all used it. Similarly, although early engineers may not have been able to articulate the laws of physics that would explain how a lever works, they nonetheless understood how to use levers effectively to move blocks of stone weighing 30 tons (27 metric tons) or more. In a few cases, such as with the Egyptians who left highly detailed paintings in tombs, there are actual illustrations that show precisely how the engineering work was completed.

The levels of technological complexity varied widely throughout the ancient world, as well as within individual societies. Not all cultures developed the same tools, nor did they always recognize the full potential of devices they did possess. The Greek engineer Heron reportedly invented complex water clocks, rudimentary steam engines, and other devices in the third century b.c.e. but never turned them into anything other than clever novelties. The one exception was a portable water pump used for fire fighting, a design that remained in use until replaced by steam pumps in the nineteenth century c.e.

Some scholars have suggested that one reason many technological devices never became widely disseminated was the lack of machine tools and the ability to make parts to standard specifications. More likely, in a time when labor was cheap and slavery was universal, most people saw no need to mechanize what could be done just as cheaply using human labor. The Romans, for example, did use some highly complex devices in specific settings. An odometer, for example, that had a complicated set of gears was developed for use in measuring distance. Roman engineers used it in laying out military encampments, designing roads and aqueducts, and in other settings in which a precise measurement of distance was necessary.

Warfare and technology

At the same time, many cultures designed and used highly complex machines for use in warfare. Beginning with the Sumerians during the second millennia b.c.e., armies built large siege towers and catapults to use in attacking enemy fortifications. Others, such as the Scythians, a nomadic people who lived in what is now Ukraine during the first millennia b.c.e., perfected small weapons suitable for use by a light, highly mobile cavalry. The Scythians’ reputation as skilled bowmen spread across the ancient world. They used compound bows formed from laminates of wood, horn, and metal. The bows were small but powerful, allowing the Scythians to shoot bronze-tipped arrows with deadly accuracy.

The wheel and transport

Peoples native to the Americas constructed elaborate stone pyramids and buildings, had record-keeping systems and sophisticated calendars, but apparently never used the wheel as anything other than an amusing toy despite being linked by a trade network that connected much of the Americas. Wheeled toys have been found in Mesoamerican archaeological digs, but no evidence exists of full-size wheeled vehicles. Trade goods were moved by human porters or, in South America, on the backs of pack animals such as llamas.

Other cultures invented carts and wagons to transport materials, which in turn may have encouraged the development of roads and highways to connect cities, although it is impossible to say which came first. Long before the Romans built the roads that linked their empire, the Persians constructed the Royal Road, 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) of highway linking Sardis in what is today western Turkey to Susa in the center of the Persian Empire. Transport between different regions of the ancient world was slow by modern standards, with caravans often being limited to the average distance a person could walk in one day, but goods did move thousands of miles. By the first century c.e., for example, Roman merchants sold silk fabric woven in China.

Even with communication and trade occurring across vast distances, innovations in one region did not always move quickly to another. The Chinese, for example, are credited with inventing the wheelbarrow well before the year 1 c.e., yet this commonsense device did not appear in Europe until a thousand years later. In the case of the wheelbarrow, the merchants who saw it probably considered it not worth mentioning. In other cases, such as weaving silk or manufacturing fine porcelain or jewelry, governments guarded the knowledge behind the technology as state secrets in an attempt to protect a trade monopoly.

Irrigation

In agriculture, farmers in Asia, Africa, and the Americas developed sophisticated irrigation systems. The ancient Egyptians’ diversion of water from the Nile River is well known, but Maya in Mesoamerica, the Chinese in Asia, and other peoples also built canals and dams for irrigating their crops. As irrigation allowed more land to be cultivated, populations grew, and cities evolved. Irrigation systems may have begun as simple ditches, but by 1000 b.c.e., elaborate canal networks existed in Mesopotamia, China, South America, and elsewhere. In South America, China, and Southeast Asia, farmers also terraced mountainous hillsides to increase the amount of arable land.

Buildings

As populations grew, massive engineering projects were undertaken in Africa, Asia, Asia Minor, Europe, and the Americas. Materials used for construction ranged from sun-dried brick, as in the ziggurats of Sumer in Asia Minor, to the massive stones found in the megaliths of Europe and the pyramids and temples of Egypt and Mesoamerica. Many of the engineering works constructed by the ancients remain marvels today, including Stonehenge in Great Britain and the pyramids at Giza in Egypt.

There is little mystery as to how ancient civilizations completed these large building projects. Bronze Age builders did not need mechanized equipment, nor did the Greeks and Romans of the Iron Age, because they enjoyed an abundant supply of both labor and time. In some cases, labor may have been supplied by slaves or prisoners. In others, the work was done by free citizens who provided labor as a form of taxes or out of a sense of religious obligation. This may have been especially true for structures such as Stonehenge, a megalithic circle of standing stones located in southern England. Although its precise significance to its builders is unknown, scholars agree construction took place over hundreds of years beginning about 3100 b.c.e. Moving stones weighing 30 tons (27 metric tons) or more over 100 miles (161 kilometers) using only hand tools and human muscle remains an impressive feat, but more for the organizational abilities of the builders than for the actual physical work when progress is measured in decades or centuries. Scientists and engineers have demonstrated that it is actually a comparatively simple matter to position massive stones using simple tools such as levers and wood cribbing.

