■ ATHENS, GREECE: The most advanced weapon of the ancient world was the Trireme. It was these ships that helped the Greek city states, with Athens bringing the greatest number of ships to the table, to defeat Xerxes' Persian invasion fleet. Now these original ships, being 2500 years by now, are naturally long gone along with any blueprints or sketches of their exact construction.

What has however survived are written descriptions as well as stone carvings, one on the Parthenon itself, which Greece used to build a modern life-sized replica which is now open to visitors who wish to see this technological masterpiece of shipbuilding firsthand with their own eyes.