Although the Roman Empire existed more than 2,000 years ago, its contribution to the history of civilization is difficult to overestimate.
And you shouldn't think that at that time people were primitive and backward.
Modern society owes many inventions and technologies to the Romans.
1. Concrete
The Romans knew how to make strong and durable concrete, which is often better than modern concrete. While today's concrete decays in fifty years or less, Roman concrete is still the way it was thousands of years ago. Legend has it that the Roman engineer Mark Vitruvius created this ultra-strong solution from volcanic ash, lime and sea water.
He mixed these three ingredients with volcanic stone and immersed the mixture in sea water... About ten years later, a rare mineral called aluminum-tobermorite was formed in concrete, which allowed it to maintain its strength.
2. Roads and highways
Once the Romans realized that paved roads could help them maintain a strong army and empire, they built them all over the place. For 700 years, they have built 88,000 kilometers of roads throughout Europe. These roads were well designed, built to last, and allowed fast travel throughout the empire. 2,000 years later, many Roman roads still exist today.
3. Food culture
The Romans loved to eat well, and the dining room was an important part of their living space... A typical Roman dinner consisted of three courses: an appetizer, a main course and a dessert, which is very reminiscent of modern times. The Romans also drank wine throughout the meal, which was different from the Greeks who drank wine after a meal. Similar habits have survived to this day.
4. Stitched books
Before the advent of stitched books, civilization mainly used stone tablets or scrolls. However, by the first century AD. NS. the Romans created the first "codices", which consisted of sheets of papyrus or parchment tied together. However, real books did not appear until the 5th century AD.
5. Plumbing
The ancient Romans developed a revolutionary plumbing system that first began with aqueducts, which allowed them to transport running water to populated areas, and ended with the development of a complex lead piping system. They are one of the first civilizations to do this.
6. Courier service
The Roman emperor Augustus founded the first courier service in the Roman Empire under the name "Cursus Publicus". This helped to transfer messages and information about taxes from one place to another. The emperor based the service on the Persian system, but changed it so that only one person delivered packages or information from one place to another, rather than passing information on to many people. It was a slower process, but it provided more security.
7. Newspapers
Newspapers have come a long way. Originally, the Romans began to publish records of the Senate meetings called "Acta Senatus", which were available only to senators. Later, after 27 BC. e., there was "Acta diurna" - a daily newspaper for "ordinary people".
8. Central heating
One of the first known centralized systems heating in the world was created by the Romans. It was called "hypocaust" and was installed mainly in large public baths. A fire was constantly burning under the raised floor, which heated the room and the water going to the bath.
9. Graffiti
It turns out that graffiti is not a modern art form, and it originated in ancient Rome. Scientists found graffiti during the excavations of Pompeii, which were "mothballed" for centuries in a layer of ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. One of the many things scrawled on the walls was the phrase, "I'm surprised the wall hasn't yet collapsed from all these recordings."
10. Sewerage
The first Roman sewage system was built by the Etruscans throughout the Italian peninsula in 500 BC. After that, the Romans expanded the sewage system. It should be noted that mainly it was not used for Wastewater, and to reduce floods.
11. Caesarean section
Caesar decreed that all women who died during childbirth should be dissected to save the child. It should be noted that this procedure was never intended to save the mother's life, but today the procedure has radically changed and has become more common.
12. Medical instruments
Thanks to the preserved ruins of Pompeii, scientists learned more about the medical instruments used by the ancient Romans. Many of them were used until the 20th century. For example, a vaginal speculum, a rectal speculum, and a male catheter were found.
13. Road signs
Road signs are not at all modern invention, and the Romans used them too. On all of their many roads and highways, they used large landmarks to give travelers direction and distance information from Rome and other cities.
14. Urban layout
The Romans pioneered urban planning that is so prevalent today, creating some of the earliest street network designs. Many of these cities became early models for later projects, as the Romans discovered that they could control the flow of traffic and improve the efficiency of trade and production when designing cities.
