The human past is paved with remarkable inventions – some fundamental and others just intriguing or bizarre.
The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World takes us on an eye-opening journey through human innovations, from the first crude stone tools of our earliest ancestors two-and-a-half million years ago up to the early medieval period.
Drawing on modern science and the latest research, leading authorities explore some of history’s most fascinating inventions and some of the most fundamental questions in our past.
Sections look at the origins of hunting, warfare and sport, art and science: the evolution of weapons of war, the beginnings of writing, the early use of codes and ciphers, and the origins of mathematics, calendars and astronomy.
Packed with over 500 photographs, diagrams, maps and plans, The Seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World is a unique guide to some of humanity’s most remarkable inventions and a testimony to the ingenuity and opportunism of our forebears, qualities that still serve us well today.