The Pheoenicians

So the Phoenicians were really good sailer's that lived to the north of Canaan. But it was hard to plant wheat where they lived because it was all rocky and sandy and dry. So they used there boats and sailed the Mediterranean sea, and became traders. They started cutting down trees to build homes. The Phoenicians were famous for making glass. Making glass in the ancient times was a long hard complicated process. So they started out by making a chemical called lye by putting water on the ashes that were left over from the fire. Then they collected the liquid that oozed out of it. Then they mixed the lye liquid with sand and then put it over a fire to melt it and to get it really hot. But it was hard to melt sand so they had to use these bellowing machines tat got it really really hot which melted the sand. Then they cooled it down so it turned into glass. Other ancient people made glass so they weren't the first people who invented glass but they were the first who invented glass blowing. It works like this, instead of putting it into a mold they would put it into a pipe and then they would blow gently and it would form a bubble, then they could twist it. They also put dye into it so they could color it.