Ancient Accomplishments Living in the time we do; we have the assistance of many assorted tools and devices to accomplish tasks. Some believe they are much smarter than our ancient ancestors because they can do things our ancestors could not. This is just a case of false bravado. Some of our ancient ancestors did things without these instruments and tools which we might be incapable of doing today without them. The ancient Greeks proved time and time again they were extremely advanced. Their inventions and mathematical solutions took place before the birth of Christ. There are examples everywhere of the incredible things they were able to do. They figured out the size of the moon, after figuring out the circumference of the earth. They discovered steam power and used it to power automatic doors in their temples. The inventions just kept pouring in. They were the first ones to invent vending machines. They figured out the planets when around the sun, way before Galileo. The city of Alexandra contained many people from all over the world, but there was a preponderance of ancient Greeks living there. The world’s most important library was located there, but was later sacked by the Roman Army. This was a loss we have never gotten over since the library contained many thousands of ancient scrolls which showed things like schematics for inventions among others. No one has an idea of what inventions were lost because of this. It seems like every ancient culture had some amazing things going for it. These things were usually connected to the building of structures. It is hard to imagine a society without metal tools building giant pyramids and beautiful buildings which are perfectly lined up and yet the Maya fit into this category. They had no metal and archaeologists suggest the reason for this was there was no iron ore where they were located. This didn’t stop them from creating fantastic structures. The Maya were around for a long time. Archaeologists claim they can be traced back to 3000 B.C. and they disappeared around 1546 A.D. thanks to the Spanish conquest. This means obviously they existed for 4546 years. At one time they were said to be ahead of the entire world in technology. They made some calculations related to astronomy which was so accurate they can’t be improved on today. There was no such thing as the Maya Empire, instead they were roughly 50 city states. They excelled in agriculture. In 300 B.C. the Maya invented a type of cement. It was used to cast structures in place. They even built the longest bridge in the ancient world and it was a suspension bridge which contains three different spans of which the longest was 63 meters. Rope was used for cables. One has to wonder how an advanced civilization such as the Maya could have believed human sacrifice was important in their religion? The ancient Egyptians were quite prolific builders. One cannot help but be impressed by the huge columns and statues of their temples and tomb complexes. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the pyramids they built, especially those on the Gaza plain. What makes the great pyramid so impressive is the fact its measurements are so incredibly accurate we would have a hard time today trying to equal them, if we could even do that. When you look at the statues of their former pharaoh’s and Egyptian gods one has to wonder how they could have gotten the faces where multiple statues of the same pharaoh on guard existed, to match so perfectly? Experts have been wondering about this for a long time. If you take a picture of one side of this type of face and flip it over it matches the other side perfectly. When one looks up and sees columns many, many times the size of a human being in a temple you have to wonder how they could have built them so high. We have found out how they did this and I have mentioned it in the past. They would put down one course of stone, cover it with sand and apply the next course of stone until it got to the height they wanted and then they would remove all the sand leaving the structure intact. This method was ingenious. My personal favorite was the Romans. It seemed like they could build almost anything they wanted. They had created things like cranes to lift heavy stones and a system of blocks and tackles. Unfortunately, everything had to be powered by either animals or people. The cement they invented was incredible and just got harder with age and the fact it would dry underwater was perfect for building harbors. There is no doubt the Romans got some of their ideas from the ancient Greeks and that is why their buildings look so similar. One of the big differences between the Greek and Roman buildings was the arch which was perfected by the Romans. The Greeks never had this. They also perfected domes and figured out how to make them light yet strong. Their oldest surviving dome was built in 64 A.D. one of their greatest accomplishments was figuring out how to bring water to places which had none. This was accomplished with aqueducts and the Romans actually figured out how to make water travel uphill without a pump. The Coliseum was a structure which was so perfectly designed it could empty out in just a couple of minutes, a feat which cannot be accomplished today for structures of the same size. We just don’t tend to think about ancient societies this way and yet when we don’t, we are missing many of the facts about how they lived. They accomplished a lot more things than most of us realize, and our society today is built upon these accomplishments.
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