The June, 1995 edition of Scientific American had an interesting article on the subject, called “Deciphering a Roman Blueprint.”
The “blueprints” were full-size carvings in a stone plaza in front of the worksite. Use geometry to get the shapes right, carve out the lines, drop the marble onto the plaza, cut to fit the carving on which they rested, put it together. No numbers necessary, just a plumb-bob and a lot of rope.
Thanks to everyone who’s replied. I would have returned sooner, but along with everyone else on my project I’ve just been moved to a very exposed and vulnerable workspace where I can’t do the Dope nearly as much as I’ve been doing.
We’re keeping our old offices though so I expect I’ll move back before long.
THey basically had 2 building materials available wood and stone. wood just wouldn’t hold up so they were left with making lots of things out of stone - so they were using a very durable building material.
Also going back to egypt what amased me was the structures created to create such things as oblisks, pyrmids and the like. The structures they had to build just to create those thigns we have today must have been massive.
One of the reasons we are amazed at the construction of things like the pyramids is because a lot of ancient construction methods have been lost. And we know they didn’t use modern methods, so we come up with, “That’s amazing!”.
The Egyptians weren’t stupid. And they had a long, long time to develop innovative construction methods using muscle power and locally available materials.
For instance, consider sand hydraulics. I just watched a show detailing the construction of a crypt. To prevent grave robbers from getting into it, a huge, multi-ton slab was placed on top of the sarcophagus. But the Sarcophagus itself was inside a stone crypt. How do you lower a multi-ton slab inside a confined space with muscle power? The answer: sand. Underneath the crypt is a chamber filled with sand. Four huge timbers poke through holes in the crypt, resting on the sand. The lid of the sarcophagus is supported by these timbers. Sand is released from the bottom chamber, and the timbers lower with the lid.
The Egyptians probably had hundreds of uses for sand as a hydraulic fluid, as a lubricant, an insulator, etc. Unique building techniques that have been lost to history.
For example, Archimedes first wrote detailed descriptions of the operation of a lever in about 287 BC. But its use may be quite a bit older than that, although the precise math and physical principles came with Archimedes. But it’s entirely possible that people understood the general idea of standing on the long end of something balancing on a point in order to gain mechanical advantage. After all, kids learn that just walking in the woods and stepping on logs. The Eyptians probably used levers to move stone blocks around or push them into place.
Now consider the combination of a large, strong lever, and a huge bucket on one end that sand can be poured into. Put a sand reservoir above that, filled by people. Need to lift a stone block? Attach it to the short end, and start pouring sand into the bucket until it lifts. pull the weight off, and pour the sand back out into a trough where it runs back to a collecting area for people to take back up to the reservoir. You don’t need to know the math behind al this or even understand the principle, because you don’t have to calculate the mass of sand required beforehand. Just oversize your bucket, and pour the stuff in until the weight raises.
Now, I don’t know if the Egyptians actually used something like that, but I’ll bet if they did, and spent hundreds of years perfecting it, that they could come up with some pretty fast operations for lifting stones.
It would be arrogance to think that we can just ‘figure out’ exactly how all these things were done. They had thousands of years to perfect their techniques. We have a lot more knowledge today, but we’re not any smarter. So if we can’t find historical descriptions of engineering techniques, we may never figure out how some of these things were done.