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Bicycles. Food preservation. Sanitation / boiling water. Roman legions mounted in bikes could be everywhere. Their roads already were a force multiplier. Combi
by njharman 10y ago
Bicycles. Food preservation. Sanitation / boiling water.
Roman legions mounted in bikes could be everywhere. Their roads already were a force multiplier. Combined with being able to feed them and have them not die of disease simple wounds. We'd all be speaking Latin.
We all know, Rome is center of the universe. :)
- adrianN 10y agoBicycles would be pretty hard with the metallurgy of ancient rome, I think. Introducing soap is very easy in comparison.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoBicycle actually needs very few metal parts, if any.
- pja 10y agoBut the parts they do need are quite high up the tech stack: decent quality bearings being the most obvious.
- Houshalter 10y agoDo they absolutely require it though? Looking at images of the first bicycles, they seem quite crude: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Draisine_or_Laufmaschine%2C_around_1820._Archetype_of_the_Bicycle._Pic_01.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Draisine... The earliest ones don't even have pedals. The Romans had wheels and carts that seemed to work. It doesn't seem like a huge leap to put a human on them.