Andrew CurryThe ramps for disabled people that smooth entry into many public buildings today aren’t a modern invention. The ancient Greeks constructed similar ramps of stone to help individuals who had trouble walking or climbing stairs access holy sites, new research suggests.
That would make the ramps—some more than 2300 years old—the oldest known evidence of architecture designed to meet the needs of the disabled.The evidence for ramps and their use has been there all along, but archaeologists haven’t paid much attention to it, argues Debby Sneed, an archaeologist at California State University, Long Beach.