After watched the BBC documentary series “What did Romans Did for us”, I was quite impressed by the extraordinary wisdom of the ancient Romans.
Personally, I think that although the products of ancient romans were quiet primitive, they were very delicate and they showed the fundamental principles of the food processing, architecture, manufacture of glass and concrete, weapons, water transport, Informatics Communication Technologies in our modern life. And based on those principles, our human being created a more convenient modern society.
In one of our European Culture class, Prof. Ding said that Rome passed on the heritage of the Greeks. In the documentary, I have also found a small detail to prove the statement. In the fifth episode: “One the edge of the Empire”, the ancient Romans use very thin wood to create postcard. This kind of folding postcard can date back to ancient Greek. And the reason why they use thin wood is that they could not get papyrus, which is one of the symbols of ancient Egypt and ancient Greeks, to make postcard.
Also, in the documentary series, I have found some similarity between the products making by Romans and ancient Chinese. When I watched the first episode: Life of Luxury, I was surprised to find that some of the processes in making grape wine are quite similar to making traditional Chinese tea. In this clip, the screw press, reconstructed using traditional techniques by carpenter Henry Russell, was used to produce wine. Similarly, in the tea manufacture of ancient China, Chinese people also need the use screw press. However, when it comes to the process of press, Ancient romans use it to squeeze the grape and get the juice, while Chinese people do that in order to roll the tea leaves and make them stay in a beautiful shape. Also, in the sixth episode: Ahead of Their Time, there is a kind of flotation made from animal skin, in the Chinese Buddhist dictionary, we can also find the definition of this flotation, it is called “Fu Nang” .
浮囊，渡海人所带免没溺之物也。名义集七曰：‘五分云：自今听诸比丘畜浮囊，若羊皮若牛皮，传闻，西域渡海之人多作鸟翎毛袋，或齐巨牛脬，海船若失，吹气浮身。’
So, both in ancient china and ancient romans, people use the same material to cross rivers. Maybe we can also create “what did ancient Chinese did for us” documentaries in China~
In my point of view, both the wonderful classes of Prof. Ding and the material she sent into Doban websites are meaningful and of high quality. We can really enrich ourselves and improve our culture literacy through the learning process!
