The tower of Babel was man's second major engineering undertaking, after Noah's ark.
So now, why did the Tower of Babel fail?
Now the whole earth used only one language, with few words. On the occasion of a migration from the east, men discovered a plain in the land of Shinar, and settled there. Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, burning them well." So they used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower whose top shall reach the heaves, so that we may not be scattered all over the earth." Then the Lord came down to look at the city and tower which human beings had built. The Lord said, "They are just one people, and they all have the same langauge. If this is what they can do as a beginning, then nothing that they resolve to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there make such a babble of their language that they will not understand one another's speech." Thus the Lord dispersed them from there all over the earth, so that they had to stop building the city.
P.Breughel, the Elder, "Turmbau zu Babel," 1563
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
taken from "The Mythical Man Month" by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
