6 advanced ancient inventions beyond modern understanding _ ancient origins

8/9/2019 6 Advanced Ancient Inventions Beyond Modern Understanding _ Ancient Origins

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7/2/2015 6 Advanced Ancient Inventions Beyond Modern Understanding | Ancient Origins

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6 Advanced Ancient Inventions BeyondModern UnderstandingBy Tara M acIsaac , Epoch Times

We’ve lost the secret to making some of histo ry’s most useful inventions, and for all of our ingenuity and

discoveries, our ancestors of thousands of years ago are still able to baffle us with their ingenuity anddiscoveries. We have developed the modern equivalent of some of these inventions, but only very

recently.

1. Greek Fire: Mysterious Chemical Weapon

Image from an illuminated manuscript, the Madrid Skylitzes, showing Greek Fire in use against the fleet

of the rebel Thomas the Slav. The caption above the left ship reads, “the fleet of the Romans setting

ablaze the fleet of the enemies.” ( Wikimedia Commons )

The Byzantines of the 7th to 12th centuries hurled a mysterious substance at their enemies in naval

battle. This liquid, shot through tubes or siphons, burned in water and could only be extinguished with

vinegar, sand, and urine. We still don’t know what this chemical weapon, known as Greek Fire, was

made of. The Byzantines guarded the secret jealously, ensuring only a select few knew the secret, and

the kno wledge was eventually lost altogether.

MORE:

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Archaeological Evide nce for 1,700-Year-Old Chemical Warfare

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2. Flexible Glass: A Substance Too PreciousThree ancient accounts of a substance known as vitrum flexile , flexible glass, are not clear enough to

determine that this substance actually existed. The story of its invention was first told by Petronius (d. 63

A.D.).

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ten-amazing-inventions-ancient-times-001539http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/author/tara-macisaac/http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Greek_fire#mediaviewer/File:Greekfire-madridskylitzes1.jpghttp://www.ancient-origins.net/news-general/more-fifty-ancient-greek-inventions-brought-life-through-incredible-reconstructionshttp://www.ancient-origins.net/history/archaeological-evidence-1700-year-old-chemical-warfare-002420http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ten-amazing-inventions-ancient-times-001539http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/author/tara-macisaac/


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He wrote about a glassmaker who presented the Emperor Tiberius (who reigned 14–37 A.D.) with a

glass vessel. He asked the emperor to hand it back to him, at which point, the glassmaker threw it to the

floor. It didn’t break; it only dented, and the glassmaker hammered it quickly back into shape. Fearing

the devaluation of precious metals, Tiberius ordered the inventor beheaded so the secret of vitrum

flexile would die with him.

Pliny the Elder (d. 79 A.D.) told this story as well. He said that, although the story was frequently told, it

may not be entirely true.

The version told a couple hundred years later by Dio Cassius morphed the glassmaker into a sort of

magician. When the vessel was thrown to the floor, it broke and the glassmaker fixed it with his bare

hands.

In 2012, the glass manufacturing company Corning introduced its flexible “Willow Glass.” Heat-resistant

and flexible enough to be rolled up, it has proven especially useful in making solar panels.

If the unfortunate Roman glassmaker did indeed invent vitrum flexile, it seems he was thousands of years ahead of his time.

3. An Antidote to All Poisons A so-called “universal antidote” against all poisons was said to have been developed by King Mithridates

VI of Pontus (who reigned 120–63 B.C.) and perfected by Emperor Nero’s personal physician. The

original formula was lost, explained Adrienne Mayor, a folklorist and historian of science at Stanford

University, in a 2008 paper, titled “Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and

Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World.” But ancient historians told us that among its ingredients

were opium, chopped vipers, and a combination of small doses of poisons and their antidotes.

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A depiction of King Mithridates VI of Pontus. ( Wikimedia Commons )

The valuable substance was known as Mithridatium, named for King Mithridates VI.

