vided. At eight pounds per gallon, water is a fairly heavy sub-
stance; consequently, the Vetruvian waterwheel was the most
powerful source of energy in the ancient world. Considering
this fact, it should be expected that the vertical waterwheel
would have been used widely throughout the Roman Empire,
but that turns out not to have been the case. With slave labor
inexpensive and abundant, the Romans simply were not in-
terested in new energy sources.
A case where Roman invention does not appear to be a
direct adaptation of another culture’s design but rather a new
product in itself is the Roman abacus. Modern people are per-
haps more familiar with the Chinese abacus, which was in use
well into the twentieth century. Records indicate that the Ro-
man version predates the Chinese abacus by several hundred
years. Interestingly, it is thought that the Babylonian abacus
predates both cultures with indications that it may have been
developed between 1000 b.c.e. and 500 b.c.e. Despite simi-
larities in design, there is no conclusive evidence that any one
was an infl uence on the development of the other. While both
the Chinese and the Roman abacus used the manipulation of
beads to help a person keep a running tally of whatever was
being counted, the Chinese abacus held the beads on strings
and the Roman version had slots in which the beads could roll
loosely and quickly. Still, the Roman version is considered a
signifi cant innovation because it was portable and included
spaces for fractions.
THE AMERICAS
BY LAWRENCE WALDRON
Th e people of the ancient Americas contributed countless in-
ventions to the world as we know it today. Th ey devised these
technologies in response to a wide range of environments
and circumstances. Some ancient American inventions were
similar to those of other world cultures, such as weapons and
hand tools, but other inventions, like the igloo, were uniquely
suited to American needs and were found nowhere else. While
it might seem surprising that ancient Native Americans had
no carts, chariots, swords, or sailing ships, it is equally no-
table that they had the largest buildings in the ancient world,
even larger than Egypt’s; had invented paper in the fi rst mil-
lennium b.c.e., more than one thousand years before the Chi-
nese; and had developed counting systems that employed the
numeral zero centuries before any other civilization. People
in each ancient American culture developed technology that
was infl uenced by the opportunities, necessities, and limita-
tions of their lives and times.
Since the native cultures of the Americas seem to have
developed with little or no contact with people from other
parts of the world, the technological achievements of the
ancient Americans seem all the more outstanding. Ancient
Americans produced some of the earliest metalwork and
sewn clothes, and they demonstrated some of the most in-
novative agricultural and medical techniques in the ancient
world. In the fi rst millennium b.c.e. Peruvian doctors occa-
sionally performed brain surgery with obsidian scalpels while
the patient was under herbal anesthesia.
Although Native American discoveries could be similar
to those from other parts of the world, they were not always
used in the same ways. Metal tools and jewelry from the Great
Lakes region of the United States date back to more than
6,000 years ago. Unlike metalworkers elsewhere in the world,
however, the North American metallurgists showed little in-
terest in making weapons. Similarly, archaeological fi ndings
in Mesoamerica show that Native Americans had invented
the wheel but did not use it to make wagons or coaches. With
no horses, cattle, or elephants to pull such vehicles, ancient
Mesoamericans had little use for the wheel except on push
toys for their children and in a few minor tools.
In many instances ancient Americans were the fi rst to
come up with ideas that would be either reinvented or ad-
opted later by Asians, Europeans, or Africans. For example,
the ancient Americans developed many kinds of waterproof-
ing for their containers and vessels, using materials and meth-
ods unknown or undeveloped in other parts of the world: Th e
ancient Chumash of California used asphalt from the La Brea
tar pits to seal their boats, and the ancient Olmec used (non-
synthetic) latex for similar purposes. Th ere were many such
inventions and innovations in the fi elds of art, architecture,
agriculture, athletics, and urban planning.
Th e art of the ancient Americans was varied and inge-
nious. Given their great antiquity, many of these ancient art-
works survive only in fragments. Pottery and metalwork are
among the most durable of the ancient American arts, but
some tex ti les a nd ot her ar ts a lso sur v ive. Native Nor t h Amer-
icans of the Great Lakes had been annealing metal—heating
and changing the shape of metal objects—since around 7000
b.c.e. Other ancient Americans throughout the continents
hit upon the same techniques, and by the second millennium
b.c.e. they had developed them substantially. Chavín Ande-
ans hammered semiprecious and precious metals into thin
foils to be used in decorating objects made of other materi-
als. By 200 b.c.e. other Andeans had begun to cast and alloy
metals into solid tools and weapon points. Eventually they re-
fi ned their casting methods into what ancient Greeks would
have recognized as the lost-wax method, a complex process of
casting hollow metal sculptures shared only by a few ancient
cultures.
Perhaps the most amazing Andean achievement in met-
allurgy was an early form of electroplating used by the Moche
sometime in the very early Common Era. In Moche electro-
plating, an anode and cathode were inserted into an acidic
solution (like the negative and positive poles of a battery) to
produce an electric charge. Th is current caused the positively
charged gold particles, intentionally dissolved in the acid, to
migrate to the negatively charged copper artwork connected
to the cathode. In this electrical process a copper object grad-
ually becomes plated with gold. Th us we can credit Andeans
not just with the discovery of electricity but with its use in the
production of consumer items.inventions: The Americas 603