4 ms·

Did the Romans really know that using certain volcanic rocks would make their concrete structures last longer? Or did they mostly just use whatever aggregate wa

by roca 5y ago

Did the Romans really know that using certain volcanic rocks would make their concrete structures last longer? Or did they mostly just use whatever aggregate was convenient and the structures that have survived are the ones that used the right rocks? The latter sounds more plausible to me. Of course we can still learn valuable lessons from these surviving structures.

WalterBright 5y ago
Rome lasted for many centuries, so I imagine they were familiar with what worked and what didn't.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  Jonathan Blow makes a bunch of great points about our simplified view of ancient people, versus the reality of their complex achievements which could only be brought about by lots of ingenuity and iterations. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    The interconnectedness of the bronze age was amazing. To make bronze required combining metals sourced from thousands of miles away from eachother. In comparison, iron could be made basically anywhere.
  - codethief 5y ago
    Even for reasons other than Rome's history, this is one of the best talks I've ever seen. IMO every software engineer should watch it and I recommend it to colleagues all the time.
  - thoughtsimple 5y ago
    He started off well with the history of civilization collapse but then he got the heart of his presentation with the misguided idea that modern software is more broken recently. He showed some incomprehensible bugs in Visual Studio. All I have to say is that on Windows the Blue Screen of Death was a prominent problem for many years. On the original MacOS that was non-preemptive multitasking and no memory hardware protection, any program could cause a denial of service or take down the whole computer. These are 30 year old technologies that were clearly worse in many ways than modern equivalents. Has software improved recently? No, I would say it has gotten somewhat worse recently but if you look at where we are today versus say 1998, things are clearly better. It isn't really possible to know if we are in a major decline or a minor local minimum.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Microsoft is not a legitimate standard of comparison. Their business model was (and to a degree still is) predicated on getting people used to everything having bugs, and not complaining or, more importantly, returning it for a refund, angrily. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and now everything else works almost as badly.
    - xmprt 5y ago
      I think software will never feel like it's improved because as technology improves and changes, new features will be expected of software and so while some parts of software improve, other new parts will bring down the average quality. It reminds me of Shepard Tones which sound like they are infinitely increasing in pitch which is impossible because the human ear can only hear certain frequencies. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0)
    - hattmall 5y ago
      The BSOD is kind of actually the opposite in reality. The software is worse, the hardware is better, so we are running more software to containerize those bugs. Software is more buggy and bloated than in the past it's just that the failures are silent and we don't have to reboot the entire system we just reboot pieces.
      - ido 5y ago
        win 9x was absolutely worse and a lot less stable than the NT lineage (that we're currently in). classic macos was absolutely worse and less stable than the NeXTSTEP lineage we're currently in. I used linux for the first time in 1998 with Red Hat 5.2 and it was an absolute pain to get working/install and a lot of hardware was unsupported. At least it didn't crash as much as windows 9x!
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The lack of writing probably impaired things greatly. I know the Romans had writing. But did they ever write manuals? It was not like Gutenberg's printing press, which put progress on a steep upward trend.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      For professions that requires formal education, certainly. There were manuals/“handbooks” for doctors and philosophers. Plinys “Natural History” contained detailed geographic information, but was considered a work of history (surprise, surprise).
    - yesenadam 5y ago
      Not sure what you have in mind with "manuals", but I believe there were treatises on every subject, e.g. Vitruvius' On architecture (~20BC), "a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It contains a variety of information on Greek and Roman buildings, as well as prescriptions for the planning and design of military camps, cities, and structures both large (aqueducts, buildings, baths, harbours) and small (machines, measuring devices, instruments)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura Ptolemy (100-170AD) wrote treatises on many subjects, and his works on astronomy and geography "never ceased to be copied or commented upon, both in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy Vegetius wrote a military manual On military matters, extremely influential until about 1500. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetius Apicius wrote On the Subject of Cooking, a cook book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius (So much ancient writing hasn't survived, e.g. none of Aristotle's many writings survived - what we know as his writings are just his students' lecture notes.)
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        The fact that any books would have to be copied by hand would disastrously limit their spread and influence. How many people could learn calculus if only 5 copies of the textbook were created? So many being lost is an inevitable consequence of very very few copies ever existing.
bsder 5y ago
> Did the Romans really know that using certain volcanic rocks would make their concrete structures last longer? Or did they mostly just use whatever aggregate was convenient and the structures that have survived are the ones that used the right rocks? Why not both? How do you think you discover that certain things work better than others? Humans are clever in any time. For example, the Pantheon has a very specific profile (thick at bottom to much thinner at center of rise) to the dome in order to allow unreinforced concrete to be used. That's a case of very deliberate design. Pompeii is in a highly volcanic area. So, digging is difficult and expensive. This put a wrench in the standard formula for Roman building. So, instead, they elevated everything slightly. That's on the spot ingenuity and convenience. Finally, there is a survivorship bias--structures specifically built with longevity and durability in mind and maintained by people are the ones that survived.
- pmontra 5y ago
  The Pantheon is maintained but the Colosseum is not and it shows. The interior of the Colosseum is a pile of rocks. However there is a plan to restore the floor https://www.stirworld.com/see-news-rome-announces-plans-for-restoring-the-colosseum-with-a-retractable-floor https://www.stirworld.com/see-news-rome-announces-plans-for-...
  - bsder 5y ago
    The Colosseum was also built with lead rebar for earthquake resistance. And that lead rebar was extracted and stolen over the years because the lead was valuable. Taking the rebar out of a building tends to make it a touch less durable.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    It is very interesting. Certainly there are holes where people have stolen iron. But more importantly, the materials in the Colosseum are massively pillaged by christians for use in other buildings. The Pantheon was turned into a church, and thus was off limits. In Rome they call it "recycling". An interesting article: https://engineeringrome.org/ancient-structures-in-rome-the-colosseum-pantheon/ https://engineeringrome.org/ancient-structures-in-rome-the-c...
Isamu 5y ago
Using volcanic rock in concrete was done to lighten vaults and domes, e.g. the Pantheon. This is distinct from using volcanic ash in the concrete mix which was essential for the long lasting strength. Arguably Roman concrete was discovered by accident when someone mixed a batch of lime plaster using the volcanic ash around Pozzuoli instead of regular sand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolan
lmm 5y ago
They famously shipped the right kind of volcanic ash to e.g. Spain rather than using local materials. They didn't know the chemistry for why (otherwise they could have found the materials with the right characteristics locally), but they definitely knew that particular aggregates lasted better than others.
- roca 5y ago
  Thanks, that's illuminating.
imtringued 5y ago
They probably noticed that their aqueducts were crumbling. You don't see their failed experiments.

