History of Science and Technology in the World

A Timeline of Human Development

  • Homo habilis (Skillful human, lived 1.5 to 2.4 million years ago)
    • Also called “Handy Man”
    • Used stones as simple tools and ate a variety of foods
  • Homo erectus (Upright human, lived 300,000 to 1.6 million years ago)
    • Used fire
    • Made stone axes and chopping tools
  • Homo sapiens (Wise human, lived 30,000 to 230,000 years ago)
    • Could speak
    • Made more complicated tools
    • Also called “the Neanderthals”
  • Homo sapiens sapiens (Modern human)
    • Have been around for 120,000 years
    • Became more advanced about 40,000 years ago

I. Early Technology

  • The Stone Age (2.5 mya – 3,000 BC)
    • Because of the great span of time involved, the Stone Age is divided into three periods: Paleolithic (or Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (or Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (or New Stone Age).
    • These three periods refer to the gradual progress of tool-making from the earliest coarse pebble tools to more advanced and refined tools.
    • During these era an eventual transformation was seen from a culture of hunting and gathering to farming and food production.

Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age) 2.5 mya-10,000 BC

  • Early humans lived in caves or simple huts or tepees and were hunters and gatherers. They used basic stone and bone tools, as well as crude stone axes, for hunting birds and wild animals.
  • They cooked their prey, including woolly mammoths, dear and bison, using controlled fire. They also fished and collected berries, fruit and nuts. The early humans of Paleolithic period that dwell in the caves are hunters and gatherers.

Mesolithic Period – (10,000 BC – 8,000 BC)

  • Humans used small stone tools, now also polished and sometimes crafted with points and attached to antlers, bone or wood to serve as spears and arrows.
  • They often lived nomadically in camps near rivers and other bodies of water.
  • Agriculture was introduced during this time, which led to more permanent settlements in villages. People of the Mesolithic period use polished pointed tools during hunting

Neolithic Period (8,000 BC – 3,000 BC)

  • Ancient humans switched from hunter/gatherer mode to agriculture and food production. They domesticated animals and cultivated cereal grains.
  • They used polished hand axes, adzes for ploughing and tilling the land and started to settle in the plains.
  • Advancements were made not only in tools but also in farming, home construction and art, including pottery, sewing and weaving.

Stone Age Breakthroughs in Hunter-Gatherer Tools

  • Sharpened stones (Oldowan tools): 2.6 million years ago
    • These were basically stone cores with flakes removed from them to create a sharpened edge that could be used for cutting, chopping or scraping.
    • One of the earliest examples of stone tools found in Ethiopia
  • Stone handaxe (Acheulean tools): 1.6 million years ago
    • Named for St. Acheul on the Somme River in France, where the first tools from this tradition were found in the mid-19th century.
    • These tool is used for striking flakes off longer rock cores to shape them into thinner less rounded implements.
  • A new kind of knapping (Levallois technique): 400,000 to 200,00 years ago
    • Known as the Levallois, or prepared-core technique, it involved striking pieces off a stone core to produce a tortoise- shell like shape, then carefully striking the core again in such a way that a single large, sharp flake can be broken off.
    • The method could produce numerous knife-like tools of predictable size and shape.
  • Cutting blades (Aurignacian industry): 80,000 to 40,000 years ago
    • The central innovation of this type of tool making involved detaching long rectangular flakes from a stone core to form blades, which proved more effective at cutting.
    • The blades’ shape also made them easier to attach to a handle, which gave greater leverage and increased efficiency.
  • Small, sharp micro blades (Magdalenian culture): 11,000 to 17,000 years ago
    • Characterized by small tools known as geometric microliths, or stone blades or flakes that have been shaped into triangles, crescents and other geometric forms.
    • When attached to handles made of bone or antler, these could easily be used as projectile weapons, as well as for woodworking and food preparation purposes.
  • Axes, celts, chisels (Neolithic tools): around 12,000 years ago
    • These tools, including axes, adzes, celts, chisels and gouges, were not only more pleasing to look at; they were also more efficient to use and easier to sharpen when they became dull.
    • Allowed humans to clear wide swathes of woodland to create their agricultural settlements.