15. Fast food
McDonald's executives probably like to think they invented fast food, but that's far from the case. For example, in ancient city Pompeii clearly disliked cooking, as several kitchens were found in people's homes. Instead, the townspeople went to "popins" or ancient restaurants. Snacks on the go were fairly common.
Do you think that 2 thousand years ago people were so primitive that they lived in mud? But no. It was the inventions of Antiquity that laid the foundation for modern technological progress giving us impressive list things that have become part of everyday comfort. What are we talking about? We present the inventions of the ancient Romans, the prototypes of which we are happy to use to this day.
11 incredible inventions of the ancient Romans that power modern civilization!
1. Sewer system
The idea of building a sewer pipe through which the city's sewage would flow, appeared in Babylon. but Ancient Rome- the first city that brought this idea to life so effectively that we use it now. The Big Cloaca was a canal lined with stone and buried at a depth of 4 meters under the city. Moreover, the very construction of the ancient Romans was performed so skillfully that it still serves as a storm sewer.
2. Road rules and signs
Since the 5th century BC NS. the Romans were actively building roads, which was accompanied by drawing road atlases and coming up with traffic rules. By the way, all of them were equipped with milestones - prototypes of modern road signs, which indicated the distance traveled, the name of the emperor and the nearest resting place for travelers. Isn't it impressive?
3. Fast food establishments
If servants prepared food for wealthy gentlemen, then the poor could not afford such a luxury, because many did not even have a normal kitchen. That is why thermopoly, the prototypes of modern eateries, were so widespread in the days of the ancient Romans. They were small establishments with open counter, on which vats of food were boiling. The food was prepared cheap and fast - lentils, peas, beans - while visitors were often on the go, so no chairs were offered. Doesn't it look like anything?
4. Heating
You say: "It can't be!" And here it can. It was the Romans who invented a kind of heated floor, which was initially used in baths, but then the design migrated to the homes of rich slave owners living in cold provinces. It was called "hypocaust" and was wood stoves under the floor, the fire of which heated the higher vats of water, forming hot air masses that penetrated into the rooms and provided warmth.
5. Caesarean section
By itself, this procedure became a forced measure to save the baby if the woman died during childbirth, so there was no need to talk about any humanity to mothers. But later this medical practice of the ancient Romans improved, becoming one of the main achievements of medicine. In addition to Caesarean, even then such important tools for doctors as a vaginal speculum and catheter.
6. Right veto
Not only did Roman law become the basis for the legal system of many European states, it was the ancient Roman rulers who invented the veto, which made it possible to block the short-sighted decisions of the consuls or reject defamatory laws passed by the Senate. Today, every head of state has it, who is a member of the UN and supports world security.
7. News newspapers
Perhaps the Internet did not exist before, but the first prototypes of newspapers were very much in use, representing scrolls of parchment filled by hand with texts on topical topics. Such a program was called "Cases of the Roman People", it was often hung out in the squares or delivered directly to the hands of noble townspeople. What did they write about? About new laws, unusual incidents on the streets of the city, rumors, natural phenomena finally, just about the life of the prominent ancient Romans. Over time, Julius Caesar made this format mandatory, founding the world's first news newspaper.
If you want someone to explain the geometry to you, then it would be best to turn to the Greek, if you need to build a floating bridge, sewer network or build a weapon that shoots blazing balls of gravel and resin at a distance of up to 274 meters, then you should have taken a Roman to help. The brilliant architectural, organizational and technical feats of the Romans distinguish them, as well as the Greeks, among the ancient peoples.
Below are some of the most significant achievements of the ancient Romans.
Dome
We take the inner space of the modern world for granted, however, we should not do this. Our great vaulted arches, great atriums, glass walls, ceilings and much more - all this was unthinkable in ancient world.
Before the Romans improved the domes of buildings, even the best architects of the time had to struggle with the creation of stone roofs for a long time. Even the greatest architectural achievements of the pre-Roman era, such as the Parthenon and the pyramids, were more impressive on the outside than on the inside. They were dark inside and represented a confined space.
