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I find it amazing that you can find Roman mosaics that have survived 2000 years without any significant damage but the tile installation in your bathroom barely

I find it amazing that you can find Roman mosaics that have survived 2000 years without any significant damage but the tile installation in your bathroom barely last 10-15 years without maintenance or renovation. In 2000 years they will still be finding Roman Ruins but nothing from the 20 + century will survive.

weberc2 9y ago
According to the article, you just need to burn your home down.
- x220 9y ago
  brb
square90 9y ago
A little tongue in cheek: but isn't that classic survivorship bias?
- nkrisc 9y ago
  I believe you're exactly right. The Romans built much more than we can find today. Obviously most of it didn't make it through the last 2,000 years.
  - badloginagain 9y ago
    Except the scale, scope, and quality Roman construction techniques was unparalleled for most regions of the former Roman empire.
SerLava 9y ago
Well to be fair, most Roman stuff didn't survive, and plenty of non-steel-reinforced concrete things will last just as long as the Roman stuff. Often times buildings are disappointingly short lived, but I think sometimes people lament it a little too much. If we need a different building there 50 years later, and we built it to last 200 years, then a lot of material and effort was wasted. There's often a lot of good that comes from knocking a building down and using the limited space for something more useful.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Back in Roman times, there were about ~300m people in the known world. That's lots of space to settle into, with a view that you and your descendants will be there for a very long time. They built stuff to _last_, because as far as they were concerned, the Roman Empire was unbeatable, and their dynasties would go on forever. These days, we're so crammed in where ever there are usable resources, that the moment we die, or move on, someone claims the space and adapts it to their needs. Space is at such a premium that it's illogical to lock it out as one particular usage for centuries.
  - tomrod 9y ago
    This is true in cities perhaps, but there are many lonely places still.
    - bronson 9y ago
      The building (& concrete) is in the cities, not the lonely places.
- kobeya 9y ago
  > and plenty of non-steel-reinforced concrete things will last just as long as the Roman stuff Not as long as you would think. Non-reinforced concrete only lasts a few generations, whereas there are Roman concrete roads still in (mild, rural) use today. We actually know why too. Recent science shows that Roman concrete used a slightly different formula that took much longer to set -- weeks or maybe months rather than days. They didn't know how to make fast-setting concrete like we have today. But the length of time also made the structure stronger. We could build that way, if we wanted. But we don't.
  - DoubleCribble 9y ago
    Indeed. One need only look at a few DIY sidewalk repair jobs to see what happens to unreinforced concrete in relatively short order. This article doesn't mention what the usable cure time is, but the magic of Roman cement is that it continues to get harder over centuries.[1] [1]http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-crumbles-roman-concrete-lasts-millennia http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-cru...
adekok 9y ago
Bury your bathroom floor in 10' of dry dirt, and it will last almost forever.
whipoodle 9y ago
Don't be so pessimistic! Our prisons will probably survive.
joshuaheard 9y ago
They didn't use grout in their mosaics, which breaks down over time. Also, most bathrooms today are built on a wood subfloor which would not survive millenia.
ashark 9y ago
Modern construction, even when it uses good materials, is shit-tier, (I think) because labor's so expensive. For a while we lived in an upper-middle-class house (at the time it was built) constructed around the time of WWI. National historic registry, the whole thing, but little reno or updating. The hardwood floors were intact but in terrible shape. Siding probably needed to be replaced. No air conditioning (Iowa, so summers hot enough for at least a month or so that you really want AC) inadequate gas heating, no insulation, etc. Point being that, even when occupied, the house experienced swings between ~55f in the winter and ~100f in the summer. The remarkable thing? It had incredible woodwork, just... everywhere. Bannisters, fireplaces, big wooden pillars with accompanying massive trim between rooms, everywhere. The doors were all custom built, paneled, and solid wood—they'd be considered top-end luxury today. It'd cost a fortune in material to do that now, the lumber was so good, but the really crazy part? The intricate joins and such were so tight you couldn't fit a piece of paper between them. I mean perfect, despite ~100 years of temperature swings like that. Good freakin' luck finding anyone who can do that today, and if you manage it, good luck finding enough money to pay them to custom-trim an entire house that way. It'd be off-the-charts expensive.
- tcbawo 9y ago
  From what I understand, a good portion of that woodwork was built on-site as well. The fine trim carpentry and plaster work of past eras was unbelievable. In many older houses, a lot of detailed trim was made from plaster. Prior to the specialization of careers in the modern industrial era, many people dedicated their lifetime to learning these skilled trades. Today, those skills are sadly rare.
- lucozade 9y ago
