The economic and social history of structures
Land
Art and tools are perhaps the oldest forms of structures. For the 2.5 million years until the end of the last glacial period 10,000 years ago, Palaeolithic and 'Old Stone Age' hunter-gatherers had only rocks and bones to shape for tools, for sculptures and for decorations. Limited knowledge and a mobile lifestyle meant it was difficult to create anything that could not easily be carried.
Agricultural cultivation, and the fixed settlements and buildings that accompanied it, developed only about 8,000 years ago.
Some of the earliest buildings were probably flat-roofed, rock-built houses – square or rectangular with a low door and simple ventilation through openings below the roof. They would have been built in protected places, such as terraced hilly areas.
The world's first truly complex structures were the pyramids, near Cairo in Egypt. The Pyramids of Giza, built in the 4th Dynasty of the Pharaohs in 2723-2563 BC, include three huge structures and six smaller ones. There are earlier similar constructions which, though not as big, are no less impressive.
In ancient Egypt, the pyramid structures were tombs for mummified kings, but other similar buildings in Central America, built in the 1st millennia BC by Mesoamerican and pre-Columbian cultures, formed platforms for temples.
Water
Since 8000 BC, people have used vessels on water for transport and catching food. Egyptian reed boats and European dugout canoes may have been far removed from the modern giants of the waves, but they did lead the way for later mariners. The search for food, trade and military ambition has been the driving force behind the human conquest of the seas. Sometimes traders were less than scrupulous. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the slave trade saw men and women from Africa exchanged for molasses in the West Indies, which was taken north to Massachusetts to be changed for rum, and, turning full circle, used to buy more slaves.
From about 2000 BC, the ancient Greeks built oar and sail-powered wooden ships. Similar wooden hulled vessels are also recorded from the Phoenicians about 1000 BC, in what is now Lebanon and Syria. But their development of the keel was – and is – critical in preventing a vessel being capsized by waves. Wood remained the dominant construction material for the Roman galleys, rowed by large numbers of oarsmen, and for the oak ships of the Norsemen or Vikings.
Air
Humans have dreamed of taking to the air since the time of the ancient Greeks, whose mythical Icarus died after flying too close to the sun. In the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci produced his famous designs for parachutes and ornithopters (flapping-wing machines). Others followed with their own visions of flight – some falling to their deaths attempting to put them into practice. It was not until the late 18th century, however, when Marquis d'Arlandes and Pilátre de Rozier took off in their hot air balloon, that man's aspirations finally got off the ground.
The desire to reach for the sky was given a new impetus in 1957 when the former Soviet Union launched the first space satellite. The challenge was picked up by US president John F Kennedy with the announcement that his country would be first to the Moon – the space race was on. The competition represented the struggle between two nations and two ideals: communism and capitalism. In 1969, US astronaut Neil Armstrong was first to walk on the Moon. The space programmes spawned great leaps forward in technology, in everything from stainless steel saucepans to computers.
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