CHAPTER LESSON 2B: Ancient Civilization

1 (Greek, Roman, and Egyptian)

Did you know that the pyramids were not built by slaves but by paid laborers? Ancient
construction workers were a mix of skilled artisans and temporary hands, and some appear to
have taken great pride in their craft. The idea that slaves built the pyramids was first conjured
by the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C., but most historians now dismiss it as
myth. While the ancient Egyptians were certainly not averse to keeping slaves, they appear to
have mostly used them as field hands and domestic servants (https://www.history.com/news).

ANCIENT EGYPT
The ancient Egyptian civilization began 5,000 years ago when people started building villages next
to the River Nile in north-east Africa. It lasted for around 3,000 years. The river was an important source of
water in a hot and dry desert landscape. It enabled the ancient Egyptians to grow crops like wheat, barley,
fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, they have established a lot in terms of infrastructure. Aside from
Engineering technology, the Egyptians have contributed other practical things that the world now
considers as essential.
CONTRIBUTIONS
THE PYRAMIDS
The oldest pyramid was erected for King Zoser between
2667-2648 BC.The oldest pyramid was erected for King Zoser
between 2667-2648 BC. In fact it is the first monumental stone
building designed and constructed that we know of.

WRITING
Along with the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians were the
first people to develop their language into a codified form of
writing. All early forms of writing were pictograms – pictures. All
writing systems developed in this way but their original forms
become lost as the pictures are refined into abstract forms. What
is interesting about the Egyptians is that although their writing
changed to the abstract form of Hieratic they deliberately
preserved the hieroglyphic pictures in their original forms.

PAPYRUS SHEETS
Papyrus sheets are the earliest paper-like material – all other civilizations used stone, clay tablets,
animal hide, wood materials or wax as a writing surface. Papyrus was, for over 3000 years, the most
important writing material in the ancient world. It was exported all around the Mediterranean and was
widely used in the Roman Empire as well
as the Byzantine Empire. Its use
continued in Europe until the seventh
century AD, when an embargo on
exporting it forced the Europeans to use
parchment.

BLACK INK
The Egyptians mixed vegetable gum, soot and bee wax to make black ink. They replaced soot with
other materials such as ochre to make various colors.
 THE OX-DRAWN PLOUGH
Using the power of oxen to pull the plough
revolutionized agriculture and modified versions of
this Egyptian invention are still used by farmers in
developing countries around the world.

THE SICKLE
The sickle is a curved blade used for cutting and harvesting grain, such as wheat
and barley.

IRRIGATION
The Egyptians constructed canals and irrigation ditches to
harness Nile River’s yearly flood and bring water to distant fields.

THE SHADOOF
The Shadoof is a long balancing pole with a weight on one end
and a bucket on the other. The bucket is filled with water and easily
Shadoof
raised then emptied onto higher ground.

THE CALENDAR
The Egyptians devised the solar calendar by recording the
yearly reappearance of Sirius (the Dog Star) in the eastern sky. It was
a fixed point which coincided with the yearly flooding of the Nile.
Their calendar had 365 days and 12 months with 30 days in each
month and an additional five festival days at the end of the year.
However, they did not account for the additional fraction of a day
and their calendar gradually became incorrect. Eventually Ptolemy
III added one day to the 365 days every four years.
Calendar
CLOCKS
In order to tell the time Egyptians invented two types of clock.
Obelisks were used as sun clocks by noting how its shadow moved
around its surface throughout the day. From the use of obelisks they
identified the longest and shortest days of the year. An inscription in
the tomb of the court official Amenemhet dating to the16th century
BC shows a water clock made from a stone vessel with a tiny hole at
the bottom which allowed water to dripped at a constant rate. The
passage of hours could be measured from marks spaced at different
levels. The priest at Karnak temple used a similar instrument at night to
determine the correct hour to perform religious rites.

SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS
The Edwin Smith Papyrus shows the Egyptians
invented medical surgery. It describes 48 surgical cases of
injures of the head, neck, shoulders, breast and chest. It
includes a list of instruments used during surgeries with
instructions for the suturing of wounds using a needle and
thread. This list includes lint, swabs, bandage, adhesive
plaster, surgical stitches and cauterization. It is also the
earliest document to make a study of the brain. The Cairo
Museum has a collection of surgical instruments which include scalpels, scissors, copper needles, forceps,
spoons, lancets, hooks, probes and pincers.

