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January 30, 2008
'Secrets of the Parthenon'
"How did the ancient Athenians build this near-flawless icon of Greece's Golden Age?"
And, I might add, they did it in less than nine years.
I watched the above-titled hour-long show, part of PBS's NOVA series, last night.
It was superb and I recommend it highly.
The program will be rebroadcast over the next week at various times, depending on your location: find out when here.
January 30, 2008 at 10:01 AM | Permalink
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Comments
"Near-flawless"?
Well, it's certainly very pretty, but its roof, like every other ancient Greek roof, was one gigantic flaw.
The Greeks may have been hot stuff in geometry, but they didn't put it to practical use when building things. The concept of the roof truss was entirely alien to them. Instead, here's how they put a roof on every single one of their temples:
1: Lay beams across columns. Wooden beams if they could get them (Greece had long ago cut down all of its forests), stone if they couldn't.
2: PILE CLAY AND DIRT UP on the beams, in a roughly roof-like shape.
3: Lay tiles on the earth, as if paving a garden path.
This design was memorably described by materials-science trailblazer J. E. Gordon as "intellectually squalid". It produced roofs which weighed THOUSANDS OF TONS, and required outrageous numbers of (very pretty!) pillars to support them.
Posted by: Daniel Rutter | Jan 30, 2008 11:24:00 PM
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