10: Prehistoric Temples The prehistoric people who lived in what is
today Malta were some of the best temple builders of their time.
One of the greatest examples of their advanced techniques still around today is the Mnajdra
complex.
This ancient temple joined astrology with architecture in one of the best representations
of an ancient observatory.
At the equinoxes in March and September, the sunrise perfectly illuminates the central
corridor in the south temple.
And during the solstices in June and December, the sunrise lines up perfectly as well.
Somehow, the builders of this temple knew exactly which parts of the structure they
wanted to be illuminated during the solstices and the equinoxes, and which parts they wished
to remain dark.
In other words, not only did they have advanced knowledge of the stars, but also of building.
This is especially impressive when you remember that Malta was a Chieftain society.
They built this temple way back in 3600 BC, more than 5000 years ago.
Back then, the people here were ruled by a class of priests, rather than an actual system
of government.
They even installed small vertical holes where light would slip through in the temple, likely
as a primitive calendar that tracked the seasons.
Experts believe the builders probably had to work at night and use the star cluster
called Pleiades as a type of rough guide, making sure all their structures were lining
up perfectly.
However they managed, this structure is a feat of incredibly advanced ancient engineering.
9: Ancient Air Conditioning Air conditioning came about in its modern
form in 1902.
But for thousands of years before that, people still enjoyed air conditioning.
They just did it in a very different way.
For example, it's believed that the ancient Egyptians were the first ones to experiment
with cooling their homes.
When the Egyptians were dealing with scorching temperatures, which was most of the time,
they would hang wet mats over their doorways.
This might sound kind of silly, but it's actually quite scientific.
When the water from the wet mats evaporated, heat got sucked out of the house.
The primitive yet ingenious method also added moisture to the air, which helped to cool
people down in the extremely dry climate.
In the Roman Empire, air conditioning became even more advanced.
The wealthiest of the Romans used their aqueducts to circulate cold freshwater through pipes
inside the walls of their houses.
This was extremely effective at keeping the inside of their homes much cooler than outside.
For those who couldn't afford these cold-water pipes, they were forced to congregate at public
baths to stay cool.
The Han Dynasty also had a unique take on air conditioning.
From 200 BC until 220 AD, the White Horse Temple had its own cooling hall where rotary
fans powered by water kept the elite members of society cool during the summer.
And finally, Persians built wind towers to keep themselves cool.
These towers had windows that allowed air to sweep through, pushing colder air into
people’s houses and sucking warmer air out.
8: Maya Water Treatment System Scientists investigating the Maya city of
Tikal deep in the jungle of Guatemala have found evidence of an ancient water treatment
system.
The Maya were using a mineral called zeolite to treat water much like we do today with
fluoride.
They poured this mineral into a special treatment system to filter any kind of harmful organisms
or toxic elements from the water supply.
So far as scientists are concerned, this is the oldest known example of water treatment
anywhere in North America.
Scientists made the amazing discovery by collecting sediment cores from three different drinking
water reservoirs.
These reservoirs stored water from between 2200 and 1100 years ago, including during
the peak of Tikal when it had about 60,000 residents.
All those people were drinking from the reservoirs placed around the city.
The mineral analysis of the sediment samples showed the presence of zeolite, which scientists
know today is capable of trapping contaminants in drinking water.
It's even used in some of the most modern water purification systems.
But how in the world did people 2000 years ago know about a mineral that could trap chemicals
in water?
We're not entirely sure.
But we do know, thanks to scientists from the University of Cincinnati, that the zeolite
was taken from a mineral deposit about 19 miles (30.5 km) from the city.
The main theory scientists have now is that the Maya knew that the water found near the
zeolite source was a lot healthier than the stuff they had in their reservoirs.
They realized that by taking the zeolite deposits and using them in Tikal, they could make their
own water purer and safer to drink.
7: An Ancient Well An ancient well found in the Czech Republic
may just be the oldest piece of surviving wooden architecture anywhere in the world.
It survived for 7200 years because it spent most of that time underwater, away from oxygen.
The well itself is lined with oak.
It was found beside a Czech motorway back in 2018, and it only goes about 4.5 (1.37
m) feet deep.
Researchers are still struggling to figure out its history, but it's pretty clear that
this advanced piece of technology may have been one of the very first wooden wells ever
made.
To understand when the well came from, an archeological team analyzed the rings found
in the wood and radiocarbon dated the material.
The well was made from oak trees in 5255 BC.
This was near the end of the Neolithic period, a time when humans first started farming.
According to the analysis of the structure, whoever built this thing had a shockingly
sophisticated understanding of technology.
It actually looks more like something that the Romans would have built some 5000 years
later.
And to make things even more bizarre, nobody has any idea how the farmers managed to create
such an advanced structure.
To us, it's just a wooden well that farmers used to gather water.
But it would have required precision craftsmanship and complicated tools that Neolithic people
simply didn't have.
Remember, these guys were using rock tools.
They were hardly even out of the Stone Age and were still carving axes from animal horns.
How do you think primitive Europeans over 7000 years ago figured out how to make a well
of the same quality the Romans were building much later?
Let me know any theories you might have in the comments and don't forget to hit subscribe
before the end of the video!
6: Central Heating Central heating was just one of the great
inventions thought up by the ancient Greeks.
Believe it or not, the Greeks were the first people to implement indoor heating, with other
cultures copying and adding more innovations later.
The Greeks used fire for their central heating system.
They figured out how to push heat from a fire through pipes into different rooms inside
of a certain building.
The pipes would be hidden under the floor so that the heat would radiate up, keeping
their feet nice and toasty.
It would also fill the room with pleasant heat, just like any house today that has underfloor
heating.
It’s really the same concept that we use today.
