ABSTRACT
To accomplish the functions of society, people used what they had available. Material culture has its origins in large part from chemical technologies. Many ancient peoples developed a variety of chemical technologies before they developed writing. Obviously volumes have been written about the history of natural substances and their uses throughout the ages. The developers of gunpowder did not have any understanding what chemical reaction was taking place. In the ancient civilizations of the Chinese, Indians, and North Africa, the medicine men used hundreds of herbs and plant materials for health care and for preventing diseases. When chemists developed more investigative knowledge, such as analyzing natural products and determining the components responsible for their beneficial effects, the components were synthesized and made available in larger quantities and more economically to the population. Obviously, human activity through countless millennia was concentrated on survival.