Roman domes, on the other hand, were spacious, open and gave a real feel. interior space... For the first time in history. Based on the understanding that the principles of the arch could be rotated in three dimensions to create a form that has the same strong supporting force, but "acts" on larger area, dome building technology became available mainly thanks to concrete, another achievement of the ancient Romans, which we will talk about later.
It is believed that the oldest dome in existence is located in the Roman Pantheon, erected around 128 AD.
Weapon
Like many technologies, Roman siege weapons were originally developed by the Greeks and later refined by the Romans. Ballista, essentially a giant crossbow that could shoot large stones during a siege, was constructed from Greek weapons that fell into the hands of the Romans.
Using animal tendons, the ballistae worked like springs in giant mousetraps, so they could throw projectiles up to 457 meters. Since the weapon was light and accurate, it was equipped with spears and arrows, thus it was used as anti-personnel. Ballistae were also used to siege small buildings.
The Romans invented their own "siege engines" called "wild donkeys" due to the powerful blow delivered by the wild donkey. Although they also used animal tendons in their work, the "wild donkeys" were much more powerful mini-catapults that fired fireballs and whole buckets of large rocks. At the same time, they were less accurate than ballistae, but more powerful, which made them ideal weapons for blowing up walls and arson during sieges.
Concrete
With regard to innovation in the field of construction, then liquid stone, which is lighter and stronger than ordinary stone, is the greatest creation of the Romans. Today concrete is an integral part of our Everyday life so it's easy to forget how revolutionary his invention once was.
In ancient Rome, there was no word for "concrete". When designating such words as mortar, for the construction of walls, vaults, - foundations, breakwaters and similar structures in the Roman lexicon, the phrase “opus caementitium” was used, which was used to refer to Roman concrete.
Roman concrete was a mixture of rubble, lime, sand, pozzolana and volcanic ash. It could be poured into any shape to build a particular structure, it was also very strong. Although it was originally used by Roman architects to build strong foundations for altars, dating back to the 2nd century BC. the Romans began experimenting with concrete in order to construct self-contained forms. Their most famous concrete structure The Pantheon is still the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world, standing for over two thousand years.
As mentioned earlier, this was a significant improvement on the old Etruscan and Greek rectangular architectural styles, which required the location of columns and heavy walls around the entire perimeter of any building. Moreover, concrete is like construction material was cheap and fireproof. It was also flexible enough to survive the numerous earthquakes that hit the volcanic Italian peninsula every now and then.
Roads
It is impossible to talk about the achievements of Roman engineering without talking about roads that were so well built that many of them are still quite usable even today. Comparing our today's asphalt highways to ancient Roman roads is like comparing cheap watches to Swiss ones. They were strong, durable, and built to last for centuries.
The best Roman roads were built in stages. To begin with, the workers dug out a pit, about a meter deep in the area where it was planned to build a road. Further, wide and heavy stone blocks were set at the bottom of the trench, the remaining space was covered with a layer of mud and gravel.
Finally, the top layer was paved with slabs with bulges in the center so that water could drain off. In general, Roman roads were extremely resistant to the effects of time.
In typical Roman fashion, the empire's engineers insisted on the creation and use of straight roads, that is, on their laying through any obstacles, and not bypassing them. If there was a forest on the way, they cut it down, if there was a mountain, they built a tunnel through it, if there was a swamp, they dried it. The downside to this type of road construction was of course great amount human resources required for work, but work force(in the form of thousands of slaves) - this was what the ancient Romans possessed in abundance. By 200 BC. the Roman Empire had about 85295 kilometers of highways.
Sewerage
The huge sewers of the Roman Empire are one of the strangest creations of the Romans, as they were not originally built to serve as sewerage systems.
