Ancient Building Technology Volume 2 - Materials




The Limits of the Ancient World

Considered from three points of view – the history of building, general history, physical geography – some individual

entity can be imagined comprising temperate Europe, the Middle East and Africa north of the Sahara together with

the Nile Valley and Ethiopia. Regular communication prevailed throughout this region; while whatever external

contacts transpired did not influence the development of building within the region.

Natural boundaries closed the region off on three sides. Only there was no natural barrier to the East, neither across

the steppes of Central Asia nor by the sea to India. The Ancient World maintained contact with further Asia and

India which exercised an influence on building there. However, the only movements of Asiatic people into the

ancient world or onto its borders did not in any way affect the history of building within the Ancient World.

Thus the Ancient World as dealt with in this book may be represented notionally by a circle with centre in the

Eastern Mediterranean (Crete) spanning about 50 both of latitude and longitude – i.e. with a diameter of roughly

2000 miles (or of three thousand kilometres). From this expanse two areas are removed because of considerations of

physical geography: a large segment at the South-West is desert (the Sahara) and the most northerly part is sub-arctic

tundra.


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