The only major difference is that with the ancient Greeks, the fire needed to be constantly
maintained.
This tedious task was usually given to the household slaves.
Back then, central heating wasn't totally without its victims.
5: The First Structures The earliest human building project ever has
been discovered deep in a French cave.
Neanderthal builders lived in the region a very long time ago.
We just talked about a well that was over 7000 years old, but these structures go back
175,000 years before today.
That's actually 100,000 years before modern humans came to exist in Europe.
Keep in mind just how old these structures are.
Archeologists found that the Neanderthals yanked over 400 stalagmites from the ceiling
of the cave and then stacked them on top of each other to produce what could be the very
first walls ever made by humanoid hands.
It really was just as simple as a wall, just a few layers of stalagmites wedged to form
a barrier about 21 feet across.
But still, it shows that even before humans evolved into humans, we were setting our sights
on greatness.
And maybe privacy!
According to archeologist Marie Soressi, this wall is different from anything the experts
have ever seen before.
Nobody is quite sure what the structure was used for, though parts of it were found blackened
from heat.
This has led some to suspect that Neanderthals may have been trying to embed fireplaces in
the walled structure, both to keep themselves warm and to illuminate the cave and stave
off the darkness.
4: The Cloaca Maxima The Cloaca Maxima is by far the best example
of a sewer system used by ancient Rome.
In fact, it's been called the greatest sewer system in the world, continuously in use since
the 6th century BC.
Back then, it was an effective water drainage system for the city of Rome, so effective
and so great that they literally named it Cloaca Maxima, or “Greatest Sewer.”
Today, this is one of the oldest monuments in the city, although it doesn't really attract
tourists like the Colosseum or the Pantheon.
It was built during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, originally intended for emptying
marshlands and carrying stormwater out of the center of the city into the river Tiber.
300 years after its inception, it became a sewage system as waste from public baths and
latrines were redirected through the Cloaca Maxima.
The sewer system continued to expand under the rule of Augustus Caesar in the 1st century.
He expanded the system to include the flow from 11 major aqueducts.
Parts of the sewer were restored during the Renaissance.
In 2012 robots inspected its interior.
And today, there is extensive maintenance being done so that it can continue being used.
3: Bringing Water to the Desert A team of archeologists in the remote highlands
of Yemen have discovered evidence of an ancient irrigation system from 5200 years ago.
This is direct proof of advanced irrigation techniques from a time when human beings were
transitioning from hunting and herding to settling down and growing crops.
And this wasn't just one piece of an irrigation system, the members of the archeological team
discovered 174 ancient irrigation structures.
According to Michael Harrower, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto,
the earliest farmers in the region of Wadi Sana faced massive environmental challenges.
There was barely enough water for them to grow crops.
So, they managed themselves to develop hydrology techniques to capture water runoff from summer
monsoons.
With these techniques, they succeeded in transforming the desert into a lush oasis.
And while irrigation systems may sound pretty banal, the truth is that by bringing water
to the desert, these people were able to eat food grown as a result of regular water access
and prosper.
This meant huge and powerful ancient cities rose up around irrigation technologies.
If it wasn’t for irrigation, the most impressive ancient civilizations of the Middle East may
never have existed.
2: Who Invented the Compass?
One of the greatest inventions of all time is also one of the most overlooked.
I’m talking about the compass, a pretty mundane device these days.
And if you don't quite know how a compass works, let me quickly explain it.
The compass consists of a magnetic needle that when placed horizontally will automatically
point itself at the magnetic field of the Earth, directed north to south.
It was China in the Han Dynasty that first learned how to use the Earth’s magnetic
fields to develop their own compasses.
This was around the 1st century AD.
But they didn't use it for navigation right away.
At first, it was used for all kinds of hocus pocus like divination, geomancy, and fortune
telling.
It wasn't for some time that people learned it could also be used to orient yourself and
for navigation.
The Chinese made their earliest compasses out of lodestone, a type of mineral magnetite.
In fact, the very first compass ever was literally just a lump of this stone tied to a rope and
left hanging.
The compass as we know it today, more or less, wasn’t used until the 11th century by the
Chinese military for navigational purposes.
And from there, the compass quickly spread into Europe.
It dramatically improved the world of sailing, since now the captain actually knew where
his ship was going.
Ships could now sail all year without having to rely on the sun and stars for orientation.
1: Conquering the World with Roads The first major road in the world was the
Appian Way, developed by the Romans in 312 BC.
It was used as a supply route between the Republic of Rome and its allies in Capua while
Rome was knee-deep in the Second Samnite War.
But the Appian Way worked so well that building roads became wildly important to the Roman
Empire, and one of the main reasons for their success.
As the Roman legions burned a trail through Europe, they built highways to link all their
captured cities with their capital of Rome.
This is where the saying, “all roads lead to Rome” comes from.
Because when roads first came into existence, they all literally led back to Rome.
Soldiers could move very quickly, traders could follow the roads from town to town,
and the world was propelled blindingly fast into the age of globalization.
But the Romans also made their roads incredibly well.
The design was impressive, with retaining walls on either side of the road and 3-foot
(.9 m) trenches.
The bottom section was made of leveled earth or sand, then a layer of small stones, a foundation
of crushed rock and gravel, and a surface layer of hard blocks made from either gravel
or volcanic lava.
And yes, many of these roads still exist today.
The one we talked about at the beginning, the Appian Way, is still around right now
and almost perfectly preserved.
Roman roads were even used up until the 19th century in a lot of places in Europe.
The Fosse Way in Britain is still used by bikes and foot traffic, while many Roman roads
line the sides of modern highways.
What do you think was the most impressive ancient technology?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks a lot for watching!
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