Ancient Inventions: City Life

Jones, Terry

Television Director: Grabsky, Phil

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Catalogue Number: SEV150-5

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Join Monty Python's Terry Jones on a tour of the ingenuity of our ancestors. Take a humorous yet factual look at inventions we think of as unique to modern times when really they have been around for centuries and many even longer. Some of the amazing discoveries include: automatic doors - first designed over 2000 years ago; accurate pregnancy tests - a regular feature of ancient Babylon; and tanks - actually devised by the Assyrians in 8 BC. Clearly the ancient world was every bit as inventive as our own.

City Life

It took Christopher Columbus over eight weeks to cross the Atlantic. Nowadays, we can do it in less than eight hours in a jumbo jet. What would Columbus or Archimedes have made of it? Well, it doesn't mean they were less intelligent than you or me. They were probably more intelligent. And maybe all this progress that modern man seems to be making is partly an illusion. Perhaps there are even things we can learn from the science and technology of ancient times. Take the city, for example. Cities seem so much the product of modern technology and yet, in fact, they are one of the most ancient of all inventions.