When I was learning history as a child, we were taught that the world lived in discomfort, illiteracy, filth, and disease until the Enlightenment. We were taught that ancients both married and died early and spent their lives as animals without philosophical thought or caring for humankind (all not true). I distinctly remember parents and teachers alike telling me that most of the ancient cultures were without written language and thus had no capability to develop science, technology, math, or culture beyond that of the bushmen of the Kalahari (yes I had to watch those videos in Junior High social studies class). The exceptions to this rule were the Greeks and Romans, I was taught.
Imagine my surprise when I began teaching Ancient History to my children and discovered the wealth of knowledge, thought, logic, and culture most ancient peoples possessed. In fact there is little fundamental difference to how they lived and our daily lives today, with the exception of mind-numbing activities like checking your Facebook status with your iphone every few minutes. Running water? yup. Medicine? yup. Advanced Math? yup. Literature? yup. Using the Internet to blog about ancient technologies and homeschooling? nope (yes, I get the irony here!)
One of the most engaging and family-friendly means to learn about ancient technology developments is through a documentary series by Martin Kemp at the BBC.
This series features a different ancient civilization each episode, along with engaging evaluation, discussion, and recreation of the technologies in modern times to be tested side by side with modern-day equivalents.
You may discover, as I have, that ancient life was not so different from ours today which leads you to a broader philosophical train of thought about human beings in general and are we really “evolving” into more superior forms of ourselves or we simply using different technologies to do essentially the same things…
