istoryworld
Water mills
In an even simpler version of a water mill, a horizontal water wheel in a stream can turn a millstone above by means of a fixed shaft. Water mills of one kind or the other are certainly known by the 1st century BC in the Hellenistic world. A poem of the time advises young girls that they can now let the nymphs of the stream do the hard work of milling. The Romans adopt the Greek water mill, and Vitruvius in the 1st century BC ...
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The Arabic script
A stele, or inscribed column, is set up at Tema in northwest Arabia. Dating from the 5th century BC, its inscription is the earliest known example of the writing which evolves a millennium later into the Arabic script. The script is developed from the 1st century BC by the Nabataeans, a people speaking a Semitic language whose stronghold at Petra, on a main caravan route, brings them prosperity and the need for records. Writing is not much needed by the nomads of Arabia, but when ...
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Herod and his successors
Herod proves a great builder. He founds new Roman cities, in particular Caesarea (now Qesari, on the coast south of Haifa), which later becomes the capital of Roman Palestine. And he creates a spectacular new Temple on the holy mount in Jerusalem (see the Temple in Jerusalem). But many of his actions are violent. In an outburst of jealousy he kills not only a favourite wife, Mariamne, but also her grandfather, mother, brother and two sons. He could well have been capable of the massacre ...
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Cave paintings
Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered in many parts of the world, from Europe and Africa to Australia. Africa has some of the earliest paintings and rock engravings to have been securely dated. Nearly 30,000 years old, they are discovered in 1969 on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia. But the most numerous and the most sophisticated of prehistoric paintings are on the walls of caves in southwest France and northern Spain. About 150 painted caves have been discovered in this ...
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Phonetics and the alphabet
Phoenician is a Semitic language and the new approach to writing is adopted by the various Semitic groups in Phoenicia and Palestine. Versions of it are used, for example, for Aramaic and Hebrew. Only the consonants are written, leaving the vowels to be understood by the reader (as is still the case today with a widespread Semitic language, Arabic). The contribution of the Greeks, adapting the Phoenician system of writing in the 8th century BC, is to add vowels. For some they use the names ...
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Pharos at Alexandria
The sun god Helios features also in the last of the seven wonders. This is the lighthouse put up on the island of Pharos at Alexandria (as a result pharos becomes the Greek word for any lighthouse). It consists of a three-tier stone tower, said to be more than 120 metres high, which has within it a broad spiral ramp leading up to a platform where fires burn at night. They are reflected out to sea by metal mirrors. Above the fires is a huge ...
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Baroque Rome
During these same years Bernini's great contribution to the exterior of St Peter's is also under construction. The open space in front of the church, where pilgrims gather to hear the pope's Easter address, needs to be enclosed in some way to form a welcoming piazza. Bernini achieves a perfect solution in the form of an open curving colonnade. The four concentric rows of columns provide covered walkways and a shape for the piazza, but they do so without closing it in - for there ...
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Voyages of Captain Cook
The voyages of James Cook are the first examples of exploration undertaken on scientific principles. His first expedition, sailing in the Endeavour from Plymouth in 1768, has a scientific task as its central mission. It is known to the astronomers of the day that in June 1769 the planet Venus will pass directly between the earth and the sun. An international effort is made to time the precise details of this transit, as seen from different parts of the world, in the hope of calculating ...
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Capella Palatina in Palermo
The small palace chapel in Palermo, with its walls covered in bright pictorial mosaic, is one of the most exquisite buildings of the Middle Ages. Known as the Capella Palatina (Latin for 'palace chapel'), it is begun in 1132 and completed in about 1189. The mosaics are in the Greek tradition, created by craftsmen from Constantinople. Christ Pantocrator is in the apse and cupola, in traditional Byzantine style. Round the walls are sequences of scenes from the Old Testament, and from the lives of St ...
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Fall of Constantinople
A month after his twenty-first birthday, in April 1453, Mehmed II applies to Constantinople the stranglehold which has been a tacit threat for nearly a century, ever since the Ottoman capture of Adrianople (Edirne in its Turkish name) in 1362. He initiates a tight blockade of the city by both sea and land. The inhabitants, as often before, place their faith in their immensely strong city walls. Only on the harbour side are these walls vulnerable, and the harbour (the long creek known as the ...