Cloaca Maxima (Latin Cloaca Maxima from Latin cluere - to clean) is a sewage system in Ancient Rome. It was originally built in order to drain some of the waters of the local marshes. The construction of the "cloaca" began in 600 BC. and over the next hundreds of years more and more waterways were added. Since the canals continued to be dug on a regular basis, it is difficult to say exactly when Maxim's cesspool ceased to be a drainage ditch and became a proper sewage system. Originally a very primitive system, the Cloaca Maxima has spread like a weed, stretching its roots deeper and deeper into the city as it grows.
Unfortunately, the Cloaca Maxima had an outlet directly to the Tiber, so the river quickly filled with human waste. However, the Romans did not have to use the water of the Tiber for drinking or washing. It is worth noting that they even had a special goddess who oversaw the work of this system - Cloakin.
The large cloaca is preserved and functions as storm sewer until now. Perhaps the most important Roman achievement sewerage system there was the fact that it was hidden from human eyes, did not allow the spread of any diseases, infections, odors and unpleasant sights. Any civilization can dig a ditch in order to satisfy its natural needs, however, serious engineering minds were required to build and maintain such a grand sewer system. The system was so complex in structure that Pliny the Elder declared it a more grandiose human structure than the structure of the pyramids.
Underfloor heating
Effectively controlling temperature levels is one of the most difficult engineering challenges humans deal with, but the Romans managed to solve it, or at least nearly solved it.
Using an idea that is still used today in underfloor heating technology, hypocaust was a set of hollow clay columns located under the floor, through which hot air and steam was pumped from a separate oven to other rooms.
Unlike other, less progressive heating methods, hypocaust accurately solved two problems at once that were always associated with heating systems in the ancient world - smoke and fire. Fire was the only source of heat, however, from time to time buildings caught fire, and the resulting smoke in the confined space often played a fatal role.
However, since the floor was raised in the hypocaust system, the hot air from the stove never came into contact with the room itself. Instead of being "in" the room, the heated air passed through the hollow tiles in the walls. On leaving the building, the clay tiles were absorbing warm air, as a result of which the room was warm.
Aqueduct
Along with the roads, aqueducts were another marvel of Roman engineering. The point of aqueducts is that they are very long, in fact, very long.
One of the difficulties of supplying water to a large city is that when the city grows to a certain size, you cannot access from any point of it. clean water... Although Rome is located on the Tiber, this river was heavily polluted by another Roman engineering achievement, sewers.
To solve this problem, Roman engineers built aqueducts - a network of underground pipes, elevated water lines and bridges designed to bring water to the city and its surroundings.
Like the roads, Roman aqueducts were very complex system... Although the first aqueduct, built around 300 BC, was only 11 kilometers long, by the end of the third century AD it was only 11 kilometers long. there were 11 aqueducts in Rome, with a total length of 250 miles.
In the city of Rome itself, water was supplied through 11 aqueducts, which were built over 500 years and had a total length of almost 350 kilometers. However, only 47 kilometers of them were land-based: most went underground.
The longest Roman aqueduct was built in the 2nd century AD to supply water to Carthage and was 141 kilometers long.
Pontoon bridges
The pontoon bridges designed by the Romans, built mainly during the war period to allow legions to quickly reach their destination and also quickly leave from there, were the brainchild of Julius Caesar. Pontoon bridge (floating) consisting of floating supports and floors.
In 55 BC. he built a pontoon bridge, which was about 400 meters long, to cross the river Rhine, which traditionally the German tribes considered to be their defense against the Roman invasion.
Caesar's bridge over the Rhine was an extremely clever construction. The construction of a bridge across the river, while not disrupting the flow of the river itself, is a very difficult undertaking, especially in a military situation where the construction site must be guarded day and night, and engineers must work very quickly and efficiently. The engineers installed the pillars at the bottom of the river at an angle against the current, thereby giving the bridge additional strength. Protection piles were also installed, which eliminated a potential threat that could float down the river. As a result, all the piles were put together and a wooden bridge was built on their tops. In total, construction took only ten days, and only sawn timber was used. Thus, in the local tribes, information quickly spread about the all-encompassing power of Rome: if Caesar wanted to cross the Rhine, he did it.