WIGS
During the hot summers many Egyptians shaved their heads to keep
them clean and prevent pests such as lice. Although priests remained bald as
part of their purification rituals, those that could afford it had wigs made in
various styles and set with perfumed beeswax.

MUMMIFICATION
The Egyptians were so expert at preserving the bodies of the
dead that after thousands of years we know of the diseases they
suffered such as arthritis, tuberculosis of the bone, gout, tooth
decay, bladder stones, and gallstones; there is evidence, too, of
the disease bilharziasis (schistosomiasis), caused by small, parasitic
flatworms, which still exists in Egypt today. There seems to have
been no syphilis or rickets.

Did you know that It was common in ancient Greece to write manuscripts bi-directionally,
meaning that one line would be written from left to right and the following line would be written
from right to left. Just to make it doubly confusing, the letters were also mirrored from one line
to the other. This was called boustrophedon text (https://www.factinate.com).

ANCIENT GREECE
Ancient Greece was born on the shores of the Aegean Sea about 4,000 years ago. In over a
millennium it expanded to lands as far as west of Spain and Far East of India. There were collections of 1500
territories that acted as sovereign nation called City- States. Moreover, Ancient Greece acquired the 1st
large scale democracy which was developed in the city state of Athens. Greek empire established colonies
overseas and it is well protected from foreign invaders such as the Persian Empire. City- States are united to
defend their homeland (Example: LEONIDAS king of Sparta fought XEREX king of Persia). Soldiers are labeled
as HEROES which inspired the creation of Olympics that celebrated PHYSICAL COMPETITION. The Greek
empire contributed mainly on the arts and architecture, philosophy (reason, ethics, and natural law),
language, and Alphabet.
REASONS FOR DECLINE
1. Greece was divided into city-states. Constant warring between the city states weakened Greece and
made it difficult to unite against a common enemy like Rome.
2. The poorer classes in Greece began to rebel against the aristocracy and the wealthy.
3. The city-states of Ancient Greece had different governments and were constantly changing alliances.
4. Greek colonies had a similar culture, but were not strong allies to Greece or any of the Greek city-
states.
CONTRIBUTIONS
WATER MILL
The water mill was used for metal shaping, agriculture, and
milling. It originated from the Perachora wheel created in the third
century BC in Greece and was invented by the contemporary
Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium.

Water mill
ODOMETER
The odometer measures the distance traveled by a vehicle such as a
bicycle or automobile. It is mechanical in nature and slowly evolving
into electro-mechanical with the rise of technology. Vitruvius first
described the odometer as being used for measuring distance around
27 BC. Archimedes of Syracuse as its inventor used the odometer
sometime around the First Punic War. Some
historians also attribute its invention to Heron
of Alexandria.
Odometer

ALARM CLOCK
The ancient Greek’s alarm clocks used large complicated mechanisms
to time the alarm. They made use of water (or sometimes small stones or sand)
that dropped into drums which sounded the alarm. Plato was believed to have
utilized an alarm clock to signal the start of his lecture. His version used four water
vessels lined up vertically. The upper vessel supplied the water which dropped to
the vessel below it, which was set to be filled in a given time. After it was full,
water was tapped off at a faster rate into the third vessel which would cause the
expulsion of contained air, creating a whistling noise. Afterwards, this vessel
would empty towards the bottom vessel for storage and reuse.

Alarm clock
CARTOGRAPHY
Anaximander was one of the first pioneer cartographers to
create a map of the world. He included all inhabited areas of the
world in his map. The map appeared in tablet form and featured
Ionia in the center. It was bounded on the east by the Caspian Sea
and stretched to the Pillars of Hercules in the west. Middle Europe
borders the map in the north while Ethiopia and the Nile feature at
the southern end.

