Arches were originally developed as a means of providing interior support to buildings, and creating doors and windows. Their use in construction permitted longer single spans built from smaller, more easily handled units, rather than from huge separate beams.

The earliest forerunner of the arch consisted of two vertical pillars with an interlocking beam. Both pillar and beam were made of wood or stone. The Babylonians used arches as early as the sixth century B.C., as did the Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks.

As urban centers grew and the need for larger buildings increased, larger pillars and beams were used to build temples, courts, and public baths. When it became more and more difficult to work with the enormous pillars and beams, true arches, curved overhead and made of small units stacked on top of one another, came into use. The stacking technique made massive arches possible, since...