How did the ancient civilizations used to make ice?
In: Technology
If they needed to store food, they used drying, pickling, salting, or just relied on foods that don’t go bad.
In deserts, at least in North Africa and the Middle East, ice was made by exposing water to the night sky and then keeping it very well insulated during the day. Even if the air temperature didn’t dip below freezing, the heat radiating from the water into the cold, black sky would allow it to freeze. This is known to have been done in ancient times, thousands of years ago.
They didnt “make” it.
They got it from cold places and transported it in big chucks. Like, boulder sized chucks.
There was quite an industry in the ice-delivery business.
Then they kept the ice in cold places like deep cellars or caves.
They didn’t, they collected it from lakes etc. Generally though ice is not very important for human civilisation. Yes it’s useful for preserving some foods but people are pretty inventive at coming up with other ways to do that.
They didn’t. They harvested it from frozen lakes. Then they would store it in a building and cover it with hay or something and hope it lasts all summer.
They didn’t make ice. Wealthy people would have giant blocks of ice shipped to them from cold areas, keeping it cold by packing it in a lot of wood shavings as insulation. It would get shipped by boat or animal drawn cart. Before that was a feasible thing to have done, only people in cold areas had ice.
Check this out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5lu-dq7agI&pbjreload=101
It’s pretty comprehensive.
They didn’t. Even as late as the 1800’s ice was cut from somewhere cold and transported to where it was in demand.
A guy named Frederic Tudor from Massachusetts made a fortune in the 1800’s cutting up frozen lakes and shipping ice across the globe to places as far as Hong Kong and India. See here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Tudor
The Romans had running water via aqueducts. They took icy water from streams way up north and directed them south toward Rome. V sophisticated designs. Some are still standing today!!
According to Wikipedia [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade#Pre-19th_century_methods), before the 1800’s people would have “ice houses” where they’d store winter ice for use in summer. Ice was mostly a novelty for rich people.
In the 1800’s, shipping ice around the world became a big business. Which collapsed in the 1900’s, when artificial refrigeration became possible.
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