7 ms·

Reconstructing Roman Industrial Engineering

103 points by samizdis 5y ago

tiahura 5y ago
Can anyone suggest a resource to learn how to distinguish the various types of construction by civilization found around the Med? For example you come across the foundation of an ancient building in Greece. It could be Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenistic, or Roman, but to my eye they all look like stone and mortar.
barney54 5y ago
The Nature article this is based on is helpful to read because of the pictures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74900-5#Fig1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74900-5#Fig1
hef19898 5y ago
Well, being an industrial engineer myself, I was always at awe looking at Roman engineering. And ancient Greek and Macedonian engineering as well. Especially compared to medieval Europe, those empires were much more modern in terms of standards and so on. Medieval engineering was top notch, especially architecture (gothic churches and cathedrals really stand out), but at that large a scale. IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.
- iSnow 5y ago
  >IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run. Interesting thought but why would the Empire have fallen then? Most likely, civil engineering remained top notch throughout.
  - bpiche 5y ago
    The empire never ended
    - acjohnson55 5y ago
      There's some truth to that, but at the same time it's undeniable that there was a dramatic decrease in political organization, stability, and economic complexity in the Western Empire. Only for brief periods would there be anything like imperial control of Western Europe, but never with the inclusion of Britain and Spain again, and never with the economic engine of Rome. The multi-centric world of Western and Central Europe didn't come close to matching the Roman economy until the Renaissance, and wouldn't surpass it in engineering achievement until the Enlightenment.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    Building roads and sewers and such in a new province is a great way to secure the new people's loyalty. But after the bridge you built has stood for 400 years, people start to ask "but what have the Romans done for me lately?"
    - monocasa 5y ago
      "What have the Romans ever done for us?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
    - nickik 5y ago
      Not sure if you are just doing a joke reference, but this doesn't really hold up. In the Imperial period most infrastructure was build the empire didn't grow all that much anymore. Binding of territories to the Roman state worked primarily by co-opting local elites by giving them a fair bit of local power and protection from their enemies.
      - jjk166 5y ago
        Those local elites would have even more power if they were independent, and imperial protection didn't mean much during the decades of civil wars. People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad, because they recognized that quality of life was better under the Romans. For centuries, barbarians migrated into the empire and were easily integrated into the empire. However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes were no longer being effectively assimilated into the empire. Rome's military was still very large, and the elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because those elites and armies were no worse off setting themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms.
        nickik 5y ago
        > Those local elites would have even more power if they were independent No they wouldn't. Because they would face both their internal rivals and external rivals most importantly the empire itself. > and imperial protection didn't mean much during the decades of civil wars There was not as much civil war as you think and not in most regions even if there was. During a civil war local elites had to pick sides. Often those choices happened above their heads. > People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad, because they recognized that quality of life was better under the Romans. Very questionable. Quality of life has little do with it. People for the most part didn't have much say in it, rather the elites. Their standard of life might get better because they get imperial titles, trade monopolies and things like that. Maybe your point is true for the late imperial period around the med, but its certainty not generally true. > However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes were no longer being effectively assimilated into the empire. Yes, but what matters is the integration not the infrastructure. In fact, if you really track this, the falling apart of infrastructure does not at all correlate with the Fall of the Western Empire. Much of the infrastructure had already been having issues since the 3rd century. > Rome's military was still very large, and the elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because those elites and armies were no worse off setting themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms. The elites with actual power (not just money) were no longer centralized or unified. If you actually look at trade pattern and urbanization they don't actually decline until much later. For the most part the Fall of the formal empire is a non-event. The collapse of the Roman Med economy and the de-urbanization of Italy mostly happens later.
  - wavefunction 5y ago
    In early Imperial Rome prestigious families would fund public works as a public symbol of their wealth and power. This shifted over time to a more self-interested display of wealth and power in the family's villas. If the aqueducts and roads have existed for centuries in your region there is less opportunity for those public displays of civil engineering and I would suspect the skills and knowledge did wither though I can't say to what extent. Look how fast the knowledge to build the space-race era rockets was lost in the US, and that's with modern record keeping and no major domestic disasters or upheavals.
    - nickik 5y ago
      The knowledge of space-race ear rockets wasn't lost, the money to build them was no longer available or going into other projects. For the cost of shuttle NASA could have recreated the J-2 and F-1. We unfortunate don't have good data on Roman private and public infrastructure spending detailed enough to really make a god case for how it changed over time.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    As we're seeing with infrastructure now in the US, civil engineering isn't a "do once" kind of job. Infrastructure (roads, bridges, irrigation etc) takes consistent upkeep, resources, and redesign as the fixtures degrade and usage patterns change. Engineers still need resources, manpower and direction, so as the empire's control area and wealth centralization receded, so did the impetus/capacity to maintain infrastructure.
- sgift 5y ago
  > IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run. An interesting aspect of this is that the legions were civil engineers. Every legion had craftsman as part of their workforce. The craftsman didn't build only their forts, but also streets, bridges, mills ... I think this combination may have been Romes greatest advantage. Not only were they able to conquer regions, but also to build them out pretty fast after the fact.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The Egyptian army was also used in construction projects. I believe the general thinking is that the state wanted to have a military force available, but didn't want it to be idle. That reasoning would predict that every standing military would see similar uses.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Is that so different from the (British Army's) Royal Engineers and similar units in modern armies really?
    - KineticLensman 5y ago
      Military engineers focus on battlefield-relevant construction and demolition techniques and aren’t routinely deployed on civilian engineering tasks during their readiness cycle. One exception would be military assistance in emergency situations, such as quickly erecting a bridge to replace a flood-damaged one. For the average soldier, their trade-specific training would be measured in months, so the only opportunities to pick up deep domain knowledge are limited. Career engineers might get deeper knowledge but I suspect they would still focus on battlefield-specific competencies.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        I won't comment on training because I suspect that varies too much internationally to be worthwhile - but of course they focus on battlefield-relevant tasks; are you saying that wasn't also true of the Romans? I don't know, I just assumed (and asked if) they were pretty similar.
- deepnotderp 5y ago
  The legions could reportedly throw up a fort in 2 hours, so I'm sure there was some overlap ;)
geebee 5y ago
I have to admit I was eager to read this because of the phrase "Industrial Engineering." Still an interesting article, and there is some discussion of components working together as a system... but overall, I think we're still talking about a somewhat mechanical innovation in aqueducts. I think it's probably more accurate to classify this one under civil engineering. Interesting and fun to read, but consistent with what most people already know about the Romans - they had remarkable large scale civil engineering projects. I don't want to drag this discussion into the minutiae of what distinguishes civil from mechanical from industrial engineering, especially since there's so much overlap (I met a lot of civil engineers in my graduate industrial engineering classes, especially from transportation engineering). But what I'm reading here doesn't really strike me as something that would be notably "industrial engineering," which I see as more abstracted from impressive mechanical innovations in infrastructure projects like aqueducts.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  I think you're kind of right in terms of the actual content of the article, but what it speaks to is a system capable of producing flour on an industrial scale. I was quite surprised to learn that there were many ways in which the Romans operated legitimate industries, in the sense of producing far more goods at single sites than the local demand. They had massive mining operations, pottery factories, and mill complexes.
Syonyk 5y ago
> “What it shows is that, also in antiquity, people were creative. They had a problem, and they had to find a creative solution.” "Creativity" isn't a modern invention. "I have a problem to solve and will use engineering!" isn't a modern invention. They've existed since the beginning of humans, and it remains quite irritating to see people who are shocked and amazed that ancient people were able to solve problems - often in ways we don't fully understand. How long was Roman cement a mystery? Human nature doesn't change with time, and while the things that people groups care about tends to change, it baffles me that someone studying ancient Roman ruins of what's pretty clearly an industrial facility sounds surprised that they did something less than the most obvious solution - especially when it worked better. Wasn't like you had Twitter to distract you - engineering solutions to problems is very clearly something the Romans were good at, given how much of their infrastructure rather outlasted the nation. Modern civilization isn't what it is because we're somehow smarter or more creative than people were 1500 or 2000 years ago - it is what it is because, about 300 years ago, we finally figured out how to make fossil fuels do something mechanically useful for us. If the Romans had figured out a steam engine, and had cared to continue developing it (a technology without an application is just a curiosity, and history is littered with those), they certainly could have accomplished plenty of what we consider modern today.
- juliangamble 5y ago
  I accept your broader point. I have a minor quibble on invention of the steam engine: First rudimentary steam engine was the Aeolipile produced in the first century in Roman Egypt. In this light one can also say China had the steam engine during the Song Dynasty(960-1279). https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chinese-develop-steam-engines-prior-to-the-17th-century https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chi... The point is that for steam engine technology to take off, there had to be an economic problem it solved. In a nation with prevalent slavery or abundant human labour, an early steam engine is superfluous.
  - rfrey 5y ago
    The rest of the thread in your link is contradicting that one answer. And the fact that particular answer says the modern steam engine was invented by Watt doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the author. Hero's Aeolipile boiled water, but didn't resemble what we call a steam engine in any other way: it's just a jet. And in fact, it's very difficult to get it to work; you need modern bearings, extremely lightweight modern materials, and very large burners to give it enough power to spin itself. It's pretty unlikely it ever worked in antiquity, it was probably a concept sketch. Likewise, the illustrations of "steam engines" in China show no boilers, no pipes, no evidence of pressure vessels of any kind. A steam engine that produces useful power requires strong steel pipes and connections. It was technology gates being passed that led to the steam engine being invented and improved, not a change in economic condition. Agreed slavery can slow down technological adoption, but keeping slaves has its expenses too. It's easy to imagine there being an economic advantage to mechanical power even in a slave tolerating society.
gos_abhi 5y ago
Building that break so easily..lol