The Bronze Age (3,000 B.C. to 1,300 B.C.)

  • Metalworking advances were made, as bronze, a copper and tin alloy, was discovered. Now used for weapons and tools, the harder metal replaced its stone predecessors, and helped spark innovations including the ox-drawn plow and the wheel.

Mesopotamian Civilization

  • Is an ancient, historical region that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
  • Part of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia was home to the earliest known human civilizations. Scholars believe the Agricultural Revolution started here.
  • The earliest occupants of Mesopotamia lived in circular dwellings made of mud and brick along the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys.
  • They began to practice agriculture by domesticating sheep and pigs around 11,000 to 9,000 B.C. Domesticated plants, including flax, wheat, barley and lentils, first appeared around 9,500 B.C.

The Sumerian

  • Sumer was first settled by humans from 4500 to 4000 B.C., though it is probable that some settlers arrived much earlier.
  • This early population—known as the Ubaid people—was notable for strides in the development of civilization such as farming and raising cattle, weaving textiles, working with carpentry and pottery and even enjoying beer.
  • Villages and towns were built around Ubaid farming communities. The people known as Sumerians were in control of the area by 3000 B.C.

The Sumerian Invention

  • Mass-Produced Pottery
    • Other ancient people made pottery by hand, but the Sumerians were the first to develop the turning wheel, a device which allowed them to mass-produce it. That enabled them to churn out large numbers of items such as containers for workers’ rations, sort of the ancient forerunner of Tupperware.
  • Writing
    • he Sumerians were the first to develop a writing system. Either way, it’s clear that they were using written communication by 2800 B.C.
    • But they didn’t set out to write great literature or record their history, but rather to keep track of the goods that they were making and selling.
    • Scribes used sharpened reeds to scratch the symbols into wet clay, which dried to form tablets. The system of writing became known as cuneiform, and as Kramer noted, it was borrowed by subsequent civilizations and used across the Middle East for 2,000 years.

Hydraulic Engineering

  • The Sumerians figured out how to collect and channel the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—and the rich silt that it contained—and then use it to water and fertilize their farm fields.
  • They designed complex systems of canals, with dams constructed of reeds, palm trunks and mud whose gates could be opened or closed to regulate the flow of water.

The Chariot

  • The Sumerians didn’t invent wheeled vehicles, but they probably developed the first two-wheeled chariot in which a driver drove a team of animals.
  • The Sumerians had such carts for transportation in the 3000s B.C., but they were probably used for ceremonies or by the military, rather than as a means to get around the countryside, where the rough terrain would have made wheeled travel difficult.

The Plow

  • The Sumerians invented the plow, a vital technology in farming.
  • They even produced a manual that gave farmers detailed instructions on how to use various types of plows.
  • They specified the prayer that should be recited to pay homage to Ninkilim, the goddess of field rodents, in order to protect the grain from being eaten.

Textile Mills

  • While other cultures in the Middle East gathered wool and used it to weave fabric for clothing, the Sumerians were the first to do weaving on an industrial scale.
  • The Sumerians’ innovation was to turn their temples into huge factories.
  • They were the first to cross kin lines and form larger working organizations for making textiles—the predecessors of modern manufacturing companies.

Mass-Produced Bricks

  • To make up for a shortage of stones and timber for building houses and temples, the Sumerians created molds for making bricks out of clay.
  • While they weren’t the first to use clay as a building material but their innovation is their ability to produce bricks in large amounts, and put them together on a large scale. Their buildings might not have been as durable as stone ones, but they were able to build more of them, and create larger cities.

Mathematics

  • Sumerians developed a formal numbering system based on units of 60. At first, they used reeds to keep track of the units, but eventually, with the development of cuneiform, they used vertical marks on the clay tablets.
  • Their system helped lay the groundwork for the mathematical calculations of civilizations that followed.