Perhaps the same apocryphal story accompanies Caligula's pontoon bridge, built across the sea between Baiae and Puzzuoli, about 4 km long. Supposedly, Caligula built this bridge after he heard from one soothsayer that he had about the same chance of becoming emperor as the opportunity to cross the Bay of Bayi on horseback. Caligula took this as a challenge, and built this very bridge.
Hydropower
Vitruvius, Godfather Roman Engineering, describes several technologies by which the Romans used water. By combining Greek technologies such as serrated flaps and water wheel, the Romans were able to develop their own advanced sawmills, mills and turbines.
The flip wheel, another Roman invention, was driven by flowing water rather than falling water, making it possible to create floating water wheels used to grind grain. This came in very handy during the siege of Rome in 537 CE. when General Belisarius solved the siege problem by cutting off food supplies by building several floating mills on the Tiber, thus providing the people with bread.
Strange, but archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans had all the necessary knowledge to create various kinds of water devices, but they used them extremely rarely, preferring instead cheap and widely available slave labor. However, their watermill was one of the largest industrial complexes in the ancient world before industrial revolution... The mill consisted of 16 water wheels that ground flour for the neighboring communities.
Segment arch
As with almost all of the above engineering feats, the Romans did not take part in the invention of the arch, however, they are sure that they improved it. Arches and arched bridges have been around for almost two thousand years when the Romans took over.
Roman engineers realized that arches did not have to be continuous, that is, they did not have to cover a given interval "in one go." Instead of crossing space in one jump, they can be split into several, more small parts... Thus, segmented arches appeared.
Have new form there were two arches clear advantages... First, the potential span of the span could be increased by geometric progression... Second, because less material was required to make them, segmented arched bridges were more pliable when water passed under them. Instead of forcing water to flow through one small hole, the water under the segmented bridges flowed freely, thereby reducing the risk of flooding and the rate of wear of the supports.
The Romans created a world empire that lasted for several centuries and left to descendants the imperial idea, the idea of a special mission of Rome, which passed through many subsequent civilizations. The Greeks laid the foundations of law The Romans created a system of law, which is still the core of the legal systems of many countries. The Greeks gave the world the ideal of a harmoniously developed personality, the Romans the ideal of a citizen and a system of civic values: virtus, ius, libertas (courage, justice, freedom). The Greeks created the majestic world of the gods. The Romans, without abandoning their gods (Vesta, Janus), tolerating the gods of Egypt and other countries, accepted Greek gods without worship, but with reverence for them, as a force capable of acting for the good of Rome and the Roman. But even here they went further than the Greeks, for one of the results of the development of ancient Roman civilization was the adoption and spread of Christianity, a new monotheistic religion of salvation, which in the following millennia had such a powerful influence on the entire course of civilizational development. The Greeks created a language that had a significant impact on the development of national languages and cultures of many peoples. The Romans created a language that was spoken by all educated Europe in the Middle Ages, and which formed the basis of a whole group of European languages.
The Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not create new schools of thought or cosmogonic theories. They were rational and practical people. But it was in ancient Rome that those sciences (astronomy, mathematics, agronomy, etc.) developed that were addressed to solving earthly practical problems, be it war, building temples and roads, cultivating fields or treating wounds and diseases. And the Roman Colosseum amazes us no less than the Greek Pantheon, and the Roman basilica became the architectural basis of many temples in subsequent centuries.
