They had to know what materials to use, which alloys, load bearing weight of the materials, how to place and configure them, etc.
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The Egyptians built skyscrapers 5000 years ago. And many Roman constructions required tall structures (aqueducts).
Things like math and geometry are well understood (enough for construction) thousands of years ago. The basics are well understood from a long time ago – foundation, support, load bearing etc are the realm of fairly simple models. Concrete was developed thousands of years ago and steel hundreds of years ago.
The main differences in modern construction is efficiency and refinement. A skyscraper built 100 years ago would be ridiculously inefficient and overdesigned today. Rather than 3 feet thick walls, we’d probably design them with one foot thick walls today. Rather than 1000 support columns, we’d probably use 100.
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