How are Rome's monuments still standing? • Hacker News Board

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#191

Post by imtringued » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:42 AM UTC

kmonsen wrote: post #38

tastyfreeze wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't the only one. https://youtu.be/znQk_yBHre4

Are there strong counterpoints to this? If that is possible it seems extremely more likely than aliens or whatever else people are coming up with.

Aliens are incredibly unlikely. The Egyptians had grain money with demurage fees which encourage hundred year+ projects. Anything they did had a discounted future value that was higher than present value. Building something that lasted 4000 years was economically viable for them.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#192

Post by Sankozi » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:44 AM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #176

smegger001 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long carbon fiber rebar, or plastic coated steel rebar would last.

Briefly (costs/duration): normal steel rebar=1 epoxy coated rebar=1.1-1.3 zinc coated rebar=1.2-1.4 stainless steel rebar=3-4-5 carbon fiber rebar=? What is used, not as "main" reinforcement but to have a (much better) mass strength are fibers, they can be either steel or plastic.

I think I do not understand the numbers. You wrote "costs/duration" so higher the number the worse solution (bigger costs or worse durability), yet the descriptions suggests otherwise.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#193

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

virtue3 wrote: post #140

poo-yie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I have a hobby of restoring vintage and antique tools. Same observation regarding how disposable many modern items are.

As someone that does swing dancing and with quite a lot of people into vintage stuff there has been this talk of "survivor" bias whenever we talk about how stuff was made better back then. Naturally the cheap stuff didn't tend to even remotely make it this far. Curious what your opinion is as I haven't heard much about tools etc.

The transition to "everything plastic" definitely was a big jump in term of quality in general. If you look at cameras from example, "cheap" old (pre 1960s) cameras were just as reliable as expensive ones, if not more, they were just simpler in design and built with less tolerance. When they started building consumer grade cameras in the 80s they almost exclusively used cheap plastic and cheap electronics which inevitably die (LCD screens instead of mechanical displays, undersized rewind motors instead of manual advance levers, autofocus vs manual focus, &c.).

The transition from hand built to machine built and the general miniaturisation of most mechanical/electronic systems since the 80s also means it gets harder and harder to fix. I do believe stuff was made better in term of repairability and simplicity, simply because they didn't have any other ways.

That's why you can pick up virtually any pre 1960 camera and repair it but cameras from the late 80s early 90s are incredibly finicky. I just picked up a camera from 1950, opened it, cleaned its lens elements / shutter mechanism and it works just as good as when it came out of the factory. It took me an hour and two screw drivers to go from "unusable paperweight" to "fully functional", the most advanced pieces of machinery in there are metal gears and springs.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#194

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 12:10 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #92

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 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.

> beverage companies hired people to conclude

Same people who concluded sodas are healthy I assume

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#195

Post by thechao » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

virtue3 wrote: post #140

poo-yie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I have a hobby of restoring vintage and antique tools. Same observation regarding how disposable many modern items are.

As someone that does swing dancing and with quite a lot of people into vintage stuff there has been this talk of "survivor" bias whenever we talk about how stuff was made better back then. Naturally the cheap stuff didn't tend to even remotely make it this far. Curious what your opinion is as I haven't heard much about tools etc.

My great-great grandfather argued this exact point to my dad in the late '50s: the buildings in Switzerland (and, later, Indiana) that "stood the test of time" were built to a different (far more expensive) standard.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#196

Post by peoplefromibiza » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

qwytw wrote: post #167

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sc…

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 ti…

> 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), 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.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#197

Post by marginalia_nu » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #122

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…

Being obsessed with building a legacy is not so uncommon. Machiavelli comes into my mind, for whom future fame is one of the most important motivations for rulers. Or think of Pericles, who states in his famous Funeral Oration: "there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages".[1] [1] http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html

Renaissance writers like Machiavelli were very influenced by the romans, to the point where some were even into Roman LARPing: Wearing togas, refusing to speak vernacular, etc.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#198

Post by cblconfederate » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

sandgiant wrote: post #42

cblconfederate wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the same reasons we preserve Victorian era buildings. Not really, christians destroyed a huge amount and ruthlessly, and tons of marble was 'repurposed'. The best chance of a building to survive was being used as a church

Destroying symbols of a previous rule was (is) commons practice. Constantine realized that some building and monuments were worth preserving and repurposed them as "Christian", thereby ensuring their preservation for hundreds, or even a thousand of years.

The ruler did not change - the motive was religious

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#199

Post by toss1 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #102

emodendroket wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we're talking about the PNW, it doesn't take a genius to look around and see nature alone manages to build towering long-lasting structures in that environment. Some of those redwood trees are older than the oldest buildings in the entire nation. The desert's evolved long-lasting structures are shrub-sized and endure by retreating underground. Otherwise there's rocks.

>>nature alone manages to build towering long-lasting structures in that environment. Some of those redwood trees are older than the oldest buildings in the entire nation.

Yes, and they are continuously maintained by the living tree's processes, building everything from new roots, bark, branches and leaves. The question you need to ask is how long a dead redwood stays standing in the Pacific Northwest? What is the proportion of standing live to standing dead trees? How long does a fallen redwood trunk last, even starting out 20 feet thick?

>>The desert's evolved long-lasting structures are shrub-sized and endure by retreating underground

Yup, due to the same processes - the high heat and low humidity make very large transpiration loads, evaporating water very rapidly from the leaves, so tall structures with huge capillary capacity are unsustainable. It isn't because they wear out fast from the wind.

You seem to be mistaking attributes of biological growth processes for attributes of mechanical wear processes.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#200

Post by marginalia_nu » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #111

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…

Hard to know if their culture was different, it could easily be a case of survival bias. Those obsessed with creating a legacy for themselves were more likely to create a legacy that lasted. Think about all your contemporaries, unless they're incredibly famous their story will be lost in time.

A lot of this is second hand accounts, i.e. people talking about other peoples' feverish quests for leaving a legacy, not always in positive terms.