The Romans did not have their own Phidias and Polykleitos. They were more interested not in the image of a god or a mythical hero (although they gladly copied Greek statues), but special person... Isn't that why the Romans left us so many magnificent sculptural portraits, surprising with their psychological depth and reality? And the wall paintings of the Romans and their mosaics were not inferior to the Greek ones. An appeal to an earthly person, his thoughts, feelings and actions was also characteristic of Roman literature. Virgil writes the Aeneid in imitation of Homer's Iliad, but it is dedicated, in fact, not to the gods and heroes of antiquity, but gives the mythical history of Rome, raising the clan of the completely earthly emperor Augustus to Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, i.e. to the Olympian gods. And he also writes a poem about agriculture Georgiki. Horace and Ovid create beautiful poems, far from the lofty passions and deeds of the gods, but filled with subtle lyricism. And, probably, only a Roman could, like Ovid, write the graceful and mocking Science of Love and the Medicine for Love. And his Metamorphoses, together with the Golden Donkey of Apuleius, Daphnis and Chloe and a number of other prose works, became the prototype of a new literary genre of the novel, which received its brilliant development a century later.
Ancient Roman civilization was meted out to its historical period. But, like the Greeks, the Romans proved the possibility of the historical immortality of their civilization. Ancient Roman civilization is still alive today in the constitutions and laws of states, in the mentality of many peoples, in world culture, and even the images of ancient Roman warriors on the TV screen are often more attractive to us than modern supermen. And, perhaps, it is worth learning from the pragmatic Romans, for whom historical science was a worthy pursuit, and historical works attracted no less attention than Cicero's speeches. They understood: there is no man without his ancestors, just as there is no power without its history. We can add there is no modern civilization outside the history of all mankind, and in this history the ancient Roman civilization occupies a great place.
History is not always true. We are accustomed to exalt the ancient Greek culture, while we assign the Roman culture a secondary role. Roman poetry was not as exalted as Greek, the philosophy of the Hellenes set the tone for the ancient world. Learning from the Greeks was the norm for the nobility of Ancient Rome.
If you want an explanation of the geometry, then it would be best to turn to a Greek, but if you need to build a floating bridge, a sewer network or build a weapon that shoots flaming balls of gravel and resin at a distance of up to 274 meters, then you should take a Roman to help. The inventions of Rome to this day serve in modern world.
The brilliant architectural, organizational and technical feats of the Romans distinguish them, as well as the Greeks, among the ancient peoples. Although their knowledge of mathematics was rudimentary, they built models, experimented, and built as solidly as possible at the time. As a result, we can still see their work today, stretching from the Limyra Bridge in Turkey to the Hadrian's Wall in Scotland. Below are the most significant achievements of the ancient Romans.
1. Pontoon bridges
Roman engineering technology is often referred to as synonymous with military technology. The world famous roads were not built for the daily use of ordinary people, they were built so that the legions quickly get to their destination and leave as quickly as possible. The pontoon bridges designed by the Romans, built mainly during the wartime period, served the same purpose and were the brainchild of Julius Caesar. In 55 BC. he built a pontoon bridge, which was about 400 meters long, to cross the river Rhine, which traditionally the German tribes considered to be their defense against the Roman invasion.
Caesar's bridge over the Rhine was an extremely clever construction. The construction of a bridge across the river, while not disrupting the flow of the river itself, is a very difficult undertaking, especially in a military situation where the construction site must be guarded day and night, and engineers must work very quickly and efficiently. The engineers installed the pillars at the bottom of the river at an angle against the current, thereby giving the bridge additional strength. Protection piles were also installed, which eliminated a potential threat that could float down the river. As a result, all the piles were put together and a wooden bridge was built on their tops. In total, construction took only ten days, and only sawn timber was used. Thus, in the local tribes, information quickly spread about the all-encompassing power of Rome: if Caesar wanted to cross the Rhine, he did it.
Perhaps the same apocryphal story accompanies Caligula's pontoon bridge, built across the sea between Baiae and Puzzuoli, about 4 km long. Supposedly, Caligula built this bridge after he heard from one soothsayer that he had about the same chance of becoming emperor as the opportunity to cross the Bay of Bayi on horseback. Caligula took this as a challenge, and built this very bridge.
