had not been cultivated previously, European farmers had
to devise a heavier plow that turned over heavy clods of turf
rather than merely scratching the top of the soil.
Animal power could also be applied to transportation.
Th e earliest wheeled vehicles appeared around 3000 b.c.e. in
central Europe. Th ey were probably wagons used for hauling
agricultural products and fi rewood from fi elds and forests
into the settlements. Such vehicles were then improved with
further inventions. Th e Celts of central Europe, for example,
produced extremely high-quality carriages and wagons, many
of which archaeologists have found in such places as Germany
and Austria. An important innovation was the use of iron on
wheels. Rather than relying on purely wooden wheels, which
deteriorated rapidly and oft en broke if the driver hit a stone,
the skilled metalworkers of central Europe learned to create
an iron hoop that served as a kind of tire for wagon wheels.
Th e hoop was heated and then rapidly cooled around the
wooden portions of the wheel, shrinking it and thus binding
it fi rmly to the wheel. Th ese wheels were far more durable
than anything that had been produced before.
Further inventions in transportation technology took
place late in prehistoric times. One was the bearing, created by
the ancient Scandinavians. By the fi rst century b.c.e. the Van-
dals and Goths of northern Europe had invented a wooden
roller bearing they used on wagons. Th is bearing was durable
and provided a more reliable and comfortable ride than any-
thing the more technically profi cient Romans produced. To fi ll
some of their wagons, the Europeans invented the wine barrel
(as opposed to such containers as jars) to transport wine, a
prestigious commodity, from the Mediterranean region.
To go along with their wheels and carriages, the ancient
Europeans also developed engineered roads. Th e ancient
Romans are oft en credited with the earliest and best road-
building technology, but in fact the oldest known engineered
road in the world—that is, a road that was built rather than
simply cut through the forest—is the so-called Sweet Track,
a causeway in Somerset, England, named aft er its discover,
Ray Sweet. It was built in about the 3800s b.c.e. and was con-
structed with crossed poles of hardwood, along with lime,
that were sunk in the spongy, wet soil to support a walkway.
Subsequently, roads made from timbers laid side by side
across the direction of the road were built across many of the
wetlands of northern Europe and the British Isles, especially
as trade fl ourished during the Iron Age.
Th e ancient Europeans, like people the world over,
looked for ways to improve their physical conditions. In do-
mestic architecture they developed new techniques of timber
construction and joinery that enabled them to build warm
and durable houses and barns. Th e cold northern climates of
Europe created the need for heavy, durable, and warm cloth-
ing, so a precursor of knitting called nålebinding, or “binding
with the needle,” emerged from the Danes. Th e Danes used
this technique, which involved passing a needle through a
loose loop to create a chain of loops, to make what may have
been the world’s fi rst true socks and mittens.
GREECE
BY JEFFREY S. CARNES
Th e technological contributions of the Greeks are some-
what diffi cult to measure, owing in part to the nature of our
sources, in part to political and social circumstances, and in
part to the Greeks’ own attitudes toward science and tech-
nology. Th ere is, for example, little scientifi c literature—and
essentially no technical literature—for the fi rst four centuries
for which we have historical records. Only in the Hellenis-
tic Period (323–31 b.c.e.) do we fi nd scientists discussing in-
ventions, so there is only indirect evidence for the technical
contributions Greeks may have made in the eighth through
fourth centuries b.c.e. To some extent this is due to a certain
disdain for practical matters among members of the upper
classes: Typical is the contempt shown by Plato and Aristotle
for the “banausic” (mechanical) professions for their negative
eff ect on the soul. Th eorists of science were generally drawn
from the elite classes (there were no “pure science” occupa-
tions at which to make a living) and therefore tended to be ig-
norant of or unconcerned with technological developments.
Political and social conditions played a further role in
slowing the progress of Greek technology. Necessity truly is
the mother of invention, and in many cases the Greeks lacked
the necessity that might spur technological innovation. Th ere
was little large-scale manufacturing of the sort in which
costs might be reduced and profi ts increased by the inven-
tion of new machinery or processes. Further, Greece was a
slave-owning society on a large scale—perhaps one-third of
the population of Athens was made up of slaves—and with
so much forced labor there would have been little incentive
for labor-saving devices. Given the lack of records for all but
the Hellenistic Period, we must content ourselves with not-
ing aspects of Greek technology that do not appear previously
elsewhere and speculating that these may be inventions.
In agriculture the main improvements probably attrib-
utable to the Greeks were in the area of processing. Various
minor innovations in milling technology are known, mostly
designed to mill more grain at once and allow more animal
power to be applied to the mill. Presses for wine and olives
show steady improvement, starting with primitive lever
presses using stone weights and progressing to a variety of
screw and lever-and-screw presses in the Hellenistic Period.
Th e screw itself seems to have been developed in the third
century b.c.e., making it the only one of the basic machines
to have been invented in the historical period. Th e screw was
also used in devices for lift ing water, which had applications
in both agriculture and mining.
Th e remains of the Athenian silver mines at Laurium
include washing devices that represent an improvement on
earlier washing techniques, allowing for more effi cient sepa-
ration of the metal from its ore. Th ese machines also allowed
the water to be recycled, a serious consideration in the semi-
arid climate of Greece. Ironworking became more effi cient
with the development of the shaft furnace in about 500 b.c.e.600 inventions: Greece