3 ms·

Nope. Romans invented concrete, and it was so good that still today the average concrete can't compete with it (its resistance to cracks is one example) Rewin

Nope. Romans invented concrete, and it was so good that still today the average concrete can't compete with it (its resistance to cracks is one example) Rewind history and roman buildings would still be there. They are thought to be one of the few things that would survive human extinction. The only thing that would outlast them are Giza Pyramids. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

atdrummond 5y ago
I don’t have the energy to revisit the arguments about Roman concrete that come up every time it is mentioned on HN. Needless to say, the notion that their “superior” method was “forgotten” is a massive oversimplification of what actually happened. Another comment made my point better than I did - which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, often an alternative one (such as a church). It speaks to their value specifically as architecture and is mostly orthogonal to their construction techniques. There are plenty of old buildings (such as Hōryū-ji, Ruwanweli Maha Seya, Mousa Broch, etc) that don’t use any kind of magical construction techniques but have stuck around because of their value to the surrounding society and active efforts at preservation and/or repurposing.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, that's a fallacy. A lot of buildings were useful back then, it wasn't easy to build them nor cheap. But most of them collapsed, because they weren't strong enough. You get roman buildings everywhere in Europe and Northern Africa, a lot of civilizations lived there in the past 40 centuries and their remains are scarce at best. It is like saying that Amazon beat many other startups of its times because they got lucky, it's simply because their execution was better than the competition.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    There are very few Roman buildings that had survived intact. Besides the theaters and aqueducts there are basically none which were not later turned into churches. While Roman buildings might have been stronger than those built by the preceding civilizations (then again in the case of Europe (outside of Greece) and Northern Africa Roman there was very little competition, who else built massive coliseums at the the time?) most ancient buildings did not just simply collapse due to age but were destroyed by people who wanted to reuse their building material.
    - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
      > Besides the theaters and aqueducts there are basically none which were not later turned into churches I am from Rome, live in Rome, in front of the Forum of Augustus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Augustus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Augustus), there's a large number of Roman buildings that never became churches. Trust me, the Domus Aurea was never a church, Villa Adriana has never been a church,they are both UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that romans built several Basilica (for example the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine), but for romans basilica meant a different thing: from the Greek word "stoà basileiós" the term basilica refers to the function of a building as that of a meeting hall. In ancient Rome, basilicas were the site for legal matters to be carried out and a place for business transactions. Most of them never became religious buildings, they remained public places to meet other people. > most ancient buildings did not just simply collapse due to age but were destroyed by people who wanted to reuse their building material. that happened to roman buildings as well, Colosseum is maybe a third of what originally it was made of, but it's still standing and survived a massive earthquake in 1349 that opened a huge crack in it, but didn't destroy it. Because of its build quality.
      - qwytw 5y ago
        Yes there are plenty of relatively well preserved Roman ruins, neither Hadrian's Villa or Domus Aurea had survived intact. I'm not denying that Roman construction techniques were advanced, but it's not like we have much to compare them against. Sure, there aren't as many well preserved Etruscan or Greek ruins in Italy, but they preceded the Romans, had way less resources and not as advanced technology. And the same happened to the Romans who were eventually surpassed by medieval and renaissance Europeans. There magnitudes more surviving medieval buildings compared to Roman buildings, just like there are magnitudes (I would assume) more Roman ones compared ones built by Etruscans/etc. But that does not mean that Roman architecture was somehow inherently superior. For example had the Carthaginians or some Greek state conquered the mediterranean instead of the Romans (obviously that was unlikely due to various non architecture related reasons) and had the resources to build as much as the Romans did would less of their buildings have survived or would they have been of worse quality everything else staying equal?
- User23 5y ago
