The crane is one of the most important inventions in the history of construction as it allows us to build higher and lift more than we could through manpower alone, and have given us the ability to create monuments and buildings that reach the clouds.

As well as this, however, it led to a dramatic transformation in how construction was undertaken and a move away from gigantic groups of workers towards a smaller group of skilled contractors.

In a world before crane hire and where relatively small groups of skilled contractors would take advantage of advanced technology, construction looked very different.

Ancient Construction

Most of the secrets of ancient construction and our earliest buildings have been lost to time, not helped by the fact that Neolithic structures tended to be tents and other simple structures that leave no trace and therefore no clue of how they were made.

Larger structures such as megaliths and tombs were not so much constructed but instead quarried and hollowed out of naturally existing stone or were simple structures made of huge pieces of stone arranged into place.

This would, in combination with the development of mud bricks (in Ancient Mesopotamia) and adobe and stonework (in Ancient Egypt) lead to the construction of ever more ambitious structures.

The pyramid, for example, was constructed without using wheels, pulleys or cranes, leading to wide speculation as to how exactly the gigantic blocks used in the pyramids were constructed, although one suggested method involved huge numbers of people, ramps and wet sand.

The First Cranes

Whilst Mesopotamia and Egypt had used cranes as part of water irrigation, the first cranes used for lifting ever-heavier loads were developed around 515BC.

Early cranes used chains and lifting tongs to heave stone blocks, and evidence of this usage has been found in Ancient Greek temples around this time.

There has been some speculation as to the exact use of the cranes, whether it took the form of one large crane above the block, or in pairs, but regardless of this they point to the earliest known use of cranes in construction.

The winch and pulley were developed around 480BC, as they are referenced in accounts of the Persian Wars and by the philosopher Aristotle as a common part of architecture by 322 BC.

This new lifting technique allowed for weights to be lifted by much fewer people but also changed what kinds of construction materials were used.

Unlike Ancient Egypt, with ever bigger stones being used, smaller stones were used, including in the construction of columns.

Part of the reason for this is due to societal changes. Assyria and Egypt were huge singular entities with a single leader that would gather huge numbers of unskilled labourers to move vast quantities of material.

Ancient Greece, especially in its earliest days was exceedingly volatile, so hiring a small team of construction contractors was far more feasible and preferred in Greek cities.

This principle was evolved by the Roman Empire into the treadwheel crane, a system that largely remained until the Industrial Revolution and the first water-powered hydraulic cranes in the 19th century.