OLYMPICS
It was dedicated to the
Olympian Gods. The game was for young men to show their physical
qualities and to enforce the relationship between the various Greek
cities. Only Greek men were allowed to participate in the Olympics but
not women. There are three stages of the Olympic Games. The Isthmian
Games (two years at the Isthmus of Corinth), Pythian Games (four years
near Delphi), and Olympia (southwest of Greece which takes place
every four years)

Did you know that ancient Romans built dams that are still in use today? Amazingly, two Roman
dams built in Spain are still in use after 1,900 years. These dams are noteworthy for their
extraordinary height, which remained unsurpassed anywhere in the world until the Late Middle
Ages (https://www.factinate.com/).
 ANCIENT ROME
Beginning in the eighth century B.C., Ancient Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s Tiber
River into an empire that at its peak encompassed most of continental Europe, Britain, much of western
Asia, northern Africa and the Mediterranean islands. Among the many legacies of Roman dominance are
the widespread use of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian)
derived from Latin, the modern Western alphabet and calendar and the emergence of Christianity as a
major world religion. After 450 years as a republic, Rome became an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s
rise and fall in the first century B.C. The long and triumphant reign of its first emperor, Augustus, began a
golden age of peace and prosperity; by contrast, the Roman Empire’s decline and fall by the fifth century
A.D. was one of the most dramatic implosions in the history of human civilization.

CONTRIBUTIONS
ARCHES
Romans first found a way to set an arch on top of
two tall pedestals such that it would span a walkway (and
in many cases, even highways). These arches went on to
become pivotal engineering constructions that laid the
foundation for many of the subsequent structural
highlights of ancient Rome. Many bridges were built upon
these arches, and so were the aqueducts, sewers,
amphitheaters, and even the great Colosseum.

GRID- BASED CITIES

It is characterized by a rectangle or a square in a
nearly perfect orthogonal layout of streets. The two main streets, the “cardo” and the “decumanus”, would
cross each other at a right angle in the center of the grid. This grid was an ideal structure to organize the
different components of a city such as housing, theaters, and stores into particular blocks. To avoid the city
becoming a monotonous series of blocks, the Romans incorporated
various items such as open theaters, public baths, markets, and
other recreational facilities within the city grid.

SEWERS AND SANITATION

The Romans established a number of public baths, latrines,
and an interlinked sewage line binding them all together in a
complex and efficient feat of engineering. Rome and other major
cities had an extensive network of sewers and drains that ran along
the sides of the streets.

ROADS AND HIGHWAYS

Used for the rise of the Roman state, expanding all
across the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire. In a
period of about 700 years, they built about 55,000 miles of
paved highways around the Mediterranean basin and across
Europe. It ensured the fast and efficient movement of goods,
soldiers, and information across the entire empire. Roman
roads usually followed a straight route across the countryside,
making travel efficient and fast.
AQUEDUCTS
It is used to transport water from rivers, springs, and
reservoirs. The first Roman aqueducts were built around 312
BC It uses the downhill flow of water to supply the city centers.
Once the water reached bigger cities like Rome, large
reservoirs would then contain it. The public baths, fountains,
toilets, and private villas could then all tap into the network
and access the water.

SURGERY TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

They have invented procedures such as the cesarean
section. During the reign of Augustus, a military medical corps was
established to assist injured soldiers in battle They also invented tools
like bronze scalpels, obstetric hooks, bone drills, and forceps, and
also the rather frighteningly named vaginal speculum. Moreover,
they pioneered the earliest form of antiseptic surgery since they used
to dip medical tools in hot water to disinfect them before surgery.

JULIAN CALENDAR
Ancient Romans instituted the 12 months of the year. It
is clear from the name that the calendar was named after
Julius Caesar himself, and some Eastern orthodox churches use
it to calculate holidays even today.

NEWSPAPERS
Newspapers were used for official announcements
and developments. Rome was the first empire to establish a
sophisticated system of circulating written news. It published
the “Acta Diurna” which translates as “Daily Events.” It is
comprised of political news, trials, military campaigns,
executions, major scandals, and other similar subjects these
handwritten news sheets were published daily and posted by
the government in the Roman Forum from the year 59 BC to
somewhere around 222 AD. The Romans also published the
“Acta Senatus” that recorded the proceedings in the Roman
Senate

CONCRETE
The Romans used to combine their cement with volcanic
rock popularly known as “tuff,” enabling the resulting concrete
to endure possible chemical decay. It is not much of a surprise
that many ancient Roman structures such as the Pantheon, the
Colosseum and the Roman Forum having been standing for
more than two millennia.
Name:_________________________________________________________
Program, Yr., and Section:________________________________

ACTIVITY 3: Answer the following. Detach the worksheet once finished.

1. Identify and write three (3) major scientific and technological developments in the
world that created a large impact on your daily life.
1 2 3

2. What historical antecedent gave rise to the invention you mentioned in the first question?

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