Humans have always created things that make their lives easier or safer. However, for the inventors and builders whose lives predate written language, the title of scientist or engineer doesn’t seem to fit comfortably. Despite this, people who lived prior to the oldest known civilizations in Sumer and Mesopotamia did figure out a lot of important things. For example, they knew how to use fire, how to build a bow and arrow, and how to make a pot.

Once these ancient makers figured out a way to write things down, human history started to fill up with calculated numbers, written observations, and precise measurements. This period, starting around 3500 BCE (before the Common Era), is the dawn of technology and engineering. With the development of writing, civilization began to flourish. There is a great deal of historical and archeological evidence showing that Mesopotamians, Sumerians, and other ancient but literate people took a near-scientific look at their world and some of them became astronomers, geologists, and biologists—at least, of a sort.

Around 3000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians, who were builders of great structures and irrigators of large farms, had many citizens who qualified as real engineers; the proof of their abilities still stands in the great pyramids on the banks of the Nile.

The people who lived near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea who came after the Egyptians also figured out a lot about the way the world worked. Thales, Archimedes, Aristotle, Heron (also known as Hero of Alexandria), and Pythagoras are just a few of the natural philosophers we unquestionably recognize as scientists today. And in addition to these famous Greeks, Romans and Persians built cities made of brick and concrete with indoor plumbing, and the ancient Chinese, Indians, and other peoples invented paper, the compass, stirrups, musical notation, and windmills, among many other things. All of these cultures made important contributions to learning, and these ideas are still the bedrock on which a great deal of 21st century science stands.

Let’s begin our exploration of the world of Ancient Makers with a trip to ancient France. The journey starts in a cave near the vineyards of present-day Bordeaux, in a beautiful, but secluded, spot not far from the Dordogne River.