The Assyrians

  • Under the Assyrian Civilization, ancient Mesopotamia expanded from the Persian Gulf to Egypt, to its Western borders of modern-day Turkey.
  • The Assyrians were the powerhouse of Mesopotamia. For over 1400 years, Assyria had control of parts of Egypt, Turkey, and modern day Iraq.
  • It is thought the civilization became wealthy enough to develop armies and warriors through trading goods with Anatolia (located in modern-day Turkey).
  • It developed advanced military and bureaucratic systems, which enabled it to expand and control much of the ancient world.

Assyrian Contributions

  • Agricultural Technology
    • The Assyrians were quite innovative when it came to agriculture, which was necessary since they lived in an area where it was either extremely dry or flooded most of the time.
    • To make up for this, they built extensive canal systems out of mud. The canals would collect the rainwater, helping to prevent flooding in rainy seasons. In dry seasons, the farmers could release the stored water onto fields by digging into them.
    • This was carried out by flood defense walls, which were used along the edges of the canals to guide the water to where it was needed.
    • Because of the importance of agriculture to the society, canals were built along the edges of all farms and were well kept.
    • Water systems were built to supply water to cities by building slopes to conduct water from the hills to the plains.
  • Assyrian Architecture
    • Major architectural works in ancient Assyria did not deviate much from the Babylonians. The Assyrians built their temples and palaces primarily from stone and typically in a ziggurat, or platform structure. Mud-brick ziggurats constructed by 2000 BC were in many Sumerian cities.
    • Unlike the Babylonians, however, the Assyrians' homes were built mostly from stone rather than clay or mud brick. Homes were rectangular, with beams on top to support an earthen roof.
    • This structure and the lack of openings besides a door made the homes great for defense - necessary for such a warring people.

The Babylonians

  • Babylonia was a state in ancient Mesopotamia. The city of Babylon, whose ruins are located in present-day Iraq, was founded more than 4,000 years ago as a small port town on the Euphrates River. It grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient world under the rule of Hammurabi.
  • Babylonia, however, was short-lived. The empire fell apart after Hammurabi’s death and reverted back to a small kingdom for several centuries.
  • Hammurabi turned Babylon into a rich, powerful and influential city. He created one of the world’s earliest and most complete written legal codes. Known as the Code of Hammurabi, it helped Babylon surpass other cities in the region.

Contributions of the Babylonian Civilization

  • Babylonian Mathematics
    • Babylonian mathematical texts are plentiful and well edited. Babylonian mathematics remained constant, in character and content, for nearly two millennia. In contrast to the scarcity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, our knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from some 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s.
    • Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed while the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. The majority of recovered clay tablets date from 1800 to 1600 BC, and cover topics which include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations and the Pythagorean theorem.
    • Babylonian numerals were written in cuneiform, using a wedge- tipped reed stylus to make a mark on a soft clay tablet which would be exposed in the sun to harden to create a permanent record.
  • Babylonian Architecture
    • Among of this artistic progress it can be identified the improvement of use given in architecture to the arch and the dome during the Babylonian Empire; they were already used previously but was perfected during the Neo Babylonian Empire. This is the time of the construction of the fabulous palaces of Nebuchadnezzar.
    • Features of art in Babylonian culture are closely related to building materials available in their environment. The stone was scarce of course but the mud, abundant.
    • Buildings are essentially cemented with very similar stone brick and adobe as the Sumerians did. The arch and the dome roof are used mainly in the construction of large palaces.
  • The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
    • The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were the fabled gardens which adorned the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, built by its greatest king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562 BCE). One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, they are the only wonder whose existence is disputed amongst historians.
    • Some scholars claim the gardens were actually at Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, some stick with the ancient writers and await archaeology to provide positive proof, and still others believe they are merely a figment of the ancient imagination.

The Egyptians (3100 B.C. to 332 B.C.)

  • For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world.
  • From the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom through the military conquests of the New Kingdom, Egypt’s majesty has long entranced archaeologists and historians and created a vibrant field of study all its own: Egyptology.
  • The main sources of information about ancient Egypt are the many monuments, objects and artifacts that have been recovered from archaeological sites, covered with hieroglyphs that have only recently been deciphered. The picture that emerges is of a culture with few equals in the beauty of its art, the accomplishment of its architecture or the richness of its religious traditions.

