Legacy of the
Ancient World
Pre-Greek Accomplishments
 Agriculture, irrigation, animal
domestication
 Calendar
 Metallurgy: Mining, smelting, metal-work,
casting
 Ceramics
 Glass-making
Why Agriculture?
• Hunter-gatherer lifestyle provides ample food
with minimal effort and ample leisure
• Cultivation may be more dependable
• Agriculture leads to:
– Greater population density
– Social Stratification
– Urbanization
Prerequisites for Agriculture
• Most plants have no use as food
• Mediterranean climate beneficial
– Seeds can survive long dry spells
– Perfect for storage
• Selective breeding
– Self-fertilization
• Wind pollination and animal dispersal means
uncontrollable offspring
– Single mutations of desirable traits (Almonds vs.
Oaks)
Animal Domestication
• Taming = training a specific animal to behave
as desired
• Domestication = changes in animal genes to
permanently instill desirable traits
• Do we really care if a rabbit is tame or
domesticated?
• Ability to tolerate human proximity
• Dominance Hierarchy that humans can co-opt
Obstacles to Animal Domestication
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Inability to tolerate human proximity (gazelles)
Chronically bad temperament (zebras)
Dangerous (bears)
No dominance hierarchy (deer)
Extremely territorial
Herds are territorial and won’t mix
Won’t mate in captivity (cheetahs)
Animal Domestication
• Self-Domestication
– Humans create a modified environment
around habitations
– Humans gather food and vital nutrients like salt
– Unconscious selection for low fear factor
– Hormonal changes: more frequent mating,
mottled coats, juvenile features, floppy ears
• Have we ever deliberately domesticated
any animal?
Ancient metallurgy
• Ancient metals: Au, Ag, Cu, Pb, Hg, Fe, plus
Sn and Zn in alloys
• How discovered?
– Campfire Theory - not hot enough
– Pigments? Possibly
– Need heat for a long time, plus lack of
oxygen, plus experimenting
– Best bet: Pottery kilns
Bronze and Iron
• Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin
• Where did the tin come from?
• How was the alloy discovered?
• Iron: Not better than bronze, but cheaper
Pre-Greek Accomplishments
Architecture
 Stone cutting, dressing, sculpting
 Arches
 Post-and-Lintel
 Corbelled
 Circular (only in Old World, except for Inuit
igloo)
 Truss-unknown until Middle Ages-requires
timber
Pre-Greek Accomplishments
 Simple machines
 Wheel
 Lever (wheel + lever = pulley)
 Wedge (inclined plane, screw)
 Heavy Woodworking
 Catapults
 Shipbuilding
Greek Technology and Science
Major traditions
 Ionian--mercantile, experimental.
 Pythagorean-mathematical but mystical
 Athenian schools: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates,
 Emphasis on logic, deduction, idealization
 "Golden Age" - Pericles ca. 450 B.C.
 Hellenistic - exported during and after
Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.)
Alexander’s Empire
Good Guys and Bad Guys?
• Ionians speak most clearly to us today, but• Science often has a faith in whole numbers
that Pythagoras would recognize
• Scientists idealize all the time. Plato would
find much familiar
• Where would science be without logic and
deduction?
• It wasn’t Aristotle’s fault that people put
him on a pedestal
Why the Greeks never developed
modern science
• They weren’t trying to become us!
• It wasn’t clear that meticulous observation of
nature would lead anywhere
• They were asking different questions, e.g.,
why is there cause and effect?
• They had all the elements but nobody ever
synthesized them.
The Etruscans
• Fairly sophisticated people, with expertise in
iron working and extensive trade contacts.
• Link between the Greeks and the Romans.
• A couple of tidbits from the Etruscans: the
letter F and the "Roman" numerals V, L and D.
• For several centuries Rome was ruled by the
Etruscans, but the Romans overthrew the
Etruscans and eventually absorbed them.