Ancient infrastructure
Empirical design + organized public works
Early societies developed durable construction, irrigation, drainage, roads, ports, surveying practices, and monumental works through accumulated observation, craft knowledge, geometry, and organized labor.
- Indus settlements demonstrate planned streets and drainage.
- Roman works integrated roads, aqueducts, bridges, harbors, and hydraulic binders.
- Andean and Mesoamerican engineering traditions should be treated as distinct cultural and geographic systems.
- Engineering knowledge existed globally; the history is not a single European sequence.