A Course in the History of Ancient Engineering

This paper introduces the development process of a unique course, History of Ancient Engineering, which blends numerous areas of science and technology. Development of such a course that integrates two different major subjects, i.e., history and engineering, and the inclusion of pertinent areas such as agriculture, archeology, architecture, arts, chemistry, civil, geography, geology, hydrology, metallurgy, and physics. While the historical aspects focus on the when, where, who, and what, the engineering aspects would endeavor to solve the why, how, made from-what, and occasionally, what-if questions associated with ancient technology. The goal of this course is to increase the student’s technical literacy by expanding their knowledge of how ancient engineering has shaped human history and in return, how people have shaped engineering and technology. The course is developed as a General Education Curriculum (GEC) course for the Engineering Education Innovation Center (EEIC) which includes such topics as our ancient engineers, stone tools and hafted tools, the quest for fire, ancient arts, primordial farms, early water-raising devices, the engineering of clayware, early metallurgy, simple machines, military engineering, mechanical and water engineering, and time measurement. In this paper, these topics are presented in chronological order, on weekly basis. At the end of the semester, students will furnish textual (conceptual reports), graphical (3-D images), and physical projects (manually made or 3-D printed) simulating an ancient device of their choice. Results from student and peer evaluations are consistently favorable.