  > There are plenty of old buildings (such as Hōryū-ji) that don’t use any kind of magical construction techniques but have stuck around because of their value to the surrounding society and active efforts at preservation and/or repurposing. This is true, but rather misleading. Hōryū-ji burned down and is probably around 80-90% new material. The Roman concrete structures on the other hand survived this long with their original construction materials.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  This is probably a rehash from your linked thread, but... perhaps it's both? Better construction materials used in buildings that had the most value in their architecture and/or purpose?
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  In East Asia, Japan in particular, most "old" buildings are reconstructed fairly often. They might reuse a lot of the old supplies, but many are very much a Ship of Theseus. Roman structures are, for the most part, preserved as they were--not fully disassembled and rebuilt. One thing is that most places with extremely old structures have them far and few between. A 2000 year old building that wasn't rebuilt from the ground up is often a symbol of national pride for a country and seen as somewhat of a miracle that it's still standing. What makes Rome unique is the city alone is full of such structures, and it's a living, active city. In other countries that had a Roman presence, many of their oldest structures are remains built by Romans. Most Egyptian structures were buried under sand for millennia and well-preserved as a consequence of that. I have to wonder how they'd hold up if they were in a different climate and with humans bustling about constantly into the modern era. Either way, Romans were clearly doing something special.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    The Roman period was followed by general population contraction and a total collapse of urban centers. The city for Rome itself did not reach the population it had in the 200's AD until the early 20th century. Of most ancient Rome was an abandoned or sparsely inhabited ruin (much like many other Roman cities) which is why so many buildings survived. If Rome had remained a densely inhabited city most of the ruins would had likely been completely destroyed and built over (besides a few temples which were converted to churches). If we look at smaller Roman cities like Cadiz, London, Paris, Milan etc. there aren't that many traces of Roman times there because their population levels eventually rebounded during middle ages.
Linosaurus 5y ago
The article did bring up some ways modern concrete is superior in the shorter term: "Among the biggest obstacles to wider adoption of the Roman recipe are its long curing time – it can take up to six months to reach full strength, compared to standard concrete's' 28 days – and lower strength (Perucchio said it's approximately 10 times weaker than modern concrete),"
- anarticle 5y ago
  Some of this is likely due to high lime content, which is self healing. Generally lower strength, longer cure time, but does not get attacked as hard by water due to remineralization. It is similar to how limestone naturally forms (think stalactites).
- jaclaz 5y ago
  JFYI, this is true also of modern Pozzolanic cement (almost unused today), but in my experience (anecdata) it is also stronger: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29377799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29377799
dehrmann 5y ago
There might be some truth to Roman concrete still being reactive leading to its longevity, but I'd be really careful about dismissing survivorship bias.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > but I'd be really careful about dismissing survivorship bias. I completely agree, we can't dismiss survivorship bias. But let's imagine we are in a speculative historical sci-fi novel. An ancient civilization makes contact with an alien one and they gain access to a new powerful way of building that had no precedent in history. Fast forward 50 years, aliens are gone for good, there's no easy way for the layman people to access documentation let alone understand it, people will obviously don't understand what's going on, but they would see older buildings collapse after a mild earthquake or be destroyed by a wild fire, while some of them would survive, mutliple times. They would most probably think of them as safer structures and give them more value and try to preserve them because of their "magical" ability to survive catastrophic events. They would probably think of those buildings as gods gifts or sth like that. Imagine that instead of 50 years it went on for almost a millennium. And then the knowledge on how they were built got lost.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    We shouldn't also dismiss more practical reasons, why build a new church if you can reuse one of the abandoned Roman temples? Why build a fortress to protect yourself from your enemies if you can just patch up some holes and install a gate to the Coliseum (or just convert some emperor mausoleum to one)? Even if people were fully aware (and at least the more educated ones were) that there was nothing magical about Roman construction they simply had no need to build anything similar themselves when they could just reuse the already present structures (either directly or as building material).