Mayor noted that Serguei Popov, a former top biological weapons researcher in the Soviet Union’s

massive Biopreparat program who defected to the United States in 1992, was attempting to make a

modern-day Mithridatium.

4. Heat-Ray Weapon

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A depiction of how Archimedes set on fire the Roman ships before Syracuse with the help of parabolic

mirrors. ( Wikimedia Commons )

Greek mathematician Archimedes (d. 212 B.C.) developed a heat-ray weapon that defied the skills of

Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” to replicate in 2004. Mayor described the weapon as “ranks of

polished bronze shields reflecting the sun’s rays at enemy ships.”

Although “Mythbusters” failed to reproduce this ancient weapon and declared it a myth, MIT students

succeeded in 2005. They combusted a boat in San Francisco harbor using the 2,200-year-old weapon.

A heat-ray weapon unveiled in 2001 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

used microwaves to penetrate “a victim’s skin, heating it to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, creating the

sensation that one is on fire,” explained Mayor.

5. Roman Concrete

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Roman concrete was used to construct the magnificent pantheon, which has endured for two millennia.

Source: BigStockPhoto.

The vast Roman structures that have lasted thousands of years are testaments to the advantages

Roman concrete has over the concrete used nowadays, which shows signs of degradation after 50

years.

Researchers have worked in recent years to uncover the secret of this ancient concrete’s longevity. The

secret ingredient is volcanic ash.

An article published in 2013 by the University of California–Berkeley News Center announced that

university researchers described for the first time how the extraordinarily stable compound calcium-

aluminum-silicate-hydrate (C-A-S-H) binds the material. The process of making it would create lower

carbon dioxide emissions than the process for making modern concrete. Some disadvantages of its use

are, however, that it takes longer to dry, and although it lasts longer, it is weaker than modern concrete.

MORE:

Researchers discover secre t recipe of Roman concrete that allowed it to endure for ov er

2,000 years

Scientists Discove r that Ancient Roman Concrete was Far Superior to Our Own

6. Damascus Steel

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A sword made of Damascus steel. ( NearEMPTiness/Wikimedia Commons )

In medieval times, swords made of a substance called Damascus steel were being produced in the

Middle East out of a raw material, known as Wootz steel, from Asia. It was perplexingly strong. It wasn’t

until the Industrial Revolution that metal so strong would be forged again.

The secret of making the Middle East’s Damascus Steel has only reemerged under the inspection of

scanning electron microscopes in modern laboratories. It was first used around 300 B.C. and the

knowledge seems to have been inexplicably lost around the mid-18th century.

Nanotechnology was involved in the production of Damascus steel, in the sense that materials were

added during the steel’s production to create chemical reactions at the quantum level, explained

archaeology expert K. Kris Hirst in an article written for About Education. It was a kind of alchemy.

MORE:

1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Used Nanote chnology

Roman nanotechnology inspires ne xt-generation holograms for information storage

Hirst cited a study led by Peter Paufler at the University of Dresden and published in the journal Nature

in 2006. Paufler and his team hypothesized that the natural properties of the source material from Asia

(the Wootz steel), when combined with materials added during the production process in the Middle

East, caused a reaction: “The metal developed a microstructure called ‘carbide nanotubes,’ extremely

hard tubes of carbon that are expressed on the surface and create the blade’s hardness,” Hirst

explained.

Materials added during the production of Damascus steel included Cassia auriculata bark, milkweed,

vanadium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and some rare elements, traces of which presumably

came from the mines in India.

Hirst wrote, “What happened in the mid-18th century was that the chemical makeup of the raw material

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altered—the minute quantities of one or more of the minerals disappeared, perhaps because the

particular lode was exhausted.”

The article ‘ 6 Advanced Ancient Inventions Beyond Modern Understanding’ was originally published

on The Epoch Time and has been republished with permission.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1149292-6-advanced-ancient-inventions-beyond-modern-understanding/

6 advanced ancient inventions beyond modern understanding _ ancient origins

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