Interesting old inventions

An ancient egyptian egg oven (for hatching huge numbers of eggs)

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/egyptian-egg-0013393

Much of permaculture is seeing old ways of doing things with new eyes, and sometimes mixing and matching from different parts of the world.  Why reinvent the wheel?  This is one more bit of data to put in your bag.

I like your post, Mick, and agree with your premise about useful traditional/basic designs. Somewhere here on Permies, I and others posted in a thread about traditional Chinese wheelbarrows and modern variants on the essential design. Edit (found it): Trad Wheelbarrow

I've posted about various simple homemade devices & tools, for instance in the Gear forum where I started a thread, Small Gadgets  Also, I followed the lead of some others and posted things to the "My re-use projects... and yours" thread (in the Frugality forum).

There's nothing wrong and often much that's right about ancient or old, same with "homemade". I'd like to see more of these kinds of things here on Permies.

Not exactly an invention, but definitely something people here will want to see.  WOOL INSOLES.

https://beforeitsnews.com/survival/2020/03/the-off-grid-survival-secret-to-warm-feet-2-2750007.html

Way back when, I was working at a resort in the Pocono  Mtns and would stroll thru the woods. One day I came across a small building maybe 12x15 that contained a shiny brass array of something I couldn't figure out. Years later I figured out it was an electric power plant driven by a small stream that no longer ran thru the building. What I remember about the channel was that it was only maybe 2 feet wide by maybe 12 inches deep. There were old timey spring driven grease fittings in glass scattered over the apparatus.

I have nothing to add right now, but think this thread needs to be bumped! The Egyptian egg hatcheries are cool! Basically a specific heat output mass heater. VERY neat!!

What else wants to be added here?
:D

How about the wood lathe?
The wood lathe was probably one of the most important inventions ever designed, without a lathe it's almost impossible to make perfectly round objects. Think of all the things in your daily life, from engine components to rolling pins that by necessity of design had to be made on a lathe.
I'm including a picture of a treadle-powered lathe from our non-electric shop.

Another ancient Egyptian invention -- an earthen dovecote, used both to raise pigeons and to collect their valuable manure to fertilise the crops grown along the Nile for millennia!

An article on the subject from Earth Architecture.

(photo by Eduardo Jezierski)

I had a funny thought. Everything we know now is once invented!
Many things we still use are very old inventions. An invention that's often mentioned is: the wheel.

To me the needle is a very important invention. And where there's a needle, there is thread ... the way to make thread is invented too!

And ways to make fire. Those were invented too.
Or maybe they were 'discovered'...

Wheelbarrow. Earliest one-wheel-type examples (with evidential support), China early 2nd century AD, depicted in art & an actual one (preserved in a tomb). A wheelbarrow was one of the first non-carpentry tools I bought when I moved onto rural land. Very important.