  Indeed. I live in a 1920's built Arts and Crafts style house. We had some carpentry work done a couple of years ago and the chap that did it also happened to specialise in period restoration work for the National Trust. He estimated that it would cost more to replace the downstairs oak paneling and staircase than it would to buy the house and land. A corollary to the labour cost also seems to be a reduction in high end craft skills. Modern houses don't have the features that require high end skills as they're too expensive so there's less demand for those skills. Another anecdote: it took us ages to find a plasterer who could do the ceiling in one of the bedrooms as the cornering was so complex and most refused to quote. Eventually, one of them put us in contact with a retired gentleman who did the work (at a quite reasonable price considering). Watching him work was amazing. The only time I recall being more impressed was, many years ago, seeing a spray painter paint a propeller as a template for the robot. It was a bit like watching dancing but to a micron (or so) tolerance. Masterful.
pjc50 9y ago
> nothing from the 20 + century will survive Several nuclear waste containment structures are planned with that kind of lifetime. They have to be.
- ocschwar 9y ago
  Their survivorship, however, is mostly designed to come from mother nature, not from craftsmanship.
rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
When I visited Ravenna, I saw some amazing Roman-era mosaics, including an uncensored Christ undergoing baptism. The detail was absolutely spectacular. Just a few blocks away was a medieval church built hundreds of years later. The mosaics there looked so amateurish that they looked like they were done by children. Japan has somewhat of an answer to this: every 20 years they tear down the Ise Grand Shrine and build it up again. This allows them to retain specialized construction techniques across generations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine
simias 9y ago
You use your bathroom daily (I hope!), those mosaics were protected by a think layer of dirt. So I guess the trick is to stop washing your bathroom! And of course as others mention there's a heavy survivor bias at play.
siphor 9y ago
According to various rome tours i recently did: Those tiles aren't surface level like ours are, each spot in the mosaic is more like a rod, and it goes down a couple inches.
- sgc 9y ago
  Not true. There may be some, but most mosaics use about 7-10mm thick stone tile. I have seen a lot of them... They last because they are covered, and the better preserved are often in dry climates. Archeological sites tend to cover them back up with a layer of gravel to protect them.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  No, the pieces a mostly cubic. I dug heaps out the ground near Swindon. A big pipeline was going in and a ruined villa was near it. After a month of digging we were told to grab anything we wanted as it would be trashed in the morning. I got a few mosaic squares, a nail and a cow tooth.
marcoperaza 9y ago
This might be a good thing, even beyond cost considerations. Nowadays, if a building doesn't fall on its own, good luck tearing it down to make space for something more useful. Getting buildings registered as "historic" has become a favorite (and highly successful) tactic of the anti-development crowd.
pm90 9y ago
You've got to compare the right things. Average Romans were probably slaves and, not sure, but probably lived in shanties that definitely don't exist. The mosaics and stuff that survives today is likely the home of an elite, or some important Government building. So the right comparison would be to, say, Empire State Building.
- thinkingemote 9y ago
  Using a US analogy I think the right one would be a Plantation owners house.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Of course the luxury homes were for an elite, but forget about the "average" Roman being a slave, by definition a Roman was NOT a slave (and a slave by definition not a Roman), actually the Romans were the first to "invent" the figure of the "liberto" (freedman in English): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman that - once freed - became a citizen (with some very marginal restrictions).
  - pm90 9y ago
    I think you're being a little too pedantic. When I said Roman, I meant a person living in the city of Ancient Rome. I deliberately avoided the use of the term citizen.
    - jaclaz 9y ago
      Sorry, if I seemed so, but one of the essential and novel parts of the political organization of Ancient Rome was the "dignity" of citizenship, that was given (with different degrees) to almost everyone, including conquered people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship
kakwa_ 9y ago
To be fair, rare are the roman buildings that survived in good condition. There are some beautiful counter examples, like for example the Rome Pantheon, but this building, being converted as a church, as been correctly maintained most of the time up to now. Long standing (and sometimes beautiful) structures are still up because of proper maintenance, they can endure some kind of neglect for a few decades, but not a lot more. Maintenance is the key. (an even bigger example that comes to my mind is Hagia Sophia, which, in spit of being in a seismic area and being quite tall, is still standing today after ~1500 years). As for the ruins, given the proper conditions, even your shitty bathroom can be preserved. Maybe not yours specifically, but one of the millions others like yours. Keep in mind that the Roman Empire spanned across most of southern Europe, the middle east and North Africa, that multiplies the "proper conditions" opportunities.

weberc2 9y ago

According to the article, you just need to burn your home down.

x220 9y ago
brb

square90 9y ago

A little tongue in cheek: but isn't that classic survivorship bias?

nkrisc 9y ago
I believe you're exactly right. The Romans built much more than we can find today. Obviously most of it didn't make it through the last 2,000 years.
- badloginagain 9y ago
  Except the scale, scope, and quality Roman construction techniques was unparalleled for most regions of the former Roman empire.

