How did ancient civilizations get the engineering knowledge required to build impressive structures?
In: Engineering
Most early engineering was done by building a thing, watching it fall down, and building it back a different way. After you find a way to build it that stays up, you can copy that design and build the next one that way. Then somebody might think they have a better idea and try that. If it works better, people would start copying that.
Eventually we go to the point where we could figure out the properties of materials and design new things with math instead of trial and error. It’s still hard to beat the basic designs of triangles and arches, though.
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