2. Segment arch
As with almost all of the above engineering feats, the Romans did not take part in the invention of the arch, however, they are sure that they improved it. Arches and arched bridges have been around for almost two thousand years when the Romans took over. Roman engineers realized that arches did not have to be continuous, that is, they did not have to cover a given interval “in one go.” Instead of crossing space in one jump, they can be broken into several, smaller parts. segmented arches.
The new arch shape had two distinct advantages. First, the potential span of the bridge could be increased exponentially. Second, because less material was required to make them, segmented arched bridges were more malleable when water passed under them. Rather than forcing water to flow through one small hole, the water under the segmented bridges flowed freely, thereby reducing the risk of flooding and the rate of wear on the supports.
3. Hydropower
Vitruvius, the godfather of Roman engineering, describes several technologies by which the Romans used water. By combining Greek technologies such as cogwheels and waterwheels, the Romans were able to develop their own advanced sawmills, mills and turbines.
The flip wheel, another Roman invention, was driven by flowing water rather than falling water, making it possible to create floating water wheels used to grind grain. This came in very handy during the siege of Rome in 537 CE. when General Belisarius solved the siege problem by cutting off food supplies by building several floating mills on the Tiber, thus providing the people with bread.
Strange, but archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans had all the necessary knowledge to create various kinds of water devices, but they used them extremely rarely, preferring instead cheap and widely available slave labor. However, their watermill was one of the largest industrial complexes in the ancient world before the industrial revolution. The mill consisted of 16 water wheels that ground flour for the neighboring communities.
4. Aqueduct
Along with the roads, aqueducts were another marvel of Roman engineering. The point of aqueducts is that they are very long, in fact, very long.
One of the difficulties in supplying water to a large city is that when the city grows to a certain size, you cannot access clean water from anywhere. Although Rome is located on the Tiber, this river was heavily polluted by another Roman engineering achievement, sewers.
To solve this problem, Roman engineers built aqueducts - a network of underground pipes, elevated water lines and bridges designed to bring water to the city and its surroundings.
Like the roads, Roman aqueducts were very complex systems. Although the first aqueduct, built around 300 BC, was only 11 kilometers long, by the end of the third century AD it was only 11 kilometers long. there were 11 aqueducts in Rome, with a total length of 250 miles.
5. Heated floors
Effectively controlling temperature levels is one of the most difficult engineering challenges humans deal with, but the Romans managed to solve it, or at least nearly solved it.
Using an idea that is still used in underfloor heating technology today, a hypocaust was a set of hollow clay columns under the floor through which hot air and steam was pumped from a separate oven to other rooms.
Unlike other, less progressive heating methods, hypocaust accurately solved two problems at once that were always associated with heating systems in the ancient world - smoke and fire. Fire was the only source of heat, however, from time to time buildings caught fire, and the resulting smoke in the confined space often played a fatal role.
However, since the floor was raised in the hypocaust system, the hot air from the stove never came into contact with the room itself.
Instead of being “in” the room, the heated air passed through the hollow tiles in the walls, and when leaving the building, the clay tiles absorbed the warm air, causing the room to be warm.
6. Sewerage
The huge sewers of the Roman Empire are one of the strangest creations of the Romans, as they were not originally built to serve as sewerage systems. The Cloaca Maxima (or the Biggest Sewerage, literally translated) was originally built in order to drain some of the waters of the local swamps. Construction of the "cloaca" began in 600 BC and more and more waterways were added over the next hundreds of years.As canals continued to be dug regularly, it is difficult to say exactly when the cloaca of Maximus ceased to be a drainage ditch and became a proper sewerage. Originally a very primitive system, the Cloaca Maxima has spread like a weed, stretching its roots deeper and deeper into the city as it grows.
Unfortunately, the Cloaca Maxima had an outlet directly to the Tiber, so the river quickly filled with human waste. However, the Romans did not have to use the water of the Tiber for drinking or washing. It is worth noting that they even had a special goddess who oversaw the work of this system - Cloakin.