SerLava 9y ago

Well to be fair, most Roman stuff didn't survive, and plenty of non-steel-reinforced concrete things will last just as long as the Roman stuff. Often times buildings are disappointingly short lived, but I think sometimes people lament it a little too much. If we need a different building there 50 years later, and we built it to last 200 years, then a lot of material and effort was wasted. There's often a lot of good that comes from knocking a building down and using the limited space for something more useful.

Jaruzel 9y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Back in Roman times, there were about ~300m people in the known world. That's lots of space to settle into, with a view that you and your descendants will be there for a very long time. They built stuff to _last_, because as far as they were concerned, the Roman Empire was unbeatable, and their dynasties would go on forever. These days, we're so crammed in where ever there are usable resources, that the moment we die, or move on, someone claims the space and adapts it to their needs. Space is at such a premium that it's illogical to lock it out as one particular usage for centuries.
- tomrod 9y ago
  This is true in cities perhaps, but there are many lonely places still.
  - bronson 9y ago
    The building (& concrete) is in the cities, not the lonely places.
kobeya 9y ago
> and plenty of non-steel-reinforced concrete things will last just as long as the Roman stuff Not as long as you would think. Non-reinforced concrete only lasts a few generations, whereas there are Roman concrete roads still in (mild, rural) use today. We actually know why too. Recent science shows that Roman concrete used a slightly different formula that took much longer to set -- weeks or maybe months rather than days. They didn't know how to make fast-setting concrete like we have today. But the length of time also made the structure stronger. We could build that way, if we wanted. But we don't.
- DoubleCribble 9y ago
  Indeed. One need only look at a few DIY sidewalk repair jobs to see what happens to unreinforced concrete in relatively short order. This article doesn't mention what the usable cure time is, but the magic of Roman cement is that it continues to get harder over centuries.[1] [1]http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-crumbles-roman-concrete-lasts-millennia http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-cru...

adekok 9y ago

Bury your bathroom floor in 10' of dry dirt, and it will last almost forever.

whipoodle 9y ago

Don't be so pessimistic! Our prisons will probably survive.

joshuaheard 9y ago

They didn't use grout in their mosaics, which breaks down over time. Also, most bathrooms today are built on a wood subfloor which would not survive millenia.

ashark 9y ago

Modern construction, even when it uses good materials, is shit-tier, (I think) because labor's so expensive. For a while we lived in an upper-middle-class house (at the time it was built) constructed around the time of WWI. National historic registry, the whole thing, but little reno or updating. The hardwood floors were intact but in terrible shape. Siding probably needed to be replaced. No air conditioning (Iowa, so summers hot enough for at least a month or so that you really want AC) inadequate gas heating, no insulation, etc. Point being that, even when occupied, the house experienced swings between ~55f in the winter and ~100f in the summer. The remarkable thing? It had incredible woodwork, just... everywhere. Bannisters, fireplaces, big wooden pillars with accompanying massive trim between rooms, everywhere. The doors were all custom built, paneled, and solid wood—they'd be considered top-end luxury today. It'd cost a fortune in material to do that now, the lumber was so good, but the really crazy part? The intricate joins and such were so tight you couldn't fit a piece of paper between them. I mean perfect, despite ~100 years of temperature swings like that. Good freakin' luck finding anyone who can do that today, and if you manage it, good luck finding enough money to pay them to custom-trim an entire house that way. It'd be off-the-charts expensive.