Ancient Egyptian Science & Technology

  • Engineering & Construction
    • The great temples of ancient Egypt arose from the same technological skill one sees on the small scale of household goods. The central value observed in creating any of these goods or structures was a careful attention to detail.
    • The Egyptians are noted in many aspects of their culture as a very conservative society, and this adherence to a certain way of accomplishing tasks can clearly be seen in their construction of the pyramids and other monuments.
    • The creation of an obelisk, for example, seems to have always involved the exact same procedure performed in precisely the same way. The quarrying and transport of obelisks are well documented (though how the immense monuments were raised is not) and shows a strict adherence to a standard procedure.
    • The Step Pyramid of Djoser was successfully built according to the precepts of the vizier Imhotep and when his plans were deviated from by Sneferu during of the Old Kingdom (c. 2613- c. 2181 BCE), the result was the so- called 'collapsed pyramid' at Meidum.
    • Sneferu returned to Imhotep's original engineering plans for his next projects and was able to create his Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid at Dashur, advancing the art of pyramid building which is epitomized in the Great Pyramid at Giza.
  • Agriculture & Architecture
    • Ancient Egypt was an agricultural society and so naturally developed innovations to help cultivate the land. Among the many inventions or innovations of the ancient Egyptians was the ox-drawn plow and improvements in irrigation. The ox- drawn plow was designed in two gauges: heavy and light. The heavy plow went first and cut the furrows while the lighter plow came behind turning up the earth.
    • Once the field was plowed then workers with hoes broke up the clumps of soil and sowed the rows with seed. To press the seed into the furrows, livestock was driven across the field and the furrows were closed. All of this work would have been for nothing, however, if the seeds were denied sufficient water and so regular irrigation of the land was extremely important.
    • Egyptian irrigation techniques were so effective they were implemented by the cultures of Greece and Rome.
    • New irrigation techniques were introduced during the Second Intermediate Period by the people known as the Hyksos, who settled in Avaris in Lower Egypt, and the Egyptians improved upon them; notably through the expanded use of the canal.
    • The yearly inundation of the Nile overflowing its banks and depositing rich soil throughout the valley was essential to Egyptian life but irrigation canals were necessary to carry water to outlying farms and villages as well as to maintain even saturation of crops near the river.
    • Shadoofs: The ancient Egyptians also used water wheels. The water wheels worked the shadoofs. A shadoof was simply a counterweight system, a long pole with a bucket on one end and a weight on the other. Buckets were dropped into the Nile, filled with water, and raised with water wheels. Then oxen swung the pole so that the water could be emptied into narrow canals or waterways that were used to irrigate the crops. It was a clever system, and it worked very well.
    • Nilometers: They also invented what is called a nilometer. A nilometer was used to predict flood levels. This instrument was a method of marking the height of the Nile over the years. Nilometers were spaced along the Nile River. They acted as an early warning system, alerting these early people that waters were not as high as usual, so they could prepare for a drought or for unusually high flood waters.
  • Medicine & Dentistry
    • Medicine in ancient Egypt was intimately tied to magic. The three best- known works dealing with medical issues are the Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE), the Edwin Smith Papyrus (c. 1600 BCE), and the London Medical Papyrus (c. 1629 BCE) all of which, to one degree or another, prescribe the use of spells in treating diseases while at the same time exhibiting a significant degree of medical knowledge.
    • The Ebers Papyrus is a text of 110 pages treating ailments such as trauma, cancer, heart disease, depression, dermatology, gastrointestinal distress, and many others.
    • The Edwin Smith Papyrus is the oldest known work on surgical techniques and is thought to have been written for triage surgeons in field hospitals. This work shows detailed knowledge of anatomy and physiology.
    • The London Medical Papyrus combines practical medical skill with magical spells for the treatment of conditions ranging from eye problems to miscarriages.

The Iron Age (1200 B.C. and 900 B.C.)

