Bricks

Brick, of course, is a modern building material. It is being used today everywhere in the world. But actually, brick is as old as the history of civilization! The Babylonians and Egyptians made and used bricks at least 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. Some excavations suggest that it was used even earlier.

The making of brick in early times was very crude. Brick is made if clay or shale and backed or burned at a high temperature. In early times, raw clay was used to make brick, but no machinery to make it had been invented. The clay was crushed and mixed with water by workmen who trampled it with their bare feet. Straw was mixed with the wet clay to hold the bricks together. The mixture was then formed by hand into different sizes and shapes and placed under the Sun to dry.

This crude method was followed by many years until it was discovered that burning the clay with fire made the bricks much harder and better able to withstand dampness. Straw was then no longer needed.

The Sun-backed bricks would have been useless in England, but in the hot, Middle-Eastern countries they proved to be so durable that some of the bricks used in ancient Babylonia can still be seen today.