Interesting fact: The concrete we use today is not as durable as Roman concrete. The Romans used volcanic ash as part of the mix and the result lasts thousands of years without rebar or metal reinforcement. What we use now is good for about 400 years with metal reinforcement.
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· 6 years ago
With metal reincforcment makes it worse for wear. Bunkers constructed with reinforced concrete in the 40s are already beginning to decay. Pure concrete is a better choice.
It is but it isn't nearly as good in terms of longetivity. When moisture manages to get through the concrete, the steel will rust. This causes the rebar to expand, breaking all of the concrete around it.
True, everything has its strengths and weaknesses (litterally in this case)
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· 6 years ago
I mostly learned about the longevity of structures from Life After People. Like, for example, if humans disappeared from the planet, the Hoover Dam would be the longest-lived man-made structure (apart from Mount Rushmore), lasting 10000 years.
Well, a couple of things
1. Advancement in energiring technology does not necessarily mean advancement in political security or military defense
2. More directly: mostly because of greed. In some ways Rome began to fall before it had even become an empire. Roman leaders had a representative democracy, in some ways like the United States has today. Well, a number of people were really unhappy with the policies being pushed by a couple of politicians in particular, and those politicians ended up killed. And I'm not saying they were assassinated on behalf of other politicians, bit it certainly looked that way.
Well, by itself this is bad, but the people responsible, whoever they were, never faced charges. Which opened up murdering people as a valid option for control of policies. And that exact thing famously happened to Julius Ceasar-and it didn't stop there.
Furthermore-the Roman Empire allowed policy control to be dictated by military numbers instead of purely representatives.
And this meant that you didn't always have to be able to kill a leader subtlety-you could just go to war. Again, this famously happened in the wake of Julius Cesar's death as the power vacuum hadn't been filled as concretely as before.
And this meant that the loyalty of numbers of soldiers was often more important than the loyalty of citizens in terms of keeping your position in government.
Ultimately that lead to, amongst other issues, certain barbarian tribes being hired as mercenaries to Roman rule. And said mercenaries were not loyal to Rome, and eventually turned on Rome from within.
So well Rome's superior building techniques were largely able to handle issues with barbarians at the gate, they ultimately couldn't handle the problem of barbarians inside the gate.
1. Advancement in energiring technology does not necessarily mean advancement in political security or military defense
2. More directly: mostly because of greed. In some ways Rome began to fall before it had even become an empire. Roman leaders had a representative democracy, in some ways like the United States has today. Well, a number of people were really unhappy with the policies being pushed by a couple of politicians in particular, and those politicians ended up killed. And I'm not saying they were assassinated on behalf of other politicians, bit it certainly looked that way.
Well, by itself this is bad, but the people responsible, whoever they were, never faced charges. Which opened up murdering people as a valid option for control of policies. And that exact thing famously happened to Julius Ceasar-and it didn't stop there.
Furthermore-the Roman Empire allowed policy control to be dictated by military numbers instead of purely representatives.
And this meant that the loyalty of numbers of soldiers was often more important than the loyalty of citizens in terms of keeping your position in government.
Ultimately that lead to, amongst other issues, certain barbarian tribes being hired as mercenaries to Roman rule. And said mercenaries were not loyal to Rome, and eventually turned on Rome from within.
So well Rome's superior building techniques were largely able to handle issues with barbarians at the gate, they ultimately couldn't handle the problem of barbarians inside the gate.