  • During the Iron Age, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and steel.
  • The discovery of ways to heat and forge iron kicked off the Iron Age (roughly 1,300 B.C. to 900 B.C.). At the time, the metal was seen as more precious than gold, and wrought iron (which would be replaced by steel with the advent of smelting iron) was easier to manufacture than bronze.
  • Along with mass production of steel tools and weapons, the age saw even further advances in architecture, with four-room homes, some complete with stables for animals, joining more rudimentary hill forts, as well as royal palaces, temples and other religious structures. Early city planning also took place, with blocks of homes being erected along paved or cobblestone streets and water systems put into place.

Persian Empire

  • During the Iron Age in the Near East, nomadic pastoralists who raised sheep, goats and cattle on the Iranian plateau began to develop a state that would become known as Persia.
  • The ancient Persians also fought on horseback. They may have been the first civilization to develop an armored cavalry in which horses and riders were completely covered in steel armor.
  • The Persians established their empire at a time after humans had learned to make steel. Steel weapons were sharper and stronger than earlier bronze or stone weapons.

Persian Contributions

  • A water management system used for irrigation originated in pre- Achaemenid Persia. The oldest and largest known qanat is in the Iranian city of Gonabad which, after 2,700 years, still provides drinking and agricultural water to nearly 40,000 people.
  • Persian philosophers and inventors may have created the first batteries (sometimes known as the Baghdad Battery) in the Parthian or Sassanid eras. Some have suggested that the batteries may have been used medicinally.
  • Other scientists believe the batteries were used for electroplating--transferring a thin layer of metal to another metal surface--a technique still used today and the focus of a common classroom experiment.
  • Wind wheels were developed by the Babylonians ca. 1700 BC to pump water for irrigation. In the 7th century, Persian engineers in Greater Iran developed a more advanced wind-power machine, the windmill, building upon the basic model developed by the Babylonians. The earliest known windmill design dates back 3000 years to ancient Persia where they were used to grind grain and pump water.
  • Mathematics
    • The 12th century mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa-al- Khwarazmi created the Logarithm table, developed algebra and expanded upon Persian and Indian arithmetic systems.
    • The works of Khwarazmi exercised a profound influence on the development of mathematical thought in the medieval West.
  • Astronomy
    • In 1000 AD, Biruni wrote an astronomical encyclopedia which discussed the possibility that the earth might rotate around the sun.
    • This was before Tycho Brahe drew the first maps of the sky, using stylized animals to depict the constellations. In the tenth century, the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi cast his eyes upwards to the awning of stars overhead and was the first to record a galaxy out with our own.
    • Gazing at the Andromeda galaxy he called it a “little cloud” --an apt description of the slightly wispy appearance of our galactic neighbor.
  • Physics
    • Abu Ali al-Hassan ibn al-Haytham is known in the West as Alhazen, born in 965 in Persia and dying in 1039 in Egypt. He is known as the father of optics for his writings on, and experiments with, lenses, mirrors, refraction, and reflection.
    • He solved the problem of finding the locus of points on a spherical mirror from which light will be reflected to an observer.
    • From his studies of refraction, he determined that the atmosphere has a definite height and that twilight is caused by refraction of solar radiation from beneath the horizon.

