Once the most basic inventions had been created in prehistoric times - food, transport, clothing, and alcohol - humanity was free to create more luxurious goods. In ancient times, Asian inventors came up with such fripperies as silk, soap, glass, ink, parasols, and kites. Some inventions of a more serious nature also appeared at this time: writing, irrigation, and map-making, for example.
Chinese legends say that the Empress Lei Tsu first discovered silk around 4,000 B.C., when a silkworm cocoon fell into her hot tea. As the empress fished the cocoon out of her teacup, she found that it was unraveling into long, smooth filaments. Rather than flinging the sodden mess away, she decided to spin the fibers into thread. This legend may be nothing more, but certainly Chinese farmers were cultivating silkworms and mulberry trees (for silkworm feed) by 3,200 B.C.
3,000 B.C. - First written language, Sumer
Creative minds all around the world have tackled the problem of capturing the stream of sounds we call speech, and rendering it into a written form. In regions as diverse as Mesopotamia, China, and Meso-America, different solutions have been found for this intriquing riddle. Perhaps the first people to write things down were the Sumerians, living in what is now Iraq, who invented a writing system based on syllables around 3,000 B.C. Much like modern Chinese writing, each symbol in Sumerian represented a syllable or idea, which could be combined with other symbols to form entire words. 3,000 B.C. - Invention of man-made glass, Phoenicia
The Roman historian Pliny tells us that the Phoenicians discovered glass-making around 3,000 B.C. when some sailors lit a fire on a sandy beach on the Syrian coast. The sailors did not have any stones on which to rest their cooking pots, so they used blocks of potassium nitrate (salt peter) as supports, instead. When they woke up the next day, they found that the fire had fused silicon from the sand with soda from the salt peter, forming glass. Naturally occuring glass can be found when lightning strikes sand, and also in the form of volcanic obsidian. The Phoenicians thus likely recognized the substance produced by their cooking fire. The earliest known glass vessel is from Egypt, and dates to about 1450 B.C. 2,800 B.C. - Invention of soap, Babylon
Around 2,800 B.C., Babylonians (in modern-day Iraq) discovered that they could create an effective cleanser by mixing animal fat with wood ashes. They boiled the two ingredients together in clay cylinders to produce the world's first known bars of soap. 2,500 B.C. - Invention of ink, China
Prior to the invention of ink, people had to carve words and symbols into stones, or carve stamps of each symbol and then press them into clay tablets in order to write. It was a time-consuming task, and the resultant documents were unwieldy or fragile. Enter ink! This handy combination of fine soot and glue seems to have been invented almost simultaneously in China and Egypt, around 2,500 B.C. Scribes could then simply brush words and pictures onto the surface of cured animal skins, papyrus, or eventually paper, for light-weight, portable, and relatively durable documents. 2,400 B.C. - Invention of the parasol, Mesopotamia
The first record of someone using a parasol comes from a Mesopotamian carving dating back to 2,400 B.C. A stretched cloth over a wooden frame, the parasol was used at first only to protect nobles from the blazing desert sun. It was such a good idea that soon, according to ancient works of art, the nobility of sunny places from Rome to India were being shaded by parasol-wielding servants. 2,400 B.C. - Invention of irrigation canals, Sumer and China
Every farmer knows that rain can be an unreliable source of water for crops. To solve this problem, the farmers of both Sumer and China began to dig irrigation canal systems around 2,400 B.C. A series of ditches and gates directed river water out onto the fields, where thirsty crops waited. Unfortunately for the Sumerians, their land had once been a sea bed. Frequent irrigation drove ancient salts to the surface, salinating the land and ruining it for agriculture. The once-Fertile Crescent became unable to support crops by 1,700 B.C., and the Sumerian culture collapsed. 2,300 B.C. - Invention of cartography (map-making) in Mesopotamia
The earliest known map was created during the reign of Sargon of Akkad, who ruled in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) around 2,300 B.C. The map depicts northern Iraq. Although map-reading is second nature to most modern-day humans, it was quite an intellectual leap to conceive of drawing vast areas of land, at a much reduced scale, and from a birds-eye point of view. 1,500 B.C. - Invention of the oar, Phoenicia
It comes as no surprise that the sea-faring Phoenicians invented the oar. Egyptians began using paddles to move up and down the Nile as early as 3,000 B.C. The Phoenician sailors took the same idea, and gave it added leverage by fixing a fulcrum (the oarlock) to the side of the boat, and sliding the oar into it. Today, oars are used mainly in recreational boating. Until the invention of steamboats and motorboats, however, oars were still very important in commercial and military sailing. Even when sailing ships were the technology of the day, people still rowed out to their ships in smaller boats... propelled by oars.One Chinese legend says that a farmer tied a string onto his straw hat to keep it on his head during a windstorm, and thus the kite was born. Whatever the actual origin of the idea, Chinese people have been flying kites for thousands of years. Early kites were likely made of silk stretched over a bamboo frame, although some may have been made of large leaves or animal hides. Kites are fun toys, of course, but some kites were also used to carry military messages, or were fitted with hooks and bait for fishing.
