BUILDINGS, PLACES & LANDMARKS
TECHNOLOGY
10 WONDERS
OF THE
ANCIENT WORLD
Take a tour of history’s greatest human-made landmarks
and discover how they were built
The pyramids were
of
built by thousands
skilled workers who
y
lived in a nearby cit
The Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx
The mystery of ancient Egypt’s monumental feat of engineering
Built between 2589 and 2504 BCE, the three However, no one quite knows how they were
Pyramids of Giza served as extravagant moved into position.
tombs for ancient Egyptian pharaohs, large One theory is that a system of sledges, rollers
enough to house everything they would and levers were used to haul the blocks up a
require in the afterlife. slope that was increased in height as the
The largest, constructed for the Pharaoh pyramid grew. Meanwhile, the Sphinx, which
Khufu, consists of 6.5 million tons of stone, stands close to the pyramids, was carved out of
some in blocks as heavy as nine tons each. the limestone bedrock of the Giza Plateau.
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DID YOU KNOW? The Great Pyramid of Giza was once encased in shining white limestone
The Great Wall Pharos of Alexandria
of China The design and destruction of the world’s first and most famous lighthouse
Incredible manpower and tasty materials
helped construct the world’s longest wall In need of a method for guiding trade ships into
Alexandria’s busy harbour, the Egyptian ruler
Although the first sections of border walls had Ptolemy Soter commissioned the construction
been built in the 8th century BCE, it wasn’t
until 220 BCE that Emperor Qin ordered for of a lighthouse in around 280 BCE.
them to be joined up as a protective barrier. Designed by Greek architect Sostratus of
He set 300,000 soldiers plus many more Cnidus, it consisted of three levels, each built
peasants and prisoners to work constructing
the wall from stone, soil, wood and even sticky from a light-coloured stone and reinforced with
rice, which was used to help hold the bricks molten lead. The lower square level supported
together. The materials were transported to an eight-sided structure, on top of which sat a
the site by hand or using wheelbarrows, ropes
and animals. cylindrical section containing a curved mirror
that reflected the light from a fire into a beam.
The finished lighthouse is thought to have been
about 135 metres tall, but was reduced to rubble
by two earthquakes in the 14th century.
The Pharos took 12
years and a
considerable
amount of slave
labour to construct
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
A towering green oasis with a somewhat misleading name
According to ancient sources, Babylonian King
Nebuchadnezzar II built a luscious hanging
garden for his wife in 600 BCE because she
was homesick for the beautiful vegetation
Approximately 400,000 workers died of her native Media. But although vivid
during the Great Wall’s construction descriptions of the gardens were given,
no physical evidence has ever been
21,196.18km
Full length of the Great Wall
found, leading many to believe it never
actually existed.
However, a more recent search has
discovered that the hanging gardens may
not have been in Babylon after all,
Equivalent to five times the width of the US but were instead built a century
earlier in the city of Nineveh by
100
million tons
King Sennacherib.
It is thought they were
planted on a series of terraces
and an Archimedes’ screw
of brick, stone and mud were used to build it device was used to douse
them with 300 tons of water
14
every day.
Nineveh was later known as
New Babylon, which may
explain the confusion over
“The hanging gardens the garden’s exact location
© Thinkstock; Alamy
metres
The tallest section is equivalent to may not have been in
the height of three buses
Babylon after all”
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BUILDINGS, PLACES & LANDMARKS
TECHNOLOGY
The Colosseum
Ingenious inventions and designs made the world’s largest amphitheatre possible
In 80 BCE, after less than ten years of vaulted arches provided the structure with
construction, Rome’s enormous entertainment plenty of support without adding excess weight
venue was completed. A pioneering feat of and enabled more than 100,000 slaves to build Awnings
engineering, the Colosseum would go on to it in simple, standardised parts. The recent Wooden masts
supported awnings
host bloody gladiator battles, re-enactments invention of concrete also added strength to the
that shaded the
and executions for four centuries. The Colosseum, helping it hold crowds of more than audience from the Sun
innovative four-tiered design of multiple 50,000 people at a time.
Seating
The tiered seating
and elliptical design
ensured everyone had
a good view
Crowd control
Almost 80
separate arched
entrances allowed
the crowd to enter
and exit with ease
Substructure
Animals, gladiators and
stage sets were winched up
into the arena from below
Petra Banaue Rice Terraces
A unique ‘Rose City’ carved out of Jordan’s desert rocks A giant staircase of rice fields built by hand
More than 2,000 years ago, the indigenous people of
Half-built and half-carved from the pink Ifugao in the Philippines came up with an ingenious
sandstone that inspired its colourful Standing at 43m, method for farming on steep terrain.
Al Khazneh (The With no tools available, they carved a series of
nickname, Petra was established as the
Treasury) is rock-cut terraces out of the mountain, bordering them with
capital of the Nabataean Kingdom in 400 façade that concealed walls of mud and stone. They then harvested water
BCE. As a busy trading hub, the historic city the tomb of a king from the forests on top of the mountain, flooding the
was once home to around 20,000 people, individual fields so that rice could grow. This method
of farming and sustaining the terraces has since been
but getting access to water was difficult in passed down through the generations and is still
the middle of the desert. practised today.
The Nabataeans solved this problem by
constructing an elaborate water The rice terraces can
management system featuring cisterns, be found in the
Cordillera Mountains
reservoirs and dams that conserved
seasonal rains.
