There's something very useful and helpful about a common piece of furniture that almost everybody takes for granted, but they'd probably be surprised to know that the table and its long history is illustrative of the ways and means we employ to come up with something helpful to in our lives. While every table has a flat surface, not all tables were low to the ground, as these first ones were.

Most people who study Egyptian civilization say that it was these inventive people who created what became the first tables. These handy items came about mainly as the result of a desire by people back then to eat while they were reclining on their version of the couch, also. This meant that tables of the day needed to be low enough to eat from. Coincidentally, they were built on four legs.

Ancient Greeks and Romans tended to look both backwards and forwards in coming up with much of their technology. They took Egyptian tables and made versions of their own that featured flat and horizontal surfaces but with a slab under both ends of the table. In this manner, the table took on the look of what we'd think of as an altar.

It was in this way that tables in the East remained for many years. In other parts of the Old World, tables came to take on different characteristics, though. At first, rudimentary tables featured a couple of boards lined up next to each other and propped up on what we'd think of as sawhorses or even trestles. They acted more in the role of a sideboard which could hold large amounts of food, too.

At some point, the development of the chair began to affect the ways and manners in which tables were employed. After a time, people began to look at tables and chairs as being interrelated in many instances, though chairs at that point tended to resemble low footstools. That meant the tables that developed were also low. In the 16th century that began to change and tables gained longer legs.

Still, for a number of years, tables tended to be lower to the ground than they are today, but as fashions in chairs changed, both tables and chairs soon enough gained in height. Eventually, in the West, tables began to be looked upon as places where people could congregate around and perhaps take a meal or hold a meeting of some sort or another.

Most modern versions of the table had made their full appearance by the 17th century, and the wide variety and styles of tables available to the masses was truly impressive. Most would probably look very comfortable in a home in which antiques or traditional furniture pieces are featured. A table can have many uses, too, including for cards or billiards, both of which have their origins to that era.

It's fair to assume that there are probably two very well-known types of table that come immediately to mind; coffee tables and the kinds that occupy a kitchen or a dining room (both are a bit interchangeable). A coffee table and a kitchen (or dining) table are purpose-built and completely comfortable in the environments for which they've been designed.