Not surprisingly, most people don’t really know what the term ‘civil engineering’ actually means or what it entails.

Fewer people realize that it is actually one of the oldest engineering disciplines in the world. Going back to the earliest moments of when humanity altered the environment to suit his needs, from the first time someone cut down a tree to cross over a woodland stream, all the way up to the most ambitious of public works projects, like Boston’s Big Dig, civil engineering has been shaping the environment to suit society’s needs.

Civil engineering has been responsible for some of the largest and enduring structures in human history, from the aqueducts that brought water across the Roman Empire to the first examples of indoor plumbing and complex sewer systems in Mohenjo Daro and such structures like the Great Pyramids of Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, and the Great Wall of China.

While the term of Civil Engineer wasn’t officially established until around 1750 as a way to distinguish civilian engineers who were working on civil projects in conjunction with military engineers, with various subsets and specializations becoming recognized later under the general umbrella of civil engineering. Examples of specializations include: geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, construction engineering, and land development, to name just a few. Engineers working for government agencies may also work in multiple specializations, especially when dealing with critical infrastructures, both in its development and maintenance.

Given how broad the field is, it is no surprise that civil engineers can be found in many industries around the world.

This field deals with the environment and creating structures to fit the needs of a modern society; this means that everything from buildings to subway systems, to the creation of space stations fall under the broad spectrum of a civil engineer’s purview. Civil engineering is how we use complex planning, science, and math to alter the world to suit our needs; it is one of the major factors that made civilization possible and helped us go from nomadic hunters and gatherers to stationary civilizations. In the future, it’s likely we will use the same skills that have allowed us to create vast cities for thousands of years to one day accomplish the same thing on distant moons and planets, perhaps even in our own solar system. The possibilities are only as limited as the human imagination and our drive to change the universe to suit our needs.