I love history, and I've taken a crap ton of classes on the subject. In college, I took so many that I qualified for a minor in history - typically unheard of for someone gunning for an engineering degree. However, my favorite instructor in this field remains Mr. Keary Burger who taught at Long Beach High School. His lectures made ancient history, perceived by many to be a dry, irrelevant subject, come alive, and in his classroom, learning about the ancients was interesting and cool. There are a lot of historical factoids I picked up in his class that I still remember to this day. King Menes united the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. The name of Alexander the Great's horse was Bucephalus. The legendary edges on Japanese katanas were made by flattening and folding the steel over and over. Interesting and cool.
One day he was talking about Roman architecture and the role that arches played in the Empire's long existence. Although not invented by the Romans, they used arches extensively in construction. Mr. Burger explained arches work by transmitting any load to the ground, meaning they can carry a lot of weight. This inherent strength, coupled with the fact that Roman architects over-engineered everything made their structures very durable. I've walked across a Roman arched bridge that's still in service today.
If you take an arch and stretch it lengthwise, you form a tunnel. Romans used these tunnels with more supporting arches to carry water from distant sources to their main cities. Some of these aqueducts are still primary water sources two millennia later.
An arch that's spun from its top gives you a dome. Imagine a barbarian chieftain being brought into the massive rotunda of the Pantheon for the first time. He'd look up and see a stone ceiling soaring 140 feet above him that had no visible means of support. The Oculus at the very top of the dome provided the only illumination, like a spotlight into the dark, cavernous interior. In class, Mr. Burger imagined the conversation going like this:
"Hey, Rothgar, see that ceiling above you?"
"Yeah, Publius. That's pretty amazing. What's holding it up?"
"God. God holds up our buildings so don't mess with us."
"Yeah. Good idea."
Martin Page's first solo album was In the House of Stone and Light in 1994. The title track from that album went to #14 on the Hot 100 but took the top spot on the Adult Contemporary chart. His inspiration for the song was the Grand Canyon, that massive masterpiece of Nature, the greatest architect ever. The song's lyrics reference the Havasupai, a Native American people in the American Southwest whose name for the Grand Canyon translates to "the house of stone and light". If you stand on the south rim and watch the play of colors as the sun moves across the sky, you'll find it's a very apt name.
The last time I was at the Canyon, Andrea and I lingered nearby the Havasupai tribal lands. Reverence for the area still runs strong. The solemnity of the region is almost palpable, and it deeply affects many who encounter it. I worked with a guy who made a trek to the Grand Canyon and the experience was profound. For him, possibly like our old friend, Rothgar, gazing up at the Pantheon's dome, he wasn't sure how you could stand in that natural cathedral and not be awed by Nature's handiwork.
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