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Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle
Five years after the coronation in Rome, Leo III is again with Charlemagne at a religious ceremony. But this time it is in Germany. He is consecrating Charlemagne's spectacular new church in Aachen, begun just nine years previously in 796. The French name of Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, specifically features this famous building - a small but richly decorated octagonal chapel which Charlemagne has consciously modelled on another famous imperial church, Justinian's San Vitale in Ravenna.
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Waterloo
When the engagement begins at Waterloo, on June 18, Wellington is in a defensive position with about 68,000 troops and 156 guns; Napoleon has 72,000 men and 246 guns. An extremely hard-fought battle looks almost certain to go Napoleon's way until the arrival in the afternoon of Blücher and the Prussians, regrouped after their flight of two days previously. They tip the balance. By the early evening the French are in full retreat, and Napoleon is on his way back to Paris.He arrives in the ...
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Destruction of the Persian empire
Within a mere eighteen months Alexander has cleared the Persians out of Anatolia, which they have held for two centuries. The conqueror now moves south along the coast through present-day Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The ports here are the home bases of the Persian fleet in the Mediterranean. By occupying them he intends to cripple the fleet and deprive it of contact with the cities of the empire, including Persepolis. Most of the Phoenician towns open their gates to him. The exception is the greatest ...
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Edward I and Wales
Llywelyn is forced to sign a treaty on November 9 at Conwy. It strips him of nearly all his territories, reducing the principality to the area of Snowdon. Anglesey is allowed him on lease from the king of England, but the rest of Wales is now to be administered by English agents - a role which they fulfil with such brutality that there is a widespread uprising, headed by Llywelyn, in 1282. Edward reacts as forcefully as before, with another invasion of Wales during which ...
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Vijayanagara
During the declining years of the Delhi sultanate, a great Hindu empire is established in the south. Founded in about 1336 with its capital at Vijayanagara (meaning 'city of victory'), it is a worthy successor to the empire of the Cholas and controls much the same area (the whole of India south of the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers). The site of Vijayanagara is at Hampi - now just a village surrounded by a ruined city of temples and palaces. Deserted in 1565, after a catastrophic ...
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Carracks, galleons and galleys
From 1570 Hawkins experiments with a design in which the high forecastle is eliminated. He proves that a ship with high stern and relatively low bow is faster and more manoeuvrable. With an official post on the Navy Board, he is able to improve the English fleet dramatically before the encounter with the Spanish Armada in 1588 - when the agility of the English vessels wins the day. Hawkins' 'low-charged' design, which acquires the general name of galleon, becomes the standard form for all large ...
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The Book
The books of the Jewish Bible are believed to have been written over several centuries, beginning in the 10th century BC - by which time the Hebrews are settled in Canaan, or Palestine. But in many parts the scribes are writing down a much older oral tradition. It is thought that some of the events described may go back as far as the 18th century BC. The holiest part of the Bible for Jews is the first five books, known as the Torah ('instruction' or ...
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Italian Gothic
More typical of Venetian Gothic is the exquisite Ca' d'Oro, built betwen 1421 and 1440. There is a wonderful contrast and harmony between the wall with its nine inset windows on the right (stone with an occasional pattern of space) and the three tiers of balconies with their filigree arches on the left (space with an occasional pattern of stone). This design blends the Gothic with other influences, deriving from Venice's connections with the Byzantine and Muslim east. The result is a beauty, purely Venetian, ...
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Ashikaga shogunate
The Ashikaga shoguns are never as firmly in control of Japan as their predecessors in Kamakura. From 1467 the country is in an almost permanent state of civil war, until their shogunate is brought to an end in 1573. But the Ashikaga make a great contribution to the cultural life of Japan. They create Zen temples and gardens, with areas specially designed for the Tea Ceremony. The famous Golden Pavilion in Kyoto is built in 1397 by the shogun Yoshimitsu as a villa for his ...
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Henry IV
Contrary to this principle, Henry decides to intervene in 1610 in a dispute over the inheritance of the duchy of Jülich, close to the sensitive border between the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands. The Habsburg emperor Rudolf II is about to seize the duchy, and Henry IV is about to march against him, when Henry is assassinated in a Paris street by François Ravaillac (a Catholic whose precise motives are unclear).Henry is one of France's most popular kings. Four years after his death a ...
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