http://www.virtual-egyptian-museum.org/Col...0787.html&0Before the invention of glass blowing, several established glass forming techniques used molds. So, blowing the glass into a two-part mold that would constrain and shape the bubble as well as provide surface texture, was a very natural evolution of known skills. This full-size mold-blowing technique was “invented on the Syro-Palestinian coast, presumably in Sidon or vicinity, in the early first century CE” (Stern 2001:26)
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/waterstone.htmlA1. The Ancient Walls (Richard Nisbet)
http://home.earthlink.net/~rnisbet/frame8.html"Hiram Bingham was told of a plant whose juices softened rock so that the surfaces would join perfectly. There are reports of such a plant, including this one by one of the early Spanish Chroniclers:
"While encamped by a rocky river, he watched a bird with a leaf in its beak light on a rock, lay down the leaf and peck at it.
The next day the bird returned. By then there was a concavity where the leaf had been.
By this method the bird created a drinking cup to catch the splashing waters of the river."
Considering the fact that lichen softens stone to attach its roots, and considering the ongoing extinction of plant species, perhaps this isn't really such a far-fetched notion."
"My nephew was down in the Chuncho country on the Pyrene River in Peru, and his horse going lame one day he left it at a neighbouring chacra, about five miles away from his own, and walked home. Next day he walked over to get his horse, and took a short cut through a strip of forest he had never before penetrated. He was wearing riding breeches, top boots, and big spurs--not the little English kind, but the great Mexican spurs four inches long, with rowels bigger than a half-crown piece--and these spurs were almost new. When he got to the chacra after a hot and difficult walk through thick bush he was amazed to find that his beautiful spurs were gone--eaten away somehow, till they were no more than black spikes projecting an eighth of an inch. He couldn't understand it, till the owner of the chacra asked him if by any chance he had walked through a certain plant about a foot high, with dark reddish leaves. My nephew at once remembered that he came through a wide area where the ground was thickly covered with such a plant. 'That's it!' said the chacarero. That's what's eaten your spurs away! That's the stuff the Incas used for shaping stones. The juice will soften rock up till it's like paste. You must show me where you found the plants.' When they came to look for the place they couldn't find it. It's not easy to retrace your steps in jungle where no trails exist."