TITLE: When Muscle Mattered Most: the Biomechanics of Some Ancient Tasks

SPEAKER: Professor Steve Vogel

TIME: Thursday Sept. 25, 2003 at 4 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

For most of our time on earth, we humans used little more than muscle to move ourselves around, to lift our loads, to plow our fields, and to reap our harvests. Our engine was muscle-- ours and that of our oxen, horses, and a few other co-opted creatures. And so muscle's peculiar performance shaped the way we did things. A look at these peculiarities can tell us a lot about such things as the design of old tools and weapons, about why the pyramids were built of stones of their particular size, why the classical triremes were much better rowed boats than the much later galleys, and about the revolution instigated by successful harnessing of horses only a thousand or so years ago.