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books2018-06-04 08:49 pm
randomdreams) wrote in books2018-06-04 08:49 pm
Ancient Inventions, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703346.Ancient_Inventions
This book was a ton of fun to read. I'll start out with a proviso that sometimes their analysis of ancient technology isn't very accurate. But they managed to collect a huge pile of interesting, entertaining history. I didn't know that people were firing glazed pottery 7000 years ago, for instance. In some places, what they talk about raises more questions than it answers. (Until the 1860's, when Lister started cleaning wounds with carbolic acid, a compound fracture of a limb almost always meant either amputation or death from infection, but we've recovered Stone Age skulls that show fully recovered bone growth from multiple holes drilled through them. They knew something about wound cleanliness, apparently, but we don't know what.)
The sexuality section contains some material that would make me think twice about giving it to a friend's pre-teen kid who is really interested in history.
I appreciated the breadth of some of their discussions: they have drawings detailing how Greek theater robots and automatic doors worked, for instance, where other sources usually just mention that Hellenic Greece had interesting automata.
Rating: Four medieval compass-making factories out of five!
This book was a ton of fun to read. I'll start out with a proviso that sometimes their analysis of ancient technology isn't very accurate. But they managed to collect a huge pile of interesting, entertaining history. I didn't know that people were firing glazed pottery 7000 years ago, for instance. In some places, what they talk about raises more questions than it answers. (Until the 1860's, when Lister started cleaning wounds with carbolic acid, a compound fracture of a limb almost always meant either amputation or death from infection, but we've recovered Stone Age skulls that show fully recovered bone growth from multiple holes drilled through them. They knew something about wound cleanliness, apparently, but we don't know what.)
The sexuality section contains some material that would make me think twice about giving it to a friend's pre-teen kid who is really interested in history.
I appreciated the breadth of some of their discussions: they have drawings detailing how Greek theater robots and automatic doors worked, for instance, where other sources usually just mention that Hellenic Greece had interesting automata.
Rating: Four medieval compass-making factories out of five!
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