Inventions Society is Founded Upon Some of the things we have today, were used in one form or another in ancient times. The first things that come to mind are alcoholic products. A form of beer was used in ancient Egypt and the people considered it a food. It is said an ancient Egyptian had to have his daily beer. Just as today, it was popular at festivals. If you had a party in ancient Egypt, you were expected to have beer. The recipe for the ancient Egyptian beer was a little different. The Egyptians didn’t have hops and the grain was different and predated modern wheat and barley. Another ancient alcoholic beverage was wine. Remains in Iran proved wine was being used as a drink somewhere between 8,500 B.C. and 4,000 B.C. So far this is the earliest use I can find. It never seemed to go out of favor since then. The ancient Greeks and Romans were big wine drinkers, and the Romans had a god of wine adapted from Dionysus the Greek god of wine, it was Bacchus. Fashion was thought to be relatively new in the long line of humans, but recently something was found unexpectedly by archaeologists. They said they found a bone tool which dates back 320,000 years. What is more surprising however is the fact, they believe it was made to tailor skins for a better fit. Up to now we thought people in those days would just throw on any old skin, but apparently, they wanted a good fit. In the same vein, scientists have found out silk is a lot older than originally thought. Silk items have been found in tombs at Jiahu, China. What makes this so surprising is the tombs are 8,500 years old. We are talking about making silk garments in 6,200 B.C. and maybe even earlier. Just because we find something older than we thought does not necessarily mean this is the first use. There could even be older silks we have not found yet. Every car and truck has an Odometer. That is the device that lists the miles traveled by the vehicle. This device is electronic in many vehicles today, but was mechanical before that. What many of us do not know is the fact the odometer is a lot older than we suspect. There are a couple different stories about who invented the odometer. The first odometer is said to have been invented in Greece by Archimedes of Syracuse around 264 B.C. Some historians say Heron of Alexandria invented it. While they were primitive by today’s standards, they were ingenious. Some say the first odometer would drop stones at exact distances from each other and each stone represented a distance. For example, if you had one hundred stones and each stone represented one mile, you could count the stones used and find the distance traveled. The Chinese built an ancient odometer which would beat a drum at a specific distance. If you kept count of the beats, you would know the distance traveled. This was built roughly three hundred years later. If someone was to say to me what ancient invention was the most important and still used today, I would be torn between fire and the wheel. As far as fire goes, scientists claim they found evidence Home erectus, a supposed early form of human had used fire over 1,000,000 years ago. In Israel evidence was found which puts the date of fire use as far back as almost 800,000 years. Getting into the wheel, it was perhaps the one invention which our entire society is based on. Wheels are everywhere. In the simplest of machines to the most complicated. If it wasn’t for the wheel, we might still be living back in 4,000 B.C., because that is suspected when it was invented. It is believed it was invented in Mesopotamia, which today is Iraq. One incredible invention was agriculture and there is a good chance the dates do not go further enough back. For example, some ruins of temples have been found which date back to at least 600 years before the date for the first agriculture. The temple complex of Gobekli Tepe is in Turkey and is at least 12,000 years old, and it is suspected it could be up to 20,000 years old. In order to build it the people had to stay in one place for many years which would have exhausted the game in the area, so it is supposed they must have had crops. It is said agriculture dates back 11,000 years. Somewhere along the line humans decided they needed to put something on their feet and invented what I will loosely call shoes, because in the beginning they were probably just skins. Some say this dates back 40,000 years, but others claim the earliest known shoe is the sagebrush bark sandal and it is from somewhere between 7,000 to 8,000 B.C. Early shoes had no left and right, both were the same. The first left and right shoes were invented in 1854 by Alexis Godillot. The first recorded use of shoes with arches was in 1865. They were invented by Everett Dunbar. The airplane has been an incredible boon to civilization. It allowed fast travel to every part of the earth. While ships increased in speed over the centuries, they just could not compete in speed with the planes, but who invented aerodynamics? It may have been the ancient Egyptians or some earlier race. As incredible as this sounds, scientists were astounded when they opened an ancient Egyptian tomb and found a model plane with a bird’s head. It had perfect aerodynamics and was capable of gliding after a missing tail piece was replaced. The glider, known as the Saqqara Bird, was found in the tomb of Pa-di-lmen in 1898 and has been dated to about 200 B.C. As for modern airplanes the credit goes to the Wright Brothers in 1903. Some dispute their title as inventors of the heavier than airplane. Our entire culture seems to have been built on the foundation created by our ancestors. Some of their accomplishments are still mysteries to us. We just can’t figure out how they did some of the things they are credited with. We know they did them because the proof has been left behind and we don’t know if we will ever be able to solve those mysteries. It is important to note there is disagreement on some of the dates I have provided. Some say some should be older and others say they are too old. I have done the best I could to be accurate.
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