The Greek Civilization

  • The Ancient Greeks are seen, in the west, as our intellectual forefathers. From Greece was born philosophy, drama, western artistic aesthetics, geometry, natural science, mathematics, astronomy and architecture.
  • Agriculture
    • The prosperity of the majority of Greek city-states was based on agriculture and the ability to produce the necessary surplus which allowed some citizens to pursue other trades and pastimes and to create a quantity of exported goods so that they could be exchanged for necessities the community lacked. The people who did the most agriculture work were people in the middle class social class, also known as the Perioeci. These people were typically farmers or peasants.
    • Cereals, olives, and wine were the three most produced foodstuffs suited as they are to the Mediterranean climate. With the process of Greek colonization in such places as Asia Minor and Magna Graecia Greek agricultural practice and products spread around the Mediterranean.
    • Equipment used in Greek agriculture was basic with digging, weeding, and multiple ploughing done by hand using wooden or iron-tipped ploughs, mattocks, and hoes (there were no spades). Richer farmers had oxen to help plough their fields.
    • Sickles were used to harvest crops, which were then winnowed using a flat shovel and baskets. Grains were then threshed on a stone floor which was trampled on by livestock (and which might also have dragged sledges for the purpose too). Grapes were crushed underfoot in vats while olives were crushed in stone presses.
  • Architecture
    • Greek architects provided some of the finest and most distinctive buildings in the entire Ancient World and some of their structures, such as temples, theatres, and stadia, would become staple features of towns and cities from antiquity onwards.
    • The Greeks certainly had a preference for marble, at least for their public buildings. Initially, though, wood would have been used for not only such basic architectural elements as columns but the entire buildings themselves.
    • Early 8th century BCE temples were so constructed and had thatch roofs. From the late 7th century BCE, temples, in particular, slowly began to be converted into more durable stone edifices; some even had a mix of the two materials.
    • Some scholars have argued that certain decorative features of stone column capitals and elements of the entablature evolved from the skills of the carpenter displayed in more ancient, wooden architectural elements.
    • The stone of choice was either limestone protected by a layer of marble dust stucco or even better, pure white marble. Also, carved stone was often polished with chamois to provide resistance to water and give a bright finish. The best marble came from Naxos, Paros, and Mt. Pentelicon near Athens.
    • One of the cultural developments of Greek thought was the museum, originally the Temple of the Muses
    • The museum became part of the palace, “the palace of culture,” and later a kind of medieval college and research institute.
    • The development of the concept of organized centers of learning (the University) descend from this period.

The Roman Engineering

  • Roman civilization was built upon the tradition of Greek natural philosophy
  • The Romans are better known for engineering than theoretical science
  • The Romans were responsible, through the application and development of available machines, for an important technological transformation: the widespread introduction of rotary motion.
  • This was exemplified in the use of the treadmill for powering cranes and other heavy lifting operations, the introduction of rotary water-raising devices for irrigation works (a scoop wheel powered by a treadmill), and the development of the waterwheel as a prime mover.
  • The 1st-century-BCE Roman engineer Vitruvius gave an account of watermills, and by the end of the Roman era many were in operation.
  • The Romans copied the Greek style for most ceremonial purposes, but in other respects they were important innovators in building technology.
  • They made extensive use of fired brick and tile as well as stone; they developed a strong cement that would set under water; and they explored the architectural possibilities of the arch, the vault, and the dome.
  • They then applied these techniques in amphitheatres, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges, walls, lighthouses, and roads. Taken together, these constructional works may fairly be regarded as the primary technological achievement of the Romans.

II. Middle Ages 476 CE -14th century

  • The millennium between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE and the beginning of the colonial expansion of western Europe in the late 15th century has been known traditionally as the Middle Ages, and the first half of this period consists of the five centuries of the Dark Ages (476-918 AD).
  • Many of the institutions of the later empire survived the collapse and profoundly influenced the formation of the new civilization that developed in western Europe. The Christian church was the outstanding institution of this type.
  • Roman conceptions of law and administration also continued to exert an influence long after the departure of the legions from the western provinces.

The Middle Ages: Art and Architecture

  • Another way to show devotion to the Church was to build grand cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures such as monasteries. Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent.
  • Between the 10th and 13th centuries, most European cathedrals were built in the Romanesque style. Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows. (Examples of Romanesque architecture include the Porto Cathedral in Portugal and the Speyer Cathedral in present-day Germany.)
  • Around 1200, church builders began to embrace a new architectural style, known as the Gothic. Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches (a technology developed in the Islamic world), and spires and flying buttresses.
  • In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless. Medieval religious art took other forms as well. Frescoes and mosaics decorated church interiors, and artists painted devotional images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints.