103 points by samizdis 5y ago

Can anyone suggest a resource to learn how to distinguish the various types of construction by civilization found around the Med? For example you come across the foundation of an ancient building in Greece. It could be Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenistic, or Roman, but to my eye they all look like stone and mortar.

barney54 5y ago

The Nature article this is based on is helpful to read because of the pictures: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74900-5#Fig1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74900-5#Fig1

hef19898 5y ago

Well, being an industrial engineer myself, I was always at awe looking at Roman engineering. And ancient Greek and Macedonian engineering as well. Especially compared to medieval Europe, those empires were much more modern in terms of standards and so on. Medieval engineering was top notch, especially architecture (gothic churches and cathedrals really stand out), but at that large a scale. IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.

iSnow 5y ago
>IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run. Interesting thought but why would the Empire have fallen then? Most likely, civil engineering remained top notch throughout.
- bpiche 5y ago
  The empire never ended
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    There's some truth to that, but at the same time it's undeniable that there was a dramatic decrease in political organization, stability, and economic complexity in the Western Empire. Only for brief periods would there be anything like imperial control of Western Europe, but never with the inclusion of Britain and Spain again, and never with the economic engine of Rome. The multi-centric world of Western and Central Europe didn't come close to matching the Roman economy until the Renaissance, and wouldn't surpass it in engineering achievement until the Enlightenment.
- jjk166 5y ago
  Building roads and sewers and such in a new province is a great way to secure the new people's loyalty. But after the bridge you built has stood for 400 years, people start to ask "but what have the Romans done for me lately?"
  - monocasa 5y ago
    "What have the Romans ever done for us?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
  - nickik 5y ago
    Not sure if you are just doing a joke reference, but this doesn't really hold up. In the Imperial period most infrastructure was build the empire didn't grow all that much anymore. Binding of territories to the Roman state worked primarily by co-opting local elites by giving them a fair bit of local power and protection from their enemies.
    - jjk166 5y ago
      Those local elites would have even more power if they were independent, and imperial protection didn't mean much during the decades of civil wars. People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad, because they recognized that quality of life was better under the Romans. For centuries, barbarians migrated into the empire and were easily integrated into the empire. However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes were no longer being effectively assimilated into the empire. Rome's military was still very large, and the elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because those elites and armies were no worse off setting themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms.
      - nickik 5y ago
        > Those local elites would have even more power if they were independent No they wouldn't. Because they would face both their internal rivals and external rivals most importantly the empire itself. > and imperial protection didn't mean much during the decades of civil wars There was not as much civil war as you think and not in most regions even if there was. During a civil war local elites had to pick sides. Often those choices happened above their heads. > People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad, because they recognized that quality of life was better under the Romans. Very questionable. Quality of life has little do with it. People for the most part didn't have much say in it, rather the elites. Their standard of life might get better because they get imperial titles, trade monopolies and things like that. Maybe your point is true for the late imperial period around the med, but its certainty not generally true. > However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes