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How are Rome's monuments still standing?

bbc.com

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Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#71

Post by codethief »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #30
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rome lasted for many centuries, so I imagine they were familiar with what worked and what didn't.

Jonathan Blow makes a bunch of great points about our simplified view of ancient people, versus the reality of their complex achievements which could only be brought about by lots of ingenuity and iterations. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk

Even for reasons other than Rome's history, this is one of the best talks I've ever seen. IMO every software engineer should watch it and I recommend it to colleagues all the time.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#72

Post by anm89 »

KSS42 wrote: post #6

Here’s some great videos on this question from YouTuber ToldinStone - Garret Ryan Author of Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators and War Elephants Why was Roman concrete forgotten during the Middle Ages? https://youtu.be/dbvvlFHCNn4 See also his YouTube series: History of Rome in 15 Buildings The Colosseum: https://youtu.be/m6iHR8zqbiM

Told in Stone is a fantastic channel. Really interesting without ever trying too hard to be entertaining or dumbing it down

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#74

Post by cpursley »

cblconfederate wrote: post #19
atdrummond wrote: post #10

They’re not. The Romans built a huge amount and much of their artistic architectural works remaining today were purposely preserved, even if reused for some alternative purpose. Yes, there are some construction techniques they used that contributed to better survival rates than some other structure types. But mostly we’ve ended up with what was lucky enough to survive. Replay the historical tape again and we might be…

> 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

Yep, that was the first thing I noticed after visiting churches in Rome. All the columns were random.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#75

Post by thoughtsimple »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #30
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rome lasted for many centuries, so I imagine they were familiar with what worked and what didn't.

Jonathan Blow makes a bunch of great points about our simplified view of ancient people, versus the reality of their complex achievements which could only be brought about by lots of ingenuity and iterations. https://youtu.be/pW-SOdj4Kkk

He started off well with the history of civilization collapse but then he got the heart of his presentation with the misguided idea that modern software is more broken recently. He showed some incomprehensible bugs in Visual Studio.

All I have to say is that on Windows the Blue Screen of Death was a prominent problem for many years. On the original MacOS that was non-preemptive multitasking and no memory hardware protection, any program could cause a denial of service or take down the whole computer. These are 30 year old technologies that were clearly worse in many ways than modern equivalents.

Has software improved recently? No, I would say it has gotten somewhat worse recently but if you look at where we are today versus say 1998, things are clearly better. It isn't really possible to know if we are in a major decline or a minor local minimum.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#76

Post by lizknope »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #66
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…

I don't see how you can call the climate "harsh" with a straight face since it never rarely get moist enough for long enough for water and bacteria to do much to wood and masonry. There's a reason you pretty much never see 100yr old unmaintained wood and masonry structures in New England, midwest, the PNW, etc.

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.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#77

Post by noyeastguy »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #56
noyeastguy wrote: post #53

I wonder if there will come a time when society decides it's better to fix ruins such as the Colosseum and the pyramids instead of letting them just rot away.

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?

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#78

Post by pmontra »

cblconfederate wrote: post #39
atdrummond wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I just don’t find that substantially different than the National Trust repurposing say Ickworth into a hotel. I understand that contemporary society places a higher value on a certain type of “accurate” preservation than many societies that came before but if people had truly wanted historical Roman buildings gone, they would be.

tons of pagan roman and greek statues were destroyed. what's left today is only a tiny amount

And basically all of them lost their paint. What we admire is only the shape of what the artists created, not the full creation.

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/gods-in-color-ancient-...

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#79

Post by pengaru »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #66
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…

I don't see how you can call the climate "harsh" with a straight face since it never rarely get moist enough for long enough for water and bacteria to do much to wood and masonry. There's a reason you pretty much never see 100yr old unmaintained wood and masonry structures in New England, midwest, the PNW, etc.

> I don't see how you can call the climate "harsh" with a straight face since it never rarely get moist enough for long enough for water and bacteria to do much to wood and masonry.

Most modern products/methods/coatings deteriorate very quickly in the extreme temperature swings of the desert. If they're exposed to the sunlight, most things can't handle the UV in combination with the extreme temperatures.

I own a desert property and do a lot of DIY construction/maintenance. To argue it's not harsh is extremely uninformed.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#80

Post by atdrummond »

arcticfox wrote: post #65
atdrummond wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because there are enough people here who have been around for the dozens of comment threads we’ve had about the Roman concrete meme and how the notion that it is A. superior and B. a recipe completely lost to time is very much an extreme simplification of the situation. Rather than spend my effort fighting a battle others have fought, here is an older HN thread with good commentary on the topic and links to c…

I thought I'd find a lot of references to it not being (A) superior in that thread, but I actually didn't find much of anything supporting your point. Maybe it's deeper in the dang linked threads but I'm not that motivated to find evidence supporting you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27282927

Here’s a thread from 6 months ago where there is significant discussion about why concrete is used the way it is today. Those parameters/considerations differ from those that the Romans would have faced. And, again, we only have the best examples of Roman cement today available for analysis versus the very wide range of construction quality that occurs today.

The very article linked also explains some of the limitations/ways in which Roman cement isn’t ideal/superior - for one, the massively longer curing time.

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