One night, I was having a hard time falling asleep, so I turned on my local PBS station and – wow – that’s something I should never do. I caught the start of this NOVA presentation on the Roman Colosseum and how the ancient Romans were able to make the bloody spectacles happen – using woodworking!
The video chronicles the work of archaeologists who, with just remnants of where the wooden structure existed, were able to recreate the mechanism that raised wild animals to the Colosseum floor and made them appear seemingly out of nowhere.
This video is offered by PBS as is free to watch online. I guarantee that when it is over, you will have a new found appreciation for woodworkers who plied their trade nearly two millennia ago.
Great recommendation! I enjoyed the video a lot, the only critique is that I wish they would have shown Roman building techniques. Doing some research for the hand plane I made for Get Woodworking Week I came across several interesting sites on Roman tools and hand planes.
Of course Chris Schwarz had one: http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/chris-schwarz-blog/roman-style-handplane-completato
One from a professor of archaeology at Dartmouth: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rogerulrich/tools_woodworking.html
An article on a Roman plane unearthed in Yorkshire: http://www.handplane.com/906/the-ancient-roman-plane-of-yorkshire-wolds/
Fascinating video! Thanks for sharing it.