Ancient Spaces - Bringing Ancient History to Life

You are walking through a marketplace. In the near distance you see a group of people converging on your community's leader. They seem to be arguing. You see a knife! Your leader is stabbed! Not once, not twice! They are all stabbing Julius Caesar! You have just witnessed the Ides of March.

Are you interested in researching or exploring the ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and the Americas? Do you want to converse with Socrates in the Agora? How about rebuilding the Pyramids, the Ziggurats, or the Temple of Jerusalem? Have you wondered what life would be like in an ancient First Nations village? Would you like to join Julius Caesar's campaigns?

That is the opening paragraph of an interesting site called Ancient Spaces. This site, an open-source project under the auspices of the University of British Columbia, provides an interesting and unique view into civilizations of the past. Some of the interesting aspects of this site include:

• 3D renderings of homes and artifacts of ancient North America and Peru

• Time-lapse video of the Parthenon throughout the day

• A rendering of the interior of the Parthenon

• 3D renderings of buildings of ancient Egypt and Rome, and so on.

Ancient Spaces is an excellent example of Virtual Archaeology. This discipline, virtual archaeology, uses modern technology to bring the past to life. It uses 3D modeling programs such as Blender 3D and Ogre to recreate ancient cities. (Click here to view the Programmers Notes.) For example, a virtual archaeologist could use this technology to recreate Pompeii, Ancient Rome or Athens, Londinium, etc.

Incorporating other technologies such as a virtual reality modeling language (VRML), one could rotate the image of the city to see it from different perspectives. This discipline is great for educational endeavors, game designers, teachers, and architects. I certainly wish it existed when I was studying Ancient History. It is more interesting than memorizing dates!

What are some of the ancient cities that make this site interesting to visit? Let's take a look at some of these projects in more detail.

The Nisaga Village project's goal is to create a 3D representation of this village that not only displays the buildings that comprised this community, but to also illustrate the relationship between the architecture of the village and the social structure of the village. This project is sponsored by Wilp Wilxo'oskwhl Nisga'a (Nisga's House of Wisdom).

This is quite an interesting project. Most importantly, it honors an indigenous culture, something that all countries should do. If this project achieves all its goals, it will provide an excellent environment for teachers and students. From the Ancient Spaces website,

"As the platform develops, interactions might include story-telling, oral culture, social structure, conversation, etc.; in the future, a linguistic component may be built in to the program (using pre-recorded voices, or text display). Some preliminary images from the 'modeling' phase of the project are now available on the Wiki, currently under construction."

Why is this important? Studying the past provides the answers for the future. If you take a look at any historical period you will see that people really haven't changed much. The customs and styles of dress may have changed, but the desires of people, the politics, and the conflicts between religious life, government, and secular life really haven't changed that much.

One can learn from the past. Studying the makeup and layout of past communities can help us deal with the problems of today's towns and cities. Many cities of the past, due to limited transportation options, built stores and other facilities within walking distance. This concept is welcome to those that are tired of paying the high gas prices or for the elderly that cannot or choose not to drive. It also helps a city develop a sense of communities.

Machu Picchu is the Lost City of the Incas located in Peru. What did it look like? What did it feel like to be there? The Machu Picchu project's goal is to recreate sections of this lost Inca city.

Ancient Spaces is working on a variety of other projects that through 3D modeling and rendering, are using 3D representations to show how people lived thousands of years ago. These projects include:

• An ancient Nisga village

• Ancient Athens

• Ancient Egypt, and

The Ancient Spaces project is based on OGRE 3D and open source real time 3D rendering engine. If you like Ancient History or are interested in seeing an interesting application of 3D graphics and rendering, visit Ancient Spaces.