Babel

On a second thought, did the Tower of Babel project fail because of communication problem (alas, in the straight literal and biblical sense), or were there other factors ? If you've read Jared Diamond, the idea of environment exhaustion would certainly come to your mind. It needs man to build the Tower (and possibly more to protect the border of the kingdom). The population continued to growth until it reached a point when the agricultural production could not support. It was also a time when fertilizer - even natural ones, you know what I mean - was not extensively used. Attempts to boost up crop production by intense seedling would certainly result in famine after exhaustion of nutrients in the soil (we have similar experience not so long ago ...), and the need of wood for building the Tower means that forest is reduced and farms will soon turn into desert.

Well, I'm not sure how much truth there is in this speculation. After all, it is equally possible that the Bible is completely correct even in literatal sense, and the project failed simply because of communication problem - not strictly because of different languages, but because of difference in idea amongst various groups of builders (i.e. "teams"). Remember it was a time long before paper and printing were invented, and people just talked to communicate - without any writen documentation. No surprise administration was difficult and target never reached.

PS. Of course it is much agruable whether the appearance of paper could have helped the Tower. More likely forest would disappear more quickly (to make the papers) and the workers would be drowned by bureaucratic work !