The book, Ancient Inventions, has already been introduced and the first four chapters have been briefed. The book is a great archaeological as well as historical account of inventions and discoveries of the ancient time, which represents a different picture of our ancestors, from what we are used to. For a long, we have had a tendency to believe that technological knowledge has remained exclusively with our generation, and ancient people were some savages who did not progress to any level close to ours. This book proves this assumption incorrect, and claims that many of our recent technological advances have roots in ancient times, and some high tech inventions, such as computers, may have been the result of innovations of people living some Melania before us. In analyzing some brilliant articles of this book, the next four chapters (chapters five through eight) are discussed here. Last four chapters (nine through twelve) will be introduced in a final article about this book.
Chapter five is titled “Military Technology”. It is unfortunate to learn that the greatest nations of the world have spent (and still do) an extensive amount of their coffers on armistice and military advances. As a result, some of the technological innovations have come about through research and development in warfare. As long as there was a civilization (cities with boundaries) there has been an aggressive behavior in the part of leaders to expand their boundaries by attacking their neighbors. On the other hand, civilizations have always been magnets attracting nomads and tribes living on their outskirts. Every city of the ancient times has experienced assaults and raids of such tribes, resulting plunder and pillage. According to the book, the oldest city known to us based on historical documents was Jericho in Palestine: ”By 7,000 B.C. the settlement was surrounded by a stone wall thirteen feet thick and ten feet high, enclosing some ten acres. At the center was a masterpiece of prehistoric construction- a solidly built stone tower, enclosing a central spiral stairway, the lower thirty feet of which were still standing when Jericho was excavated by a team of British archaeologists in the 1950s (P.200).” The earliest known army, according to the book, is found in Iraq from a relief on a decorated box (called Standard of Ur) dated 2,500 B.C. Some military innovations of the ancient times include: Assyrians’ ninth century B.C. full-length scale armor and tank, Archimedes’ ship-shaking device, Greeks’ catapults and machine guns, Byzantines’ flamethrowers of 674 and hand grenades of 1,000 A.D., Chinese invention of paper armor and booby trap and poison gas and finally gunpowder, leading to invention of cannon. There is an interesting account of gunpowder, describing how Chinese found it and how Europeans claimed this invention: “It is truly remarkable how little was known of the real history of gunpowder until recently, given its enormous impact on the world. Even twenty years ago it was still being touted as the greatest original invention of feudal Europe, the prime example of Western ingenuity…Gunpowder seems to have been discovered in China by accident- ironically, by alchemists seeking the elixir of immortality. Among the many mixtures they concocted was one of saltpeter, sulfur and carbon of charcoal (P.234,235).”
Next chapter is titled “Personal Effects”; from cleaning and grooming and beautifying tools and objects, to jewelry and knitted attire and other personal paraphernalia. For instance, it was customary with well-off Romans to carry a set of grooming tools consisting of tweezers, nail cleaner, file, ear scoop and toothpick. It is amazing to learn that personal hygiene and fashion had declined from ancient times, to a level at the end of the Dark Ages that is hard for us to picture nowadays: “At the same time, standards of cleanliness were still at such a low ebb that Elizabeth had to set an example for her subjects by taking a bath once a month. Her successor, King James I, felt no such compunction and restricted himself to the use of a fingerbowl after dinner (P. 245).” Although beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, yet some measures of beauty of the ancient times seem bizarre to the 21st century readers. Due to mass communication and establishment of what is considered ‘beautiful’ by the wealthy and influencing nations of the world, the general idea of beauty is almost universal to us now. However, not long ago, every culture had its own distinct definition of beauty: “Not all ancient aids to beauty match modern Western tastes, such as the facial scarring or neck stretching favored by some African tribes, or the traditional Chinese binding of female babies’ feet to inhibit growth (both practices that continued into the twentieth century). The Maya of ancient Mexico had a great regard for slightly crossed eyes and would hang small beads in from of their children’s faces to induce the condition. A widespread custom, practiced in both the Old and the New World, was the artificial deformation of head. In ancient America the desired shape was a flattened forehead; this was achieved by fastening an infant to a cradleboard soon after birth, with its little head compressed between two boards in such a way as to permanently flatten the skull (P.247).” Ancient beautifying aids such mirror, makeup, soap, razor, perfume, wig, false beard, fashionable clothing, jewelry, spectacles, goggles, umbrella and beautifying undertakings (such as tattooing) are described in detail. Among such descriptions, the story of soap is fascinating: “According to Pliny’s Natural History (written in A.D. 79) they [Romans] imported a substance from Germany called sapo, made of goats’ fat and beechwood ash pressed into small golf-ball-sized cakes. This was used to dye the hair a sandy red color, more often by men than by women. Only at the end of the second century A.D. did the Romans adopt it as a cleanser… Surprisingly, given the Romans’ ignorance of it, soap had been discovered more than 2.000 years earlier in Mesopotamia. Babylonian chemists boiled together oil and alkalis to produce a residue with which people washed themselves (P.261).”