were no longer being effectively assimilated into the empire. Yes, but what matters is the integration not the infrastructure. In fact, if you really track this, the falling apart of infrastructure does not at all correlate with the Fall of the Western Empire. Much of the infrastructure had already been having issues since the 3rd century. > Rome's military was still very large, and the elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because those elites and armies were no worse off setting themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms. The elites with actual power (not just money) were no longer centralized or unified. If you actually look at trade pattern and urbanization they don't actually decline until much later. For the most part the Fall of the formal empire is a non-event. The collapse of the Roman Med economy and the de-urbanization of Italy mostly happens later.
- wavefunction 5y ago
  In early Imperial Rome prestigious families would fund public works as a public symbol of their wealth and power. This shifted over time to a more self-interested display of wealth and power in the family's villas. If the aqueducts and roads have existed for centuries in your region there is less opportunity for those public displays of civil engineering and I would suspect the skills and knowledge did wither though I can't say to what extent. Look how fast the knowledge to build the space-race era rockets was lost in the US, and that's with modern record keeping and no major domestic disasters or upheavals.
  - nickik 5y ago
    The knowledge of space-race ear rockets wasn't lost, the money to build them was no longer available or going into other projects. For the cost of shuttle NASA could have recreated the J-2 and F-1. We unfortunate don't have good data on Roman private and public infrastructure spending detailed enough to really make a god case for how it changed over time.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  As we're seeing with infrastructure now in the US, civil engineering isn't a "do once" kind of job. Infrastructure (roads, bridges, irrigation etc) takes consistent upkeep, resources, and redesign as the fixtures degrade and usage patterns change. Engineers still need resources, manpower and direction, so as the empire's control area and wealth centralization receded, so did the impetus/capacity to maintain infrastructure.
sgift 5y ago
> IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run. An interesting aspect of this is that the legions were civil engineers. Every legion had craftsman as part of their workforce. The craftsman didn't build only their forts, but also streets, bridges, mills ... I think this combination may have been Romes greatest advantage. Not only were they able to conquer regions, but also to build them out pretty fast after the fact.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The Egyptian army was also used in construction projects. I believe the general thinking is that the state wanted to have a military force available, but didn't want it to be idle. That reasoning would predict that every standing military would see similar uses.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Is that so different from the (British Army's) Royal Engineers and similar units in modern armies really?
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    Military engineers focus on battlefield-relevant construction and demolition techniques and aren’t routinely deployed on civilian engineering tasks during their readiness cycle. One exception would be military assistance in emergency situations, such as quickly erecting a bridge to replace a flood-damaged one. For the average soldier, their trade-specific training would be measured in months, so the only opportunities to pick up deep domain knowledge are limited. Career engineers might get deeper knowledge but I suspect they would still focus on battlefield-specific competencies.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      I won't comment on training because I suspect that varies too much internationally to be worthwhile - but of course they focus on battlefield-relevant tasks; are you saying that wasn't also true of the Romans? I don't know, I just assumed (and asked if) they were pretty similar.
deepnotderp 5y ago
The legions could reportedly throw up a fort in 2 hours, so I'm sure there was some overlap ;)

