Antiquity
Wood, bone, stone, and earth are some of the materials which formed the structures of the Roman empire. Certain structures were made possible by the character of the land upon which these structures are built; a volcanic peninsula with stone aggregates and conglomerates containing crystalline material, will produce material which weathers differently from soft, sedimentary rock and silt. That is one of the reasons that the concrete Pantheon of Rome could last for 1850 years. And why the thatched farmhouses of Holland sketched by Rembrandt have long since decayed.
After the thighbone daggers of the early hunter-gatherers were superseded by wood and stone axes, and then by copper, bronze and iron implements of the Roman civilization, more precious materials could then be sought, and gathered together. Thus the medieval goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini could seek and defend the gold which he had to turn into objects of desire for dukes and popes. His autobiography contains one of the first descriptions of a metallurgical process.
Read more about this topic: History Of Materials Science
Famous quotes containing the word antiquity:
“Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)