Food, Drink and Drugs are subjects of the following section of the book. The story starts with the invention of fire. Although it is not determined when fire was discovered, archaeological findings show that use of fire goes back to at least half a million years ago. In addition to light and warmth and security to keep predators in distance, fire makes the taste of meat better, and easier to eat and helps digesting it. In addition, meat can be preserved longer when it is cooked. As a result, fire has played a major role in development of human brain, as early man could eat more meat and hence, increase his or her brain nourishment (protein), which lead to ongoing technological advances. Preparation and storage of vegetables and meat by cutting, mixing, grinding; to creation of various forms of cooking such as roasting, frying, boiling, required tools and utensils, such as baskets, shaped animal skins, and pottery. As a result of these and other technological advances, the amount of food prepared was more than it could be consumed. Preservation of food such as drying, freezing, pickling and fermenting was discovered by accident and trial and error. Honey and sugar and spices are discussed, and geographical origination of each is explained. Although people of most cultures of the world used their hands for eating, eating utensils have been around for a long time: “the table fork is probably an invention of the Eastern Roman Empire based at Byzantium, where forks were in use from the fourth century A.D. onward. From there they made agonizingly slow progress westward into Europe via Greece and Italy. When a medieval Byzantine princess was given in marriage to a doge of Venice, she took along some two-pronged forks; their appearance startled and shocked the Venetians. Despite Italy’s status as a model for medieval manners and style, forks failed to catch on in the rest of Europe until the eighteenth century (P.305).” At the beginning of the discussion about restaurants and snack bars, we learn that the longest running restaurant in the world is located in the Chinese city of Kaifeng. Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House has been in operation since 1153! After restaurants and snack bars, cookbooks and refrigeration (snow, radiation, evaporation) are discussed in great detail. Some other food and food related items such as chewing gum, coffee and chocolate, beer and wine (as well as the art of brewing), and consumption of various drugs including tobacco are reviewed: “The idea of getting ‘high’ by taking drugs seems to be as old as humanity itself. Recent attempts to explain the remarkable cave paintings and engravings of Stone Age western Europe, going back some thirty thousand years, have argued that they were produced by tribal shamans, or medicine men, during drug-induced trances.”
Chapter eight discusses Urban Life, which starts with the following paragraph: “Even before the retreat of the last Ice Age, around 8000 B.C., the first towns were growing in the Near East. Beginning as small villages where seminomadic hunters would stay on a seasonal basis, they developed into true urban centers with the rise of farming. Jericho, in southern Palestine, can claim to be the oldest, its beginning going back some ten thousand years. By about 7000 B.C. it was a town with some two thousand inhabitants and impressive fortifications (P.354).” This chapter continues to discuss subjects such as urbanization in Near East and Africa (Egypt), sewer system and other utilities, apartment buildings, fire engines, banking, and money (means of exchange). One interesting subject is the comparison made between the population of large cities of the ancient times with the population of the same cities in medieval times. Some factors are mentioned to explain why the population has dwindled dramatically from ancient time to medieval Europe: “During its heyday Babylon must have housed at least half a million souls. In the time of Christ some 900,000 people lived in Rome; in 1526 after invasions and plagues only 55,000. Likewise the bustling city of Alexandria, in Egypt, had some 600,000 inhabitants around 50 B.C. but a mere 35,000 by A.D. 1300 (P.356).” Some interesting facts about Pharaoh’s naval police force of the 14th century B.C., plumbing for water and sewer system of Roman empire (that vanished in later times), seven-story apartments in Egypt and apartment building with fast-food shops in Ostia (Rome), and fire engines invented by Heron of Alexandria, are described in this chapter. Banks are certainly invented in ancient Iraq by the sacred prostitutes of Babylonian temples! However, history of invention of money goes beyond that: “One of the earliest forms of money was the cowrie shell. Many bronze drinking vessels from Shang Dynasty China (c. 1500-1000 B.C.) carry inscriptions recording gifts of strings of cowrie shells. Cowries were precious essentially because of the great distance of Anyang from the Pacific coast, where they were collected. According to tradition, the importance of cowrie continued even after the introduction of coinage- around 600 B.C. the prime minister of the kingdom of Tsu, in modern Honan, is said to have issued metal coins in the shape of cowrie shells (P.373).”
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Peter James & Nick Thorpe: Ancient Inventions- 1994 Ballantine Books; New York