Megaliths similar to Stonehenge—circles and lines of standing stones—are found throughout Europe. Their origins remain shrouded in mystery. The builders left no written records, and artifacts found with the megaliths have yielded few clues. Although traces of villages have been found relatively close to European megaliths, the archaeological record provides little information on the lifestyles or religious beliefs of the people during the time period in which the megaliths were raised. Based on the mortise and tenon joints connecting the capstones with the uprights, archaeologists have concluded that the builders of Stonehenge were people used to working with wood. The builders of Stonehenge were not the only early engineers to transfer principles of wood construction to building with stone: An examination of Greek temples built a thousand years after Stonehenge, for example, reveals that the Greeks also applied wood construction techniques to stone.

Indus River and Sumerian cities

In contrast with the enigmas surrounding Europe’s standing stones, archaeological sites in Asia and the Americas have provided a great deal of information about ancient civilizations and their technologies. In the Indus River Valley of what is modern-day Pakistan, for example, scientists have been able to trace the evolution of the Harappān culture from its origins as small farming villages in approximately 2500 b.c.e. to an empire with cities of 40,000 persons or more five hundred years later. Harappān engineers designed cities built of both fired and sun-dried brick on mounds elevated well above flood levels of the Indus and its tributaries. For the city of Harappā builders protected the base of the city with a 45-foot- thick (14-meter-thick) brick embankment. Although Harappān cities included large public buildings, they did not indulge in the public ornamentation or elaborate statuary characteristic of the Sumerian cities of the same time period along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Asia Minor in what is now the country of Iraq. Building facades were austere, and the interiors simple.

Sumerians embellished the facades of buildings in the city of Ur and elsewhere with colorful mosaics and other decorative elements. Builders constructed the structures from sun-dried brick but pressed cone-shaped glazed tiles into the exterior bricks while they were still soft. The tiles both presented a colorful appearance and protected the sun-dried brick from the occasional rains that fell in the Fertile Crescent. The region’s climate is naturally arid; only the extensive irrigation systems that directed the rivers’ waters into farmers’ fields made agriculture possible.

Sumerian cities apparently grew unplanned as maps of the ancient city of Ur and other archaeological sites present a bewildering maze of streets and alleys. The same was not true of Harappān cities, in which streets formed neat grids. In addition, one particularly intriguing aspect of Harappān cities is the municipal infrastructure: The Harappān people apparently placed a high value on cleanliness. Individual homes had bathrooms that often included toilets that drained into a city sewer system, an impressive feat of city planning that predated Roman engineering by two thousand years. The Harappāns also designed a system for city trash collection, an innovation unknown in many other societies.

Chavín culture

At the same time that Harappān society began to decline, new civilizations emerged in the Americas. In South America, in what is now Peru, farmers began constructing irrigation canals to expand the area of cultivated land near rivers. Villages grew into cities. Temple mounds appeared, topped first by simple buildings constructed of adobe brick and later by more elaborate stone structures. About 1500 b.c.e., architectural styles changed to reflect the spread of a new religious cult. Just as in Europe where construction of megaliths stretched over centuries, archaeologists believe the 50-foot-high (15-meter- high) temple at Chavín de Huántar in Peru took several hundred years to complete. The building, constructed from massive stone blocks, was embellished with relief carvings portraying battle scenes as well as colossal statues of supernatural beings. Just as the builders of Stonehenge used methods developed for use with wood, so did the builders at Chavín de Huántar. Ceilings are flat, with stone being used as beams. The stone work is cantilevered over hallways, and ventilation shafts are chiseled through the stone walls.

Although the Chavín culture eventually declined, it had a lasting impact on the South and Central American societies that followed, such as the Olmecs. Olmec temples also used massive stone blocks, and, like the Chavín, relied on cantilevering to form passageways. Neither society ever perfected a building technique now taken for granted: the arch.

The arch and concrete

Before the discovery of the true arch, builders relied on corbeling to create passageways or rooms with rounded ceilings. In corbeling, each layer of stone is cantilevered over the edge of the layer below until the final layer of stones meets at the top. Compared to arches, corbels are unstable and require more building materials. In a true arch, the stones are carefully fitted to push against each other so that the force of the weight of the material above the arch is directed through the arch and into the piers supporting it. In a corbel, the weight of the material above each stone is pushing straight down on it. In an arch, the forces are directed to the sides.

