Que Sera, Sera

that's not even glaze do you understand that's not glaze that's burnished slip!! she was just that fucking good!! some of the most beautiful pottery on earth imho

this is whats called a ‘coffer dam’, you basically build some walls, drop them in the water, tie them together, and then pump out the water from your new hole in the water so you can build while staying dry its oddly not that hard- the flippin ROMANS were able to do it with logs and mud

“Not that hard - the ROMANS were able to do it” - people seriously underestimate how advanced some ancient cultures were and the organized effort it takes to come up with something like this and actually implement it. The Romans had heated floors, glass windows and ceilings that could be rotated to reflect what you were eating (forests for game, sea landscapes for fish). Hell, the Greeks built cameras and moving robots. The Minoans, who lived four thousands years ago and were wiped out by a tsunami three times as powerful as the one which devasted Japan in 2011, had running water and modern toilets. And let’s not get into how China basically invented everything centuries before anyone else. 

someone: you build how many bridges on a single military campaign…?

The Indus valley civilisations (one of the cradles of civilisation) had a covered sewer system. The first urban sanitation system might have been Harappa around 4 500 years ago. It included baths. The people in Lothal had a toilet in every house around 4370 years ago. They also had normed brick sizes to make building easier.