Technology in the Middle Ages Drives Growth

  • The medieval period, on the other hand, was one that was fairly rich in technological innovation. Stereotypes contribute to the idea of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages, as having descended from the heights of classical antiquity. If we were talking about technology, we’d have to flip the polarity of that old equation and say that the Middle Ages were rather cleverer.
  • The clearest indicator we have of medieval technology, of its application and its connection to this population increase, is in the realm of cereal production, where medieval farmers vastly expanded it.
  • They laid down most of the fundamental ways: By getting maximum cereal production out of the soil, before the advent of modern chemical fertilizers. This has been the greatest change in modern times, not anything else—not even, for example, the use of motor-driven tractors. Using horses rather than an ox as draft animal in farming has increased cereal production in the middle ages.
  • The horse collar was a key invention that allowed medieval Europeans to make use of the horse as a draft animal, rather than the ox
  • The heavy, wheeled plow played a significant role in changing how farming was conducted. Once again, using horses to pull it allowed more work to be completed. A heavy iron plowshare can cut much more deeply into the soil than can the older forms of the aratrum, the Roman scratch plow, which didn’t do much more than just disturb the surface.
  • The soils of northern Europe are very good, but they’re damp and heavy. The heavy, wheeled plow was able to turn the soil, which aerates it. This new plow with its iron plowshare also called for a greater proliferation of iron in this society leading to more smithing. We can see connections between the use of the plow, the advantages that it brought, and then some of the requirements that flowed from its development. The heavy, wheeled plow allows for deeper plowing and aerates the soil better, a key need in making rich, wet European soil as productive as possible.
  • Watermills were widely used in the 11th century. In some parts of northern Europe, for example, in the Low Countries windmills were used, but watermills were fairly common.
  • Engineers had to make the water go past the water wheel, whether the water wanted to or not, to do the milling at the convenience of the miller, and not by the movements of the river naturally. A variety of technologies were spawned by the need to use more mills.
  • Mills were imperative because there was an increase in grain. As more and more land was brought under cultivation, the new technological inputs made the land that was being plowed and farmed more productive, producing yet more grain. Water mills required complicated gears that had to be built and maintained which, in turn, drove advances in engineering.

Mining and Heavy Industry in the Middle Ages

  • By this time there were greater efficiencies in surface mining. In the Middle Ages, deep mining was impossible because you couldn’t get the water out of the shafts, or out of the mine galleries. Thus, most mining tended to be surface mining, focusing on stone, called quarrying, the most prominent kind.
  • Some famous churches were built were built out of stone in the 12th and 13th centuries. These vast stone buildings required ever more efficient mining. As they were often built long distances from the sources of the stone, once again, better roads and more efficient vehicles of transportation played a significant role in the functioning of medieval society.

Byzantine Science and Technology

  • The immediate eastern neighbour of the new civilization of medieval Europe was Byzantium, the surviving bastion of the Roman Empire based in Constantinople (Istanbul), which endured for 1,000 years after the collapse of the western half of the empire.
  • Apart from the influence on Western architectural style of such Byzantine masterpieces as the great domed structure of Hagia Sophia, the technological contribution of Byzantium itself was probably slight, but it served to mediate between the West and other civilizations one or more stages removed, such as the Islamic world, India, and China.
  • The Byzantines made numerous contributions to philosophy, science and medicine while also making innovations and inventions.
  • Warfare
    • The Counterweight trebuchet, which was far more powerful than the normal traction trebuchet. It was used by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and it is said that it impressed his crusader allies during the siege of Nicaea.
    • The hand-trebuchet, a staff sling mounted on a pole using a lever mechanism to propel projectiles. It was used by Emperor Nicephorus Phocas’ army in his campaigns to disrupt enemy lines.
    • The famous Greek Fire. Invented by Kallinikos, it was the flamethrower of the era. It was liquid fire used by the Byzantine navy to inflame the enemy ships. It played a crucial role in saving Constantinople from the Arab onslaught.
    • Grenades. They appeared during the reign of Leo III (717–741). Byzantine soldiers threw ceramic jars with Greek fire. They set them alight by fire arrows or ignited them before throwing them at the enemy.
    • The Beacon System. The Byzantines used a system of beacons to transmit messages from the border with the Caliphate across Asia Minor to Constantinople during the 9th century. The system was devised during the reign of Emperor Theophilos (829–842) by Leo the Mathematician. The main line of beacons stretched over some 450 miles and it functioned through two identical water clocks placed at the two terminal stations.
  • Architecture
    • The cross-in-square architectural form appeared first in the late 8th century. It was used in the construction of churches
    • The pointed