Perhaps the most important achievement of the Roman sewer system was the fact that it was hidden from human eyes, preventing the spread of any diseases, infections, odors and unpleasant sights. Any civilization can dig a ditch in order to satisfy its natural needs, however, serious engineering minds were required to build and maintain such a grand sewer system. The system was so complex in structure that Pliny the Elder declared it a more grandiose human structure than the structure of the pyramids.
It is impossible to talk about the achievements of Roman engineering without talking about roads that were so well built that many of them are still quite usable even today. Comparing our today's asphalt highways to ancient Roman roads is like comparing cheap watches to Swiss ones. They were strong, durable, and built to last for centuries.
The best Roman roads were built in stages. To begin with, the workers dug out a pit, about a meter deep in the area where it was planned to build a road. Further, wide and heavy stone blocks were set at the bottom of the trench, the remaining space was covered with a layer of mud and gravel. Finally, the top layer was paved with slabs with bulges in the center so that water could drain off. In general, Roman roads were extremely resistant to the effects of time.
In typical Roman fashion, the empire's engineers insisted on the creation and use of straight roads, that is, on their laying through any obstacles, and not bypassing them. If there was a forest on the way, they cut it down, if there was a mountain, they built a tunnel through it, if there was a swamp, they dried it. The disadvantage of this type of road construction was, of course, the enormous amount of manpower needed to work, but labor (in the form of thousands of slaves) was something that the ancient Romans had in abundance. By 200 BC. the Roman Empire had about 85295 kilometers of highways.
When it comes to building innovation, liquid stone, which is lighter and stronger than ordinary stone, is the greatest creation of the Romans. Today, concrete is an integral part of our daily life, so it's easy to forget how revolutionary its invention was once.
Roman concrete was a mixture of rubble, lime, sand, pozzolana, and volcanic ash. It could be poured into any shape to build a particular structure, it was also very strong. Although it was originally used by Roman architects to build strong foundations for altars, dating back to the 2nd century BC. the Romans began experimenting with concrete in order to construct self-contained forms. Their most famous concrete structure, the Pantheon, is still the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world, standing for over two thousand years.
As mentioned earlier, this was a significant improvement in the old Etruscan and Greek rectangular architectural styles, which required columns and heavy walls to be placed around the entire perimeter of any building. Moreover, concrete as a building material was cheap and fireproof. It was also flexible enough to survive the numerous earthquakes that hit the volcanic Italian peninsula every now and then.
Like many technologies, Roman siege weapons were originally developed by the Greeks and later refined by the Romans. The ballista, essentially a giant crossbow that could fire large stones during a siege, was constructed from Greek weapons that fell into the hands of the Romans.
Using animal tendons, the ballistae worked like springs in giant mousetraps, so they could throw projectiles up to 457 meters. Since the weapon was light and accurate, it was equipped with spears and arrows, thus it was used as anti-personnel. Ballistae were also used to siege small buildings.
The Romans invented their own "siege engines" called wild donkeys because of the powerful blow from the wild donkey. Although they also used animal tendons in their work, the wild donkeys were much more powerful mini-catapults that fired buckets of large stones. At the same time, they were less accurate than ballistae, but more powerful, which made them ideal weapons for blowing up walls and arson during sieges.
We take the inner space of the modern world for granted, however, we should not do this. Our huge vaulted arches, large atriums, glass walls, ceilings and more were all unthinkable in the ancient world.
Before the Romans improved the domes of buildings, even the best architects of the time had to struggle with the creation of stone roofs for a long time. Even the greatest architectural achievements of the pre-Roman era, such as the Parthenon and the pyramids, were more impressive on the outside than on the inside. They were dark inside and represented a confined space.
Roman domes, by contrast, were spacious, open and gave a real sense of interior space. For the first time in history. Based on the understanding that the principles of the arch could be rotated in three dimensions to create a shape that has the same strong supporting force, but "acts" over a larger area, dome technology became available mainly thanks to concrete.