tcbawo 9y ago
From what I understand, a good portion of that woodwork was built on-site as well. The fine trim carpentry and plaster work of past eras was unbelievable. In many older houses, a lot of detailed trim was made from plaster. Prior to the specialization of careers in the modern industrial era, many people dedicated their lifetime to learning these skilled trades. Today, those skills are sadly rare.
lucozade 9y ago
Indeed. I live in a 1920's built Arts and Crafts style house. We had some carpentry work done a couple of years ago and the chap that did it also happened to specialise in period restoration work for the National Trust. He estimated that it would cost more to replace the downstairs oak paneling and staircase than it would to buy the house and land. A corollary to the labour cost also seems to be a reduction in high end craft skills. Modern houses don't have the features that require high end skills as they're too expensive so there's less demand for those skills. Another anecdote: it took us ages to find a plasterer who could do the ceiling in one of the bedrooms as the cornering was so complex and most refused to quote. Eventually, one of them put us in contact with a retired gentleman who did the work (at a quite reasonable price considering). Watching him work was amazing. The only time I recall being more impressed was, many years ago, seeing a spray painter paint a propeller as a template for the robot. It was a bit like watching dancing but to a micron (or so) tolerance. Masterful.

pjc50 9y ago

> nothing from the 20 + century will survive Several nuclear waste containment structures are planned with that kind of lifetime. They have to be.

ocschwar 9y ago
Their survivorship, however, is mostly designed to come from mother nature, not from craftsmanship.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

When I visited Ravenna, I saw some amazing Roman-era mosaics, including an uncensored Christ undergoing baptism. The detail was absolutely spectacular. Just a few blocks away was a medieval church built hundreds of years later. The mosaics there looked so amateurish that they looked like they were done by children. Japan has somewhat of an answer to this: every 20 years they tear down the Ise Grand Shrine and build it up again. This allows them to retain specialized construction techniques across generations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine

simias 9y ago

You use your bathroom daily (I hope!), those mosaics were protected by a think layer of dirt. So I guess the trick is to stop washing your bathroom! And of course as others mention there's a heavy survivor bias at play.

siphor 9y ago

According to various rome tours i recently did: Those tiles aren't surface level like ours are, each spot in the mosaic is more like a rod, and it goes down a couple inches.

sgc 9y ago
Not true. There may be some, but most mosaics use about 7-10mm thick stone tile. I have seen a lot of them... They last because they are covered, and the better preserved are often in dry climates. Archeological sites tend to cover them back up with a layer of gravel to protect them.
lostlogin 9y ago
No, the pieces a mostly cubic. I dug heaps out the ground near Swindon. A big pipeline was going in and a ruined villa was near it. After a month of digging we were told to grab anything we wanted as it would be trashed in the morning. I got a few mosaic squares, a nail and a cow tooth.

marcoperaza 9y ago

This might be a good thing, even beyond cost considerations. Nowadays, if a building doesn't fall on its own, good luck tearing it down to make space for something more useful. Getting buildings registered as "historic" has become a favorite (and highly successful) tactic of the anti-development crowd.

pm90 9y ago

You've got to compare the right things. Average Romans were probably slaves and, not sure, but probably lived in shanties that definitely don't exist. The mosaics and stuff that survives today is likely the home of an elite, or some important Government building. So the right comparison would be to, say, Empire State Building.

thinkingemote 9y ago
Using a US analogy I think the right one would be a Plantation owners house.
jaclaz 9y ago
Of course the luxury homes were for an elite, but forget about the "average" Roman being a slave, by definition a Roman was NOT a slave (and a slave by definition not a Roman), actually the Romans were the first to "invent" the figure of the "liberto" (freedman in English): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman that - once freed - became a citizen (with some very marginal restrictions).
- pm90 9y ago
  I think you're being a little too pedantic. When I said Roman, I meant a person living in the city of Ancient Rome. I deliberately avoided the use of the term citizen.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Sorry, if I seemed so, but one of the essential and novel parts of the political organization of Ancient Rome was the "dignity" of citizenship, that was given (with different degrees) to almost everyone, including conquered people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship

kakwa_ 9y ago

To be fair, rare are the roman buildings that survived in good condition. There are some beautiful counter examples, like for example the Rome Pantheon, but this building, being converted as a church, as been correctly maintained most of the time up to now. Long standing (and sometimes beautiful) structures are still up because of proper maintenance, they can endure some kind of neglect for a few decades, but not a lot more. Maintenance is the key. (an even bigger example that comes to my mind is Hagia Sophia, which, in spit of being in a seismic area and being quite tall, is still standing today after ~1500 years). As for the ruins, given the proper conditions, even your shitty bathroom can be preserved. Maybe not yours specifically, but one of the millions others like yours. Keep in mind that the Roman Empire spanned across most of southern Europe, the middle east and North Africa, that multiplies the "proper conditions" opportunities.