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

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#151

Post by silisili » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 6:54 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #145

silisili wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thought. Where I grew up...if water didn't kill it, tornados would. The only barns that stood the test of time were made from the now nearly extinct chestnut. They turn grey and get knotty and twisty as they age but are nearly indestructible. Everything else rots away in the humidity. One rather interesting memory...I remember my father rebuilding an old barnish structure with railroad ties for the frame. Appare…

Mostly because it is quite polluting if it gets into the groundwater or in your well.

So I had some experience similar to this with an awful substance called cosmoline. Russians used it to store old guns, and they did the same thing really by sweating some chemical every time they heat up.

After some reading and thinking, I decided just to bake the thing at 250. It sweated tons of that awful red jelly out, then never again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not for polluting the groundwater, but seems it can be mitigated with proper heat treating prior.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#152

Post by a_bonobo » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

One other explanation is that many of these monuments didn't stand around undisturbed for 2,000 years, a lot of work of hundreds of generations of humans went into these monuments.

The Porta Nigra is a great example - it's an ancient Roman city gate in Trier, Germany, still standing since it was built in 170 AD. The ground floor was buried for a long time (>800 years?) preserving it. The gate was a ruin for a few hundred years, around 1000 AD a church was built around the gate keeping the construction in place. As part of a general de-'churchification' 1802 Napoleon had the church-part taken off and had the gate and its insides fixed up (while the ground floor was still buried!). So the gate didn't have to survive on its own.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#153

Post by bennysomething » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

moosedev wrote: post #117

bennysomething wrote: post #12

Surely it should be "why are Rome's monuments..." Or am I mistaken, I'm not actually sure

Native speaker (Brit in USA) here. Either one is fine, although they have subtle differences in meaning and implication (to me) in this context. The first thing that struck me before I gave this any real thought is that "How" here connotes a little incredulity or even amazement (to me). There's an implied, rhetorical sense of unlikelihood of the fact. ("How are Rome's monuments still standing?! Shouldn't they have fa…

Interesting!

It's got even more confusing since I moved to Scotland!

https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20vs%20why%20scotland&ie...

(I'm a native English speaker too,and would have defaulted to why, how is jarring to me, but I notice myself saying more and more)

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#154

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #151

jacquesm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly because it is quite polluting if it gets into the groundwater or in your well.

So I had some experience similar to this with an awful substance called cosmoline. Russians used it to store old guns, and they did the same thing really by sweating some chemical every time they heat up. After some reading and thinking, I decided just to bake the thing at 250. It sweated tons of that awful red jelly out, then never again. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not for polluting the groundwater, but seem…

That probably won't work for railroad ties because they are usually in/on the ground and without that tar the bugs would eat them in a few years.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#155

Post by silisili » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #154

silisili wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I had some experience similar to this with an awful substance called cosmoline. Russians used it to store old guns, and they did the same thing really by sweating some chemical every time they heat up. After some reading and thinking, I decided just to bake the thing at 250. It sweated tons of that awful red jelly out, then never again. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not for polluting the groundwater, but seem…

That probably won't work for railroad ties because they are usually in/on the ground and without that tar the bugs would eat them in a few years.

Well, the idea is to just heat them past any temperature they'd experience naturally such that they don't bleed anymore. The wood itself would still be saturated in awful chemicals.

For railroad ties specifically, I imagine it would be deemed way too much cost. But for say, house framing lumber... guaranteed termite free forever, I think people would pay for it.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#156

Post by kart23 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

thinkski wrote: post #55

Does make me wonder what we’re building today that will last. I suppose the engineers who worked on Voyager or Pathfinder have the best shot of having built something enduring.

I've read the hoover dam is engineered to last at least 10,000 years, and much longer if 'properly maintained'.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#157

Post by ithkuil » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 8:09 AM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #95

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.

"the Romans empire never ended, we just call it the Catholic Church now"

(Obviously a joke, but not that silly as it looks at first sight)

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#158

Post by Bayart » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #93

It’s not just the monuments. Everywhere you go in Rome there are fountains with cold, clean drinkable water. The combination of the roads, rivers, infrastructure, and monuments leaves you feeling like we kind of aimed a little low, at times.

The fountains have nothing to do with (ancient) Romans. Italians didn't invent modern water management.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#159

Post by asimpletune » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 8:18 AM UTC

Bayart wrote: post #158

asimpletune wrote: post #93

It’s not just the monuments. Everywhere you go in Rome there are fountains with cold, clean drinkable water. The combination of the roads, rivers, infrastructure, and monuments leaves you feeling like we kind of aimed a little low, at times.

The fountains have nothing to do with (ancient) Romans. Italians didn't invent modern water management.

Really? I thought those fountains were a public service in Roman antiquity as well?

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#160

Post by roca » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 8:18 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #113

roca wrote: post #26

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.

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.

Thanks, that's illuminating.