They chiselled their buildings out of the
cliffs by carving steps into the surrounding
rock, providing them with safe ledges to
work from, and ensured important
monuments aligned with the sunrise on
winter solstice.
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DID YOU KNOW? Placed end to end, the Banaue Rice Terraces would stretch halfway around the Earth
Machu Picchu Machu Picchu features palaces,
plazas, temples, homes and an
The amazing engineering found in irrigation system
the Inca’s lost city
Meaning ‘old mountain’ in the native Quechua
language, Machu Picchu stands 2,430 metres
above sea level in the Peruvian Andes.
Only recently rediscovered in 1911, the city
was built by the Inca people in the 15th century
and then abandoned 100 years later when their
empire was conquered by the Spanish. As the Inca
had no written language, there are no records
indicating the purpose of the site, but many
archaeologists believe it was a royal estate used
by leaders.
Set on the steep mountain slopes, the 200
buildings were constructed using a dry-stone
technique without mortar. Blocks of granite were
precisely cut and tightly slotted together like a
jigsaw, leaving cracks so small even a knife could
not penetrate them.
“Machu Picchu
stands 2,430 metres
above sea level in
the Peruvian Andes”
Easter Island statues
The giant stone heads that required a lot of heavy lifting
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, almost 900 17th century, and are thought to represent their
enormous statues called Moai can be found dead ancestors.
surrounding the remote Chilean island of Rapa Despite being carved out of a light, porous
Nui, the original name given to Easter Island by rock called tuff, which is formed by compacted
its Polynesian settlers. volcanic ash, they each weigh several tons, and
The statues were made by the Polynesians exactly how they were moved into position still
sometime between the 12th century and the remains a mystery.
The Moai appear in
many different stages
of completion
© Thinkstock
037
BUILDINGS, PLACES & LANDMARKS
Stonehenge The Henge
A prehistoric monument helping us to uncover the secrets of the past
completed
In the Wiltshire countryside of England stands Discover how Stonehenge might have
one of the most iconic and oldest human-made Bluestone looked in 2200 BCE
The smaller stones travelled more
landmarks in the world.
than 250km via river from the
Built over thousands of years, Stonehenge is Preseli Hills in southwest Wales
the only surviving stone circle of its kind and has and have a blueish tinge when wet
become a site of incredible archaeological
importance. Although it has revealed a lot about
certain practices of the past, the structure is still
shrouded in mystery, mainly because we still
can’t be sure what it was built for.
The most popular theory is that it was a
prehistoric temple, as the stones are precisely
aligned with the movements of the Sun across
the sky, which has special religious significance.
What we do know is that its construction began
in 3100 BCE, when a large circular ditch was dug
using tools made from antlers. Around this time,
the site was used for burials; in fact it’s the largest
late Neolithic cemetery in the UK.
In 2500 BCE, the stones were erected, having
been worked into shape and smoothed using
sarsen and flint hammerstones, and a few
hundred years later were rearranged into their
final position. Over the years many of the stones
have toppled or been removed, leaving
Stonehenge in its current state.
Superhenge
In 2015, scientists found what they thought
was another stone monument, five times the
size of Stonehenge, buried less than three
kilometres away from the iconic landmark.
Dubbed a ‘superhenge’, it was detected using
ground-penetrating radar and believed to
feature more than 100 stone monoliths.
However, when a dig was conducted,
archaeologists instead found a series of deep
pits that once held large wooden poles. The
site was originally home to the people who
built Stonehenge and the poles were erected
when they left, perhaps as a memorial.
However, they were later removed, and the pits
were filled with chalk and covered over with a
dirt bank.
Trilithons
The tall arches were
created by fitting a
horizontal lintel stone on
top of two vertical stones
using mortice holes and
protruding tenons
Sarsen stone
These large sandstones came from the
The superhenge monument featured wooden Marlborough Downs 32 kilometres away
poles, not large stones as previously thought and on average weigh 25 tons each
038
DID YOU KNOW? In 1915, Cecil Chubb went to an auction to buy chairs but instead bought Stonehenge for £6,600
So
ut 15 16
h 14 17
13 18
Alignment 11
12 19
20
“Stonehenge is the
The main axis of the stones
line up with the sunrise of the
10 21
Lunistice only surviving stone
summer solstice and the
sunset of the winter solstice
9
8
22
circle of its kind”
7 Summer
solstice
6 25 sunset
Winter
solstice
sunrise
5
4 27
26
Assembling
3
2 1 30 29
28
No
r th Stonehenge
How might the structure have been
29.6 m put in place with primitive tools?
Transportation
The stones were dragged to the site on rollers
and sledges, and some even came on rafts
down the River Avon.
Positioning
The stones were placed in large holes with
sloping sides and lined with wooden stakes at
the back.
Alter stone
Unique to the site,
this stone is made
from a type of old,
red sandstone and
comes from the Senni Raising the stones
Beds in south Wales Ropes, a wooden A-frame and sheer
manpower were used to pull the stones
upright, then the hole was packed with rubble.
Placing the lintels
Timber platforms were used to lift the
horizontal lintels into position before they
were placed on top of the upright stones.
Lintels
The horizontal stones
on top of the outer ring
were tightly slotted
together using tongue
and groove joints
© Sol90; LBI ArchPro
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