by roca 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

Rome lasted for many centuries, so I imagine they were familiar with what worked and what didn't.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
Jonathan Blow makes a bunch of great points about our simplified view of ancient people, versus the reality of their complex achievements which could only be brought about by lots of ingenuity and iterations. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  The interconnectedness of the bronze age was amazing. To make bronze required combining metals sourced from thousands of miles away from eachother. In comparison, iron could be made basically anywhere.
- codethief 5y ago
  Even for reasons other than Rome's history, this is one of the best talks I've ever seen. IMO every software engineer should watch it and I recommend it to colleagues all the time.
- thoughtsimple 5y ago
  He started off well with the history of civilization collapse but then he got the heart of his presentation with the misguided idea that modern software is more broken recently. He showed some incomprehensible bugs in Visual Studio. All I have to say is that on Windows the Blue Screen of Death was a prominent problem for many years. On the original MacOS that was non-preemptive multitasking and no memory hardware protection, any program could cause a denial of service or take down the whole computer. These are 30 year old technologies that were clearly worse in many ways than modern equivalents. Has software improved recently? No, I would say it has gotten somewhat worse recently but if you look at where we are today versus say 1998, things are clearly better. It isn't really possible to know if we are in a major decline or a minor local minimum.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Microsoft is not a legitimate standard of comparison. Their business model was (and to a degree still is) predicated on getting people used to everything having bugs, and not complaining or, more importantly, returning it for a refund, angrily. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and now everything else works almost as badly.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    I think software will never feel like it's improved because as technology improves and changes, new features will be expected of software and so while some parts of software improve, other new parts will bring down the average quality. It reminds me of Shepard Tones which sound like they are infinitely increasing in pitch which is impossible because the human ear can only hear certain frequencies. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0)
  - hattmall 5y ago
    The BSOD is kind of actually the opposite in reality. The software is worse, the hardware is better, so we are running more software to containerize those bugs. Software is more buggy and bloated than in the past it's just that the failures are silent and we don't have to reboot the entire system we just reboot pieces.
    - ido 5y ago
      win 9x was absolutely worse and a lot less stable than the NT lineage (that we're currently in). classic macos was absolutely worse and less stable than the NeXTSTEP lineage we're currently in. I used linux for the first time in 1998 with Red Hat 5.2 and it was an absolute pain to get working/install and a lot of hardware was unsupported. At least it didn't crash as much as windows 9x!
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The lack of writing probably impaired things greatly. I know the Romans had writing. But did they ever write manuals? It was not like Gutenberg's printing press, which put progress on a steep upward trend.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    For professions that requires formal education, certainly. There were manuals/“handbooks” for doctors and philosophers. Plinys “Natural History” contained detailed geographic information, but was considered a work of history (surprise, surprise).
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    Not sure what you have in mind with "manuals", but I believe there were treatises on every subject, e.g. Vitruvius' On architecture (~20BC), "a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It contains a variety of information on Greek and Roman buildings, as well as prescriptions for the planning and design of military camps, cities, and structures both large (aqueducts, buildings, baths, harbours) and small (machines, measuring devices, instruments)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura Ptolemy (100-170AD) wrote treatises on many subjects, and his works on astronomy and geography "never ceased to be copied or commented upon, both in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy Vegetius wrote a military manual On military matters, extremely influential until about 1500. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetius Apicius wrote On the Subject of Cooking, a cook book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius (So much ancient writing hasn't survived, e.g. none of Aristotle's many writings survived - what we know as his writings are just his students' lecture notes.)
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      The fact that any books would have to be copied by hand would disastrously limit their spread and influence. How many people could learn calculus if only 5 copies of the textbook were created? So many being lost is an inevitable consequence of very very few copies ever existing.

