Standardized containers allows us to transport goods efficiently and in large number across the oceans. What sounds like a modern idea is actually quite old. 2,000 years ago, humans used the same concept for transporting both staple goods and luxuries across the Mediterranean sea and beyond.
Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians or Cathargans – many peoples traded goods with each other in the ancient world. One of the most common type of goods were liquids, from wine over olive oil to garum, the popular fish-based condiment of the day. They all needed a way to be stored on a ship. The technology was a kind of bottle made from ceramic, the amphora (plural: amphorae). Also other kinds of food could be stored in the amphorae, like figs or dates from North Africa.
Nowadays we know the form of the amphora from visits in Greek restaurants or history museums. But the amphora was not only used as a vase, but in large quantities for the transport of goods.
To store a high number of amphorae on a ship, they were stacked in multiple layers. This was made possible by the shape of the amphorae – and by standardization. Only if all amphorae had the same shape it was possible to stack them efficiently. A typical freighter, the so-called Myriophoros, could store about 10,000 amphorae with up to 500kg!
The need for efficient storage led to a number of standardized forms, which could also be mass produced. Archeologists have discovered 66 different kinds of amphorae. One of the most commonly used was the wine amphora, which held 39 litres. Other forms could be filled with up to 100 litres. I imagine those were quite difficult to handle with muscle power alone.
In many regards, amphorae were like the containers of the ancient era. Yet in one way they were quite different: They could not be reused. Especially liquids like olive oil or garum soaked into the ceramic material, and the smell would not get off. You could not use it for another shipment of food. For this reason, they were not shipped back. Instead, they were often repurposed: as building material, urinals or even coffins! And the ones that could not be repurposed were just discarded. Up to this day, we can still see the result of this throw-away culture. The Monte Testaccio in Rome is fully made from shards of amphorae the Romans threw away. What sounds short-sighted is now, two millenia later, a windfall for archeologists. For them, it is a giant archive of Roman eocnomic history.
Lucky for us that modern ISO containers could be reused. Imagine we were to throw them away after they delivered their goods – what gigantuan mountains we would see in the hinterlands of harbours as Rotterdam, Shanghai or Singapur!
One thing we can learn from the history of the amphorae is that good ideas in transportation don’t have to be new, they just have to be adapted to the needs of their time. If only we could be around in two thousands years from now to see which kind of containers were used, on Earth and maybe even in space. What do you think it could look like?