The combination of the arch and the discovery of concrete allowed the Romans to build on a massive scale. Many cultures developed mortar to help secure stone work. The Olmecs, for example, used an adobe (clay) mortar to join the large stone blocks in temple pyramids, but the Romans were the first to fully exploit cement and concrete. They went beyond using mortar to join masonry blocks and clay bricks to using cement as a building medium in itself. Cement is a mixture of sand, lime, and water. The Romans were fortunate to have an abundant supply of a volcanic sand that yielded a superb cement. When aggregate (small rocks, or gravel) is added to cement, the result is concrete. The Romans’ use of arches and cast concrete made possible construction of numerous public works projects, particularly aqueducts and sewer systems, as well as domed buildings such as the Pantheon, which still stand today.

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China provides one exception to the general rule that many massive construction projects took decades to complete. Sections of the Great Wall had been completed under previous Chinese rulers when Shi Huangdi ordered construction that would tie the wall into one continuous structure 2,600 miles (4,183 kilometers) long. The Great Wall consists of two parallel rock walls faced with brick with the space between filled with clay and dirt. Forty-foot-high (12-meter-high) guard towers are spaced several hundred yards apart, allegedly at a distance that ensured that no attacker would ever be out of range of archers stationed in the towers. Completion of the Great Wall reportedly took only seven years, although no written records remain to either verify that claim or to explain how the emperor’s engineers organized the work. However, some recent scholars believe that the Great Wall created by Shi Huangdi is not the Great Wall that is still standing. The first emperor’s wall probably was destroyed, and the extant wall was created during the Ming Dynasty. In addition to the Great Wall, Shi Huangdi’s reign was characterized by massive construction projects. During this same time period, a 20-mile (32-kilometer) barge canal linking two rivers in the Yangzte Valley was completed. The canal is still in use more than two thousand years later.

Metallurgy

Ancient civilizations did not confine their use of technology to building projects. Significant innovations occurred in ceramics, weaving, metallurgy, and other fields. Many different cultures learned to work with metals. As with many technological innovations, metalworking appeared in many different regions of the world at about the same time. Often the presence of float copper (pure copper in a malleable form) may have encouraged artisans to work with the metal.

In North America, for example, archaeologists have traced copper artifacts found as far south as the Yucatán Peninsula to copper ore originating in the Lake Superior region. The ore was so pure that it did not require smelting. Pure float copper is comparatively rare, however. More commonly copper is found in ore with other elements. In some cases, the secret to extracting copper from ore may have been found by accident. In ancient Egypt, for example, copper was usually found as an element in semiprecious stones such as malachite. Historians of technology speculate that the Egyptians may have learned to extract copper from ore accidentally while attempting to glaze jewelry. Malachite, a green carbonate of copper, was widely used for beads and other jewelry, and ground malachite was a common cosmetic.

Copper is one of the two metals that can make up bronze. The other most commonly used ore is tin, although some metalsmiths used arsenic. By 4500 b.c.e., cultures in the Balkans, Armenia, Thailand, and China had learned to smelt bronze. Metalsmiths in the Americas discovered bronze slightly later than their counterparts in Asia, Europe, and Africa, but by 1500 b.c.e., the Chavín metalsmiths were also working with bronze. As with many new materials, bronze was initially seen as a luxury item and used primarily in decorative ornaments—brooches, earrings, and so on—but as it became more common, it began to be used for weapons, dishes, and other utilitarian items. Glass was also used to make jewelry and other ornaments before being formed into drinking cups or plates, just as iron would appear first as jewelry and later as more practical objects.

Still, bronze never became a material that every person could possess. Many common people went straight from having flint knives to owning iron. Float copper was rare, mining and smelting copper ore was dangerous, and some bronze production processes created highly toxic arsenic fumes. Many smiths became crippled as a result of their work, which may be why the smiths portrayed in the myths from ancient societies, such as the Greek god Hephaestus, are often described as deformed or hunchbacked. The Egyptians used convict labor at their bronze foundries, just as the Romans and other cultures later relied on slaves to mine hazardous materials. The Romans, for example, recognized the flame-retardant properties of asbestos but also realized exposure to its dust caused lung damage. Slaves worked the Roman asbestos mines.

In Europe, Asia, and Africa, the use of iron spread much more quickly than the use of bronze, as once the secrets to smelting the metal were known, bog iron proved much easier to obtain than copper. Small ironworks became common in societies in southern Africa in the regions now occupied by the nations of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia as well as throughout Europe and Asia. Still, although metalsmiths in the ancient world learned to work with iron, they were unable to raise the temperature of the metal high enough to melt it for casting. The harder a metal, generally the higher its melting point. Gold melts at a comparatively low temperature so metalsmiths learned early to cast gold ornaments. Iron requires much higher temperatures. All the iron used in ancient societies was wrought iron forged by repeatedly heating, being beaten with a hammer to shape it, and then cooled.

Bibliography

DeCamp, L. Sprague. The Ancient Engineers. New York: Ballantine, 1960.

Hodges, Henry. Technology in the Ancient World. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1992.

Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.