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The guide: https://medieval-wisdom.com

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A painted tomb wall from around 1900 BC shows 172 men hauling a 58-tonne statue, and one man pouring water on the sand in front of it. In 2014, physicists measured what that water does: the right amount halves the pull.

This video revisits twelve technologies that are often lumped together as "ancient secrets": what each one was, the physics behind it, its practical limit, and which popular stories about them fail a source check. One of the twelve really is lost.

Chapters (adjust to the final edit):

00:00 The man pouring water

01:20 1 · Wet sand under the sledge

03:20 2 · The Greek and Roman crane (and a trispastos you can rig)

05:30 3 · Herodotus's "machines of short timber" and the Hatnub ramp

07:10 4 · Baalbek: sound levitation vs. capstans

09:00 5 · The Archimedes screw

10:50 6 · The watermill at Barbegal

12:40 7 · Windmills from Sistan to Yorkshire

14:10 8 · Roman marine concrete

15:50 9 · Cutting granite with copper and sand

17:40 10 · Greek fire, the one that was lost

19:30 11 · The "Baghdad Battery" and fire gilding

21:00 12 · Ley lines and the solar calendars

22:20 What worked, and what was lost

Sources

- Fall et al., "Sliding friction on wet and dry sand," Physical Review Letters 112 (2014)

- Vitruvius, De Architectura, Books II and X (LacusCurtius)

- Herodotus, Histories 2.125; Diodorus Siculus 1.34 and 5.37

- University of Liverpool / IFAO, Hatnub quarry ramp (2018)

- German Archaeological Institute, Baalbek quarry block (2014); J.-P. Adam, Syria 54 (1977)

- Sürmelihindi et al., Science Advances (2018), Barbegal mills

- Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle (c. 1190s)

- Jackson et al., American Mineralogist (2017); Seymour et al., Science Advances (2023)

- D. Stocks, Antiquity 75 (2001); F. Petrie, Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh (1883)

- Theophanes, Chronicle; Constantine VII, De Administrando Imperio 13; J. Haldon, "'Greek fire'

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