Ramps

Though perhaps the simplest of the so-called ‘simple machines’, the ramp has allowed for some otherwise rather difficult tasks to be accomplished throughout history. There’s a reason the Romans used a siege ramp and not a ‘siege pulley’ at the battle for Masada in the first century. This would have been most inefficient and likely left a majority of the Roman soldiers like David’s son Absalom, swinging in midair as perfect sitting duck targets for enemy spears and arrows. It is possible they could have used a lever, but with the similar constraint of the pulley of being inefficient, it would have to have been a lever of Archimedes’ proportions to even have a chance at functionality. One supposes they could have used wheels, but without the ramp, this would have merely landed at the base of the city walls and ramparts, and on d again easy targets for the arrows, spears, and in this instance close enough for the hot oil to be poured on them from above. A wedge would do no good, unless they were hoping to wedge themselves between a rock and a very hard place. No, it is the ramp that allows the entirety of the platoon (or cargo, or load - to use the physics terminology) to move steadily upwards to the goal while reducing the force necessary to get them to that height. There are more than just siege ramps, however. Even the ladder that Jacob saw angels ascending and descending to the earth was more likely a stairway in modern vernacular, and a stairway is just a graded ramp! “He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Gen. 28:12)