3 ms·

Your conclusions about what the Romans did and did not know seem dubious. Even in the modern era we still fuck constructions up, despite all we know. If I reca

Your conclusions about what the Romans did and did not know seem dubious. Even in the modern era we still fuck constructions up, despite all we know. If I recall correctly they had pretty strict standards for the roads themselves [citation needed], I would suspect much the same existed for bridges. Having said that, I think it stands to reason that chemical processes and variances in materials locally sourced would be something worthy of scrutiny. Porting tons of materials in those days would be suboptimal to say the least, so concrete compositions could suffer, alongside with a litany of other material compromises. Add in process errors and I think it becomes a far more compelling hypothesis than "they just slapped shit together but somehow invented keystones, leveraging both structural and gravitational forces" Knowing what we do know, I think, tends more towards material optimization. We can more confidently design structures and do it with greater respect to cost - something I don't know that earlier civilizations paid a lot of mind to, especially when looking at the multi-decadal constructions of cathedrals for instance or more on point the coliseum.

filoleg 4y ago
> Even in the modern era we still fuck constructions up, despite all we know. That's precisely why we fuck it up, because we know tolerances and such much better, and we can do things with much finer granularity. So we aim to build right at that precise edge of "just barely above what's minimally required for it to work." And when small fuck ups happen, that edge gets lost, and suddenly it is all falling down. In Roman times? No precise tools and techniques were available, things had far less granularity. So when they decided they wanted to build things "good enough", there was no precise edge. They would often ballpark for a construction project to be much stronger than minimally needed (by modern measurements), precisely because that "minimally needed" wasn't nearly as simple to achieve or even calculate. Think about medieval brick castles. Some are still standing, while some houses built only about 100 years ago are pretty much disintegrating. Is it because we don't know how to build castles anymore? Not at all, it's just we try to build on the edge of the calculated expected lifespan of a house, balancing pricing at the same time. It was extremely difficult to do something like this with the knowledge available back then, so if they wanted something actually stable, they would often go for an overkill.
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  My argument is the the Romans had a really good understanding of the macro forces, but minimal knowledge of the micro forces. I would also expect long-run events would be more difficult to parse. The floodlines of Egypt, for instance, required a modern engineer decades of work to model because there is a complex system of dependency undergirding the processes determining them. Prior years flooding determined the latter years, this wasn't integrated into the reasoning when it came to constructing dams, instead they used 100-years floodlines to determine how high to build the dams, which was inadequate for the safety margin. I suspect such errant features of nature might explain failures, and material issues, but I'm definitely confident Romans had a highly intimate understanding of the high-visibility macro forces, because you really just can't miss broken sticks and falling bricks, can you?
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Many of the castles (“Kracs”) used by the Crusaders still exist. They were used as military forts during the recent war. They stood up very well. Think about that … even against modern artillery, they still held. And with little damage.
pyuser583 4y ago
The Romans considered bridge building to be a religious activity. Rivers were gods, and bridges interfered with them. A crappy bridge was sacrilegious.

filoleg 4y ago

> Even in the modern era we still fuck constructions up, despite all we know. That's precisely why we fuck it up, because we know tolerances and such much better, and we can do things with much finer granularity. So we aim to build right at that precise edge of "just barely above what's minimally required for it to work." And when small fuck ups happen, that edge gets lost, and suddenly it is all falling down. In Roman times? No precise tools and techniques were available, things had far less granularity. So when they decided they wanted to build things "good enough", there was no precise edge. They would often ballpark for a construction project to be much stronger than minimally needed (by modern measurements), precisely because that "minimally needed" wasn't nearly as simple to achieve or even calculate. Think about medieval brick castles. Some are still standing, while some houses built only about 100 years ago are pretty much disintegrating. Is it because we don't know how to build castles anymore? Not at all, it's just we try to build on the edge of the calculated expected lifespan of a house, balancing pricing at the same time. It was extremely difficult to do something like this with the knowledge available back then, so if they wanted something actually stable, they would often go for an overkill.

brnaftr361 4y ago
My argument is the the Romans had a really good understanding of the macro forces, but minimal knowledge of the micro forces. I would also expect long-run events would be more difficult to parse. The floodlines of Egypt, for instance, required a modern engineer decades of work to model because there is a complex system of dependency undergirding the processes determining them. Prior years flooding determined the latter years, this wasn't integrated into the reasoning when it came to constructing dams, instead they used 100-years floodlines to determine how high to build the dams, which was inadequate for the safety margin. I suspect such errant features of nature might explain failures, and material issues, but I'm definitely confident Romans had a highly intimate understanding of the high-visibility macro forces, because you really just can't miss broken sticks and falling bricks, can you?
pyuser583 4y ago
Many of the castles (“Kracs”) used by the Crusaders still exist. They were used as military forts during the recent war. They stood up very well. Think about that … even against modern artillery, they still held. And with little damage.

pyuser583 4y ago

The Romans considered bridge building to be a religious activity. Rivers were gods, and bridges interfered with them. A crappy bridge was sacrilegious.