geebee 5y ago

I have to admit I was eager to read this because of the phrase "Industrial Engineering." Still an interesting article, and there is some discussion of components working together as a system... but overall, I think we're still talking about a somewhat mechanical innovation in aqueducts. I think it's probably more accurate to classify this one under civil engineering. Interesting and fun to read, but consistent with what most people already know about the Romans - they had remarkable large scale civil engineering projects. I don't want to drag this discussion into the minutiae of what distinguishes civil from mechanical from industrial engineering, especially since there's so much overlap (I met a lot of civil engineers in my graduate industrial engineering classes, especially from transportation engineering). But what I'm reading here doesn't really strike me as something that would be notably "industrial engineering," which I see as more abstracted from impressive mechanical innovations in infrastructure projects like aqueducts.

acjohnson55 5y ago
I think you're kind of right in terms of the actual content of the article, but what it speaks to is a system capable of producing flour on an industrial scale. I was quite surprised to learn that there were many ways in which the Romans operated legitimate industries, in the sense of producing far more goods at single sites than the local demand. They had massive mining operations, pottery factories, and mill complexes.

Syonyk 5y ago

> “What it shows is that, also in antiquity, people were creative. They had a problem, and they had to find a creative solution.” "Creativity" isn't a modern invention. "I have a problem to solve and will use engineering!" isn't a modern invention. They've existed since the beginning of humans, and it remains quite irritating to see people who are shocked and amazed that ancient people were able to solve problems - often in ways we don't fully understand. How long was Roman cement a mystery? Human nature doesn't change with time, and while the things that people groups care about tends to change, it baffles me that someone studying ancient Roman ruins of what's pretty clearly an industrial facility sounds surprised that they did something less than the most obvious solution - especially when it worked better. Wasn't like you had Twitter to distract you - engineering solutions to problems is very clearly something the Romans were good at, given how much of their infrastructure rather outlasted the nation. Modern civilization isn't what it is because we're somehow smarter or more creative than people were 1500 or 2000 years ago - it is what it is because, about 300 years ago, we finally figured out how to make fossil fuels do something mechanically useful for us. If the Romans had figured out a steam engine, and had cared to continue developing it (a technology without an application is just a curiosity, and history is littered with those), they certainly could have accomplished plenty of what we consider modern today.

juliangamble 5y ago
I accept your broader point. I have a minor quibble on invention of the steam engine: First rudimentary steam engine was the Aeolipile produced in the first century in Roman Egypt. In this light one can also say China had the steam engine during the Song Dynasty(960-1279). https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chinese-develop-steam-engines-prior-to-the-17th-century https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chi... The point is that for steam engine technology to take off, there had to be an economic problem it solved. In a nation with prevalent slavery or abundant human labour, an early steam engine is superfluous.
- rfrey 5y ago
  The rest of the thread in your link is contradicting that one answer. And the fact that particular answer says the modern steam engine was invented by Watt doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the author. Hero's Aeolipile boiled water, but didn't resemble what we call a steam engine in any other way: it's just a jet. And in fact, it's very difficult to get it to work; you need modern bearings, extremely lightweight modern materials, and very large burners to give it enough power to spin itself. It's pretty unlikely it ever worked in antiquity, it was probably a concept sketch. Likewise, the illustrations of "steam engines" in China show no boilers, no pipes, no evidence of pressure vessels of any kind. A steam engine that produces useful power requires strong steel pipes and connections. It was technology gates being passed that led to the steam engine being invented and improved, not a change in economic condition. Agreed slavery can slow down technological adoption, but keeping slaves has its expenses too. It's easy to imagine there being an economic advantage to mechanical power even in a slave tolerating society.

gos_abhi 5y ago

Building that break so easily..lol