bsder 5y ago

> Did the Romans really know that using certain volcanic rocks would make their concrete structures last longer? Or did they mostly just use whatever aggregate was convenient and the structures that have survived are the ones that used the right rocks? Why not both? How do you think you discover that certain things work better than others? Humans are clever in any time. For example, the Pantheon has a very specific profile (thick at bottom to much thinner at center of rise) to the dome in order to allow unreinforced concrete to be used. That's a case of very deliberate design. Pompeii is in a highly volcanic area. So, digging is difficult and expensive. This put a wrench in the standard formula for Roman building. So, instead, they elevated everything slightly. That's on the spot ingenuity and convenience. Finally, there is a survivorship bias--structures specifically built with longevity and durability in mind and maintained by people are the ones that survived.

pmontra 5y ago
The Pantheon is maintained but the Colosseum is not and it shows. The interior of the Colosseum is a pile of rocks. However there is a plan to restore the floor https://www.stirworld.com/see-news-rome-announces-plans-for-restoring-the-colosseum-with-a-retractable-floor https://www.stirworld.com/see-news-rome-announces-plans-for-...
- bsder 5y ago
  The Colosseum was also built with lead rebar for earthquake resistance. And that lead rebar was extracted and stolen over the years because the lead was valuable. Taking the rebar out of a building tends to make it a touch less durable.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  It is very interesting. Certainly there are holes where people have stolen iron. But more importantly, the materials in the Colosseum are massively pillaged by christians for use in other buildings. The Pantheon was turned into a church, and thus was off limits. In Rome they call it "recycling". An interesting article: https://engineeringrome.org/ancient-structures-in-rome-the-colosseum-pantheon/ https://engineeringrome.org/ancient-structures-in-rome-the-c...

Isamu 5y ago

Using volcanic rock in concrete was done to lighten vaults and domes, e.g. the Pantheon. This is distinct from using volcanic ash in the concrete mix which was essential for the long lasting strength. Arguably Roman concrete was discovered by accident when someone mixed a batch of lime plaster using the volcanic ash around Pozzuoli instead of regular sand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolan

lmm 5y ago

They famously shipped the right kind of volcanic ash to e.g. Spain rather than using local materials. They didn't know the chemistry for why (otherwise they could have found the materials with the right characteristics locally), but they definitely knew that particular aggregates lasted better than others.

roca 5y ago
Thanks, that's illuminating.

imtringued 5y ago

They probably noticed that their aqueducts were crumbling. You don't see their failed experiments.