We tend to see concrete as one of the commonplaces of our modern world; we seldom give this dull white substance a second thought. Many recall that the Romans used it. But its basic ingredient, lime, came into use far earlier. In fact, like the fire which creates it, lime's time of first use is lost in prehistory.
Buildings using lime in construction were found at the Fertile Crescent sites of Göbekli Tepe, Nevali Çori, Çayönyü, and Çatal Höyük — the first two being temples, the last two the world's oldest known towns. To those ancient peoples, lime would have seemed magical, releasing heat when mixed with water and turning into hard rock.
The Romans learned to mix it with sand and gravel to form concrete, and later to add clay to the mixture. Some buildings built from the resulting "Roman concrete" have lasted through more than twenty centuries, enduring far longer than anything we have today. The secret of making concrete was lost after that, and rediscovered only in the nineteenth century.
Robert Courland's history demonstrates a scholar's dedication to research and a raconteur's gift for storytelling. His tale is filled with heroes and villains, commercial successes and failures, brilliant achievements and abysmal tragedies — right up to the present, when Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized architecture by making use of reinforced concrete's tensile strength.
I expected a rather boring book, but I found this one a genuine page-turner. Who knew that mundane concrete was in use so long ago, or had such an illustrious history?
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