8 Modern Inventions That Are Actually Super Ancient

8. Persian Air Conditioning

A lot of the world's earliest civilisations had one thing in common: They were all located in regions that were, to use the technical parlance, hot as balls.

As anyone who lives in a hot country knows, it's difficult to get any civilising done when all you want to do is lie naked next to an open window and drink iced lemonade, so if the Persians wanted to get anything done in what is now mostly modern day Iran, they were going to need to invent the AC. So they did just that.

Early version of the AC systems involved drawing hot desert air across the cool water channels they used to irrigate thier cities (oh yeah, they also invented complex irrigation systems), and directing it into dwellings. Later, in the medieval Persian empire, they constructed huge cooling towers designed to capture the prevailing wind and channeling it into their houses.

With their minds and bodies pleasantly cool, they were free to get on with inventing modern wonders such as ice cream and the postal service.