Ancient Technology Quotes

The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect: as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name.

Theater originated with technology. People forget that.

Half the world’s people fail to receive the level of water services available in many of the cities of ancient Greece and Rome

I've never really seen archaeology as being any different from history. What I love are the stories of human beings that were around 1,000 years ago and how they lived - archaeology is another aspect to that.

What I am trying to figure out in my preface is how Romans could operate without the simple items - maps - that are necessary for running such a huge empire.

I'm fascinated by anything that deals with the unexplained. I love any show that totally makes me want to know more. How did they build these pyramids? Why did they find these carvings that look like spaceships?

'Stargate' was more a fantasy.

The ancients were destitute of many of the conveniences of life which have been invented or improved by the progress of industry; and the plenty of glass and linen has diffused more real comforts among the modern nations of Europe than the senators of Rome could derive from all the refinements of pompous or sensual luxury.

Stone tools are fossilized human behavior.

Long before it was 'Raided' and 'Lost' with Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant was originally stolen from the Israelites by The Philistines; The Ark of the Covenant was the nuclear bomb of its age: when activated, it was devastating.

If you stop and think about it, the form of propulsion used today hasn't changed in over a thousand years... since the invention of fireworks by the Chinese.

I want to travel the world - like Egypt. I love history. That's my favorite subject at school. From the building of the pyramids to... King Tut. Their way of working without technology. I find all that fascinating.

Some archeologists believe that Stonehenge - the mysterious arrangement of enormous elongated stones in England - is actually a crude effort by the Druids to build a computing device.

Carter pulled out several lengths of brown twine, a small ebony cat statue, and a thick roll of paper. No, not paper. Papyrus. I remember Dad explaining how the Egyptians made it from a river plant because they never invented paper. The stuff was so thick and rough, it made me wonder if the poor Egyptians had had to use toilet papyrus. If so, no wonder they walked sideways.

The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.

Many people say I believe aliens built the pyramids. I don't. In fact I'm not a supporter of the 'ancient alien' hypothesis at all. I think a lost human civilization is a much better explanation of the mysteries and paradoxes of ancient cultures.

I love prehistory - particularly the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. These were times when our ancestors made a revolutionary change from being hunter-gatherers to being farmers, and when great migrations of people spread languages - and genes - across Europe.

Beyond Greek mythology, history just didn't have a strong resonation with me.

There is but little room for doubt that Egypt led the way in the creation of the earliest known group of civilizations which arose on both sides of the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia in the fourth millennium B.C.

When the Egyptians were building the pyramids or the Romans were building roads, or you had the westward push with the railroads, I don't think that the guys on the ground were spending a lot of time thinking, 'Hey, hundreds or thousands of years from now they will look back at the brick I have just laid down here and say that I changed the world!'

The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel - but who?

But that was the trouble with ancient artifacts - no one really knew what they did.

The rabbit is significant in that the handle on the original South Pointing Chariot was carved in the form of a rabbit. Because the handle extended out front it meant that wherever the rabbit went the chariot had to follow.

I didn't have a computer until I was 19 - but I did have an abacus.

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art.