atdrummond 5y ago

I don’t have the energy to revisit the arguments about Roman concrete that come up every time it is mentioned on HN. Needless to say, the notion that their “superior” method was “forgotten” is a massive oversimplification of what actually happened. Another comment made my point better than I did - which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, often an alternative one (such as a church). It speaks to their value specifically as architecture and is mostly orthogonal to their construction techniques. There are plenty of old buildings (such as Hōryū-ji, Ruwanweli Maha Seya, Mousa Broch, etc) that don’t use any kind of magical construction techniques but have stuck around because of their value to the surrounding society and active efforts at preservation and/or repurposing.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, that's a fallacy. A lot of buildings were useful back then, it wasn't easy to build them nor cheap. But most of them collapsed, because they weren't strong enough. You get roman buildings everywhere in Europe and Northern Africa, a lot of civilizations lived there in the past 40 centuries and their remains are scarce at best. It is like saying that Amazon beat many other startups of its times because they got lucky, it's simply because their execution was better than the competition.
- qwytw 5y ago
  There are very few Roman buildings that had survived intact. Besides the theaters and aqueducts there are basically none which were not later turned into churches. While Roman buildings might have been stronger than those built by the preceding civilizations (then again in the case of Europe (outside of Greece) and Northern Africa Roman there was very little competition, who else built massive coliseums at the the time?) most ancient buildings did not just simply collapse due to age but were destroyed by people who wanted to reuse their building material.
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    > Besides the theaters and aqueducts there are basically none which were not later turned into churches I am from Rome, live in Rome, in front of the Forum of Augustus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Augustus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Augustus), there's a large number of Roman buildings that never became churches. Trust me, the Domus Aurea was never a church, Villa Adriana has never been a church,they are both UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that romans built several Basilica (for example the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine), but for romans basilica meant a different thing: from the Greek word "stoà basileiós" the term basilica refers to the function of a building as that of a meeting hall. In ancient Rome, basilicas were the site for legal matters to be carried out and a place for business transactions. Most of them never became religious buildings, they remained public places to meet other people. > most ancient buildings did not just simply collapse due to age but were destroyed by people who wanted to reuse their building material. that happened to roman buildings as well, Colosseum is maybe a third of what originally it was made of, but it's still standing and survived a massive earthquake in 1349 that opened a huge crack in it, but didn't destroy it. Because of its build quality.
    - qwytw 5y ago
      Yes there are plenty of relatively well preserved Roman ruins, neither Hadrian's Villa or Domus Aurea had survived intact. I'm not denying that Roman construction techniques were advanced, but it's not like we have much to compare them against. Sure, there aren't as many well preserved Etruscan or Greek ruins in Italy, but they preceded the Romans, had way less resources and not as advanced technology. And the same happened to the Romans who were eventually surpassed by medieval and renaissance Europeans. There magnitudes more surviving medieval buildings compared to Roman buildings, just like there are magnitudes (I would assume) more Roman ones compared ones built by Etruscans/etc. But that does not mean that Roman architecture was somehow inherently superior. For example had the Carthaginians or some Greek state conquered the mediterranean instead of the Romans (obviously that was unlikely due to various non architecture related reasons) and had the resources to build as much as the Romans did would less of their buildings have survived or would they have been of worse quality everything else staying equal?
User23 5y ago
> There are plenty of old buildings (such as Hōryū-ji) that don’t use any kind of magical construction techniques but have stuck around because of their value to the surrounding society and active efforts at preservation and/or repurposing. This is true, but rather misleading. Hōryū-ji burned down and is probably around 80-90% new material. The Roman concrete structures on the other hand survived this long with their original construction materials.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
This is probably a rehash from your linked thread, but... perhaps it's both? Better construction materials used in buildings that had the most value in their architecture and/or purpose?
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
In East Asia, Japan in particular, most "old" buildings are reconstructed fairly often. They might reuse a lot of the old supplies, but many are very much a Ship of Theseus. Roman structures are, for the most part, preserved as they were--not fully disassembled and rebuilt. One thing is that most places with extremely old structures have them far and few between. A 2000 year old building that wasn't rebuilt from the ground up is often a symbol of national pride for a country and seen as somewhat of a miracle that it's still standing. What makes Rome unique is the city alone is full of such structures, and it's a living, active city. In other countries that had a Roman presence, many of their oldest structures are remains built by Romans. Most Egyptian structures were buried under sand for millennia and well-preserved as a consequence of that. I have to wonder how they'd hold up if they were in a different climate and with humans bustling about constantly into the modern era. Either way, Romans were clearly doing something special.
- qwytw 5y ago
  The Roman period was followed by general population contraction and a total collapse of urban centers. The city for Rome itself did not reach the population it had in the 200's AD until the early 20th century. Of most ancient Rome was an abandoned or sparsely inhabited ruin (much like many other Roman cities) which is why so many buildings survived. If Rome had remained a densely inhabited city most of the ruins would had likely been completely destroyed and built over (besides a few temples which were converted to churches). If we look at smaller Roman cities like Cadiz, London, Paris, Milan etc. there aren't that many traces of Roman times there because their population levels eventually rebounded during middle ages.

Linosaurus 5y ago

The article did bring up some ways modern concrete is superior in the shorter term: "Among the biggest obstacles to wider adoption of the Roman recipe are its long curing time – it can take up to six months to reach full strength, compared to standard concrete's' 28 days – and lower strength (Perucchio said it's approximately 10 times weaker than modern concrete),"

anarticle 5y ago
Some of this is likely due to high lime content, which is self healing. Generally lower strength, longer cure time, but does not get attacked as hard by water due to remineralization. It is similar to how limestone naturally forms (think stalactites).
jaclaz 5y ago
JFYI, this is true also of modern Pozzolanic cement (almost unused today), but in my experience (anecdata) it is also stronger: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29377799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29377799

dehrmann 5y ago

There might be some truth to Roman concrete still being reactive leading to its longevity, but I'd be really careful about dismissing survivorship bias.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> but I'd be really careful about dismissing survivorship bias. I completely agree, we can't dismiss survivorship bias. But let's imagine we are in a speculative historical sci-fi novel. An ancient civilization makes contact with an alien one and they gain access to a new powerful way of building that had no precedent in history. Fast forward 50 years, aliens are gone for good, there's no easy way for the layman people to access documentation let alone understand it, people will obviously don't understand what's going on, but they would see older buildings collapse after a mild earthquake or be destroyed by a wild fire, while some of them would survive, mutliple times. They would most probably think of them as safer structures and give them more value and try to preserve them because of their "magical" ability to survive catastrophic events. They would probably think of those buildings as gods gifts or sth like that. Imagine that instead of 50 years it went on for almost a millennium. And then the knowledge on how they were built got lost.
- qwytw 5y ago
  We shouldn't also dismiss more practical reasons, why build a new church if you can reuse one of the abandoned Roman temples? Why build a fortress to protect yourself from your enemies if you can just patch up some holes and install a gate to the Coliseum (or just convert some emperor mausoleum to one)? Even if people were fully aware (and at least the more educated ones were) that there was nothing magical about Roman construction they simply had no need to build anything similar themselves when they could just reuse the already present structures (either directly or as building material).