G. Harrison, PhD
Preferred email: George_Harrison@Carleton.ca
Office Location: 4436 Herzberg Laboratories
Class Location: SGW Hall 521
Class Hours: Tues 5:30 – 7:30
Office Hour: Tues 4:00 – 5:00
Class Hours: Tues 5:30 – 7:30
TA: Alyssa Staff
Office Hours: by appointment
Email: Alyssa.Staff@Carleton.ca
With thanks to Gord Deinstadt
ANCIENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
(CLCV 2305A/TSES 2305A)
Course Description:
The Fall term will look primarily at technological innovations of the ancient Mediterranean
peoples, principally the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks.
The Winter term will look primarily at advances at knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean
peoples, principally the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks.
Each week will explore a different topic as an introduction to the material. There is the
expectation that one or another of these topics will form the basis of the term essay.
My writ is that advances in science and technology are cross-fertilising and crosssubstantiating. I am particularly aware, and encourage students to pursue (at their choice) in
their term essays, that periods of great technological innovation, such as the rise of
Muhammadism, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and the Computer Age, are also
periods of great advance in knowledge. This course examines this phenomenon for ancient
cultures, particularly through topics with contemporary ramifications.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
This course is cross-listed with the College of the Humanities/Classics and the Technology,
Society and Environment Program.
Course Book:
None.
No comprehensive textbook exists for a course as broad as this one.
To order several textbooks would impose an unfair financial burden.
Rather, each week will have links so that students can follow the books and sites where I have
found the information for each lecture. Those links will be useful for initial investigation of
Term Essay topics.
For the take home mid-term (before Sunday 21 Dec) and the Final Exam (TBA in the period 1123 April) class notes and power points will be posted on CU Learn site on which the exams will
be based.
A number of good atlases of antiquity exist for Greece, for Rome, and for Egypt. The Barrington
Atlas of the Classical World is the only comprehensive atlas for the ancient Mediterranean but it
is expensive. Affordable paperback atlases for Greece, for Rome, and for Egypt are easy to find;
the ones by Penguin, by Oxford University Press, and by the British Museum are recommended.
Engineering in the Ancient World by J.G. Landels (20022) remains a standard reference
work.
Grading and Evaluation:
Pliny critical evaluation
Book Report
Fall Term Take Home Exam
21 Oct
18 Nov
21 Dec
15%
15%
20%
Term Essay
17 Mar
25%
Winter Term Final Exam
TBA
25%
 see individual files for details
 ALL ASSIGNMENTS (EXCLUSIVE OF WINTER TERM FINAL EXAM) MUST
BE UPLOADED ELECTRONICALLY ON CU LEARN SITE FOR THIS CLASS
Suggested Class Outline:
TECHNOLOGY
9 Sept: Introduction + scale, space and time in the Mediterranean World
 Ptolemy, Strabo, Mela, Peutinger table
 the politics of maps > the Egyptian nomes
16 Sept: Origins of technology
 the Neolithic period in the ancient Mediterranean
 ‘technological lag’ and the bronze age revolution
23 Sept: Egyptians and cities of the Tigris-Euphrates
 merim and ziggurats
 first writing systems: cuneiform and hieroglyphics
30 Sept: The Gifts of Prometheus (fire)
 ‘cooked and the raw’; kilns for ceramics
 implications of cooking/storage containers
7 Oct:
The Gifts of Prometheus (fire)
 metals
 improved tools; improved weapons
14 Oct: Technology for display
 social stratification and technology
 dyes, paints, pots, carpentry, carving, tools, weaving, leather
21 Oct: Agriculture
 rise of private property
 ard and germination rates
 animals and agriculture
 ALL CALENDARS ARE AGRICULTURAL CALENDARS
PLINY ASSIGNMENT DUE ON CU-Learn (15%)
28 Oct: Engineering and Transport
 animals and agriculture
 animals and transport: the axle; carts and breakage
 water: Frontinus + boats and seamanship
4 Nov: Architecture
 tombs
11 Nov: Architecture
 public buildings
18 Nov: Architecture
 roads and harbours
BOOK REPORT DUE ON CU-Learn (15%)
25 Nov: War
 chariot and the battle of Qadesh
 sarissa
 Alexander and beards
 Marius’ spears
2 Dec: Communication
 ancient theatres, stadia and horse race parks as entertainment + proganda & dissent
 finance: compound interest; loan rates; avarice
 influence of coins on trade; propaganda
Christodoulos the counterfeiter
 weights and measures and trade
21 December (Sunday): FALL-TERM TAKE HOME EXAM (25%)
 posted 2 Dec (so we can discuss in class)
SCIENCE
6 Jan: Re-hash of Fall term + science in myth and religion
 unexplored assumptions
 scientia = knowledge (Gk. episteme)
13 Jan: Pre-Socratics
 4 humours
 4 elements
 investigation restricted to the 5 tactile senses
20 Jan: Plato, Aristotle, Zeno/Theophrastus, Alexandria on the natural world
 on the natural world
 Greek empiricism
 danger of kalo k’agatho (the Beautiful and the Good)
27 Jan: Mathematics
 Archimedes and Euclid
 problem of zero and trig/calculus
 calculating by Roman numerals
3 Feb: Measurements + Astronomy
 survey instruments
 Hippodamean planning
 constellations and navigation
 myth and the skies
 centuriation
 solar vs. lunar calendars
10 Feb: Biology and Psychology
 the nature of the mind in Aristotle, Stoics, and Epicureans
 Lucretius
17 Feb: WNITER BREAK – NO CLASS
24 Feb: Music, Acoustics, and Optics
 Ps. Plutarch, On music
 cultural perceptions of physical objects
3 Mar: Medicine
 Soranus, on Reproduction
 Galen
 Hippocratic corpus
 Aesculapius (and Ayios Pandelemon)
10 Mar: Physics and mathematics in imperial Greek and Roman writers
 Plutrach
 Seneca
 Philoponus
 Simplicius
17 Mar: Encyclopedists and observers
 Pliny the Elder
 Plutarch
 Pausanias
TERM ESSAY DUE ON CU-Learn (20%)
24 Mar: Mystics
 Apollonius of Tyana
 Philostratus
 hero cults as responses to drought and famine
 bleeding
 breeding
31 Mar: Science at the cross-roads of Christianity and paganism
 alchemy
 miracle cures
 the pilgrimage route
 iconoclasm
 astrology
 Hiero of Alexandria
 Hypatia of Alexandria
7 April: The first centuries of Moslem science
 astrolabe
 ‘On the tenets of the philosophers’
 the survival of Aristotle
 discussion of Winter-Term Final Exam
TBA: WINTER-TERM FINAL EXAM (25%)
 posted no later than 7 April (so we can discuss in class)
-- Other material on CU-Learn site --