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How are Rome's monuments still standing?

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Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#91

Post by CubsFan1060 »

noyeastguy wrote: post #77
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the practical purpose of "fixing" something like the pyramids? Vs. just preserving them as-is.

I think it would be cool to imagine ourselves as part of the process of civilization that created these buildings and restore them to their former glory. If the Mona Lisa was ripped in half we would surely restore it back to a single piece. Why should we not rebuild ancient Rome and host pop-up shops and events in the Forum?

It is an interesting thought, but I think your example doesn't work. In that we have two complete halves in need of minor repair. For ruins, we have parts left, and don't really even know for sure what it's supposed to look like. I mean, a very good idea, but not for sure.

And especially, over time, you can end up with a bit of a ship of theseus.

Also interesting -- if some day one of the earthquakes there knocks down part of the colosseum, will we rebuild the ruins to their ruinous state?

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#92

Post by Spooky23 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #84
HPsquared wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the old glass bottles were designed to be used again and again.

Aren't modern bottles designed for that too? Atleast here, you return them to the store, get some money back, and they wash and refill them

In the US, the beverage companies hired people to conclude that washing bottles uses more energy/carbon/etc than disposable containers.

Walmart used this as an argument for styrofoam cups.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#95

Post by cblconfederate »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #89

It's struck me, reading roman authors, that they were considerably more obsessed with building a legacy than we are. Not just getting powerful or famous in life, but entering the history books, to become big name like Scipio Africanus. May be that it comes with living in an "eternal" city that's been the same as long as anyone can remember, with generations coming and going and most human activity washed away like sa…

Still i think they would be surprised at how much of their civilization has survived in ours 2k years later.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#96

Post by dragontamer »

lillecarl wrote: post #87
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't modern bottles designed for that too? Atleast here, you return them to the store, get some money back, and they wash and refill them

In Sweden we sort them by colored or translucent, they'll be smashed and reheated to be made into brand new bottles. Haven't seen used bottles in quite awhile, not sure if it's good or bad.

That's how its normally done in the USA as well.

Brown, Green, and Transparent glass gets sorted, smashed, and melted back down into new bottles.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#97

Post by emodendroket »

rurp wrote: post #57

Tangentially related to this, one of my hobbies is to explore old long abandoned ghost towns and mining camps in the Southwest US. It is really impressive how well many of these structures have held up in harsh climates. One of my favorite parts is seeing how repairs were improvised in the wilderness using whatever supplies happened to be available. The standard approach to trash back then was to throw it in a pile n…

Isn't the Southwest uniquely not harsh? The biggest enemy of most man-made structures is water.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#98

Post by emodendroket »

pengaru wrote: post #86
lizknope wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the water is far worse than the sunlight. Airlines and the military parks aircraft in the desert for storage because with a little bit of prep work at the beginning the aircraft will stay in good shape. Constant rain would be far worse.

The thing is desert structures still have to deal with water ingress. It does rain, and when it rains it's often a blowy monsoon of doom, assaulting desiccated wood structures which more often than not have developed some leaks from the year-round wind/sandstorm/thermal/UV abuse and complacency promoted by deceptively always-dry conditions. And when lumber that has been dry and 120F+ for half a year abruptly gets soa…

Every climate brings its own challenges, of course, but it still seems true that that's better than dealing with constant precipitation, freezing, and so on.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#100

Post by peoplefromibiza »

dehrmann wrote: post #54
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

> 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.

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