1. A civil engineer is just a engineer who designs large structures taking into consideration the physics and other outside influences that will effect the structure. Their job is to make the structures last as long as possible. The trebuchets and mangonel are just a different type of structure.
2. My impressions of the Middle East are big sweeping buildings. Buildings that would be in Aladdin or Lawrence of Arabia. I know very little outside of what I have seen in movies and history books.
3. Like in medieval Europe, the man with most money had much bigger houses then those without money. It is much the same relationship with a westerns castle as it is in the medieval Middle East. Both cultures had the rich in big houses, while the poor either lived in the houses to serve them or lived in small huts. The only diffrence is in the style of the different houses.
In my opinion, you over-simplified your response to question 3 when you stated that the rich built large, lavish houses while the poor lived in huts or as servants to the rich. One of the connections you didn’t make was that conflicts drove the advancement of structural technology. The wealth was just a means of construction, while the motive was survival. Granted, some motive behind building large, lavish abodes was to flaunt one’s wealth, but the structures where always designed with some level of security in mind. On a different note, I completely agree with you when you said that the behaviors of the medieval Europeans and Middle Easterners, in terms of building structures, is quite similar with the exception of style. Also, for question 2, don’t forget structures that were built as cultural icons, such as the pyramids and sphinx of Egypt, and the ziggurat of Ur. (ENGL 106)
ReplyDeleteI think that most of the grand structures and homes for the rich were actually built by the poor. For example, the pyramids were built by thousands of slaves and poor civilians because it took many people to roll each massive piece of the pyramid higher until the top was finished. I do agree that past cultures, especially ancient cultures, were able to create marvelous structures because the rich/upper-class took advantage of the weaker and poorer people. I think that although there was probably a lot of corruption in the societies of ancient cultures, the grand structures and artifacts that were created have come to current cultures to regard the ancient societies as exceptional engineers. (ENGR 103)
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