Although the Roman Empire existed more than 2000 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 deteriorates within fifty years or less, Roman concrete is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. Legend has it that the Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius created this super-strong solution from volcanic ash, lime and sea water.
He mixed these three ingredients with volcanic stone and immersed the mixture in sea water. After about ten years, a rare mineral called aluminum tobermorite formed in the 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 everywhere. Over the course of 700 years, they laid 88,000 kilometers of roads throughout Europe. These roads were well designed, built to last, and allowed for rapid travel throughout the empire. 2,000 years have passed, but many Roman roads still exist today.
3. Food culture
The Romans loved to eat well, and dining 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 their meals, which differed from the Greeks who drank wine after meals. Similar habits continue to this day.
4. Stitched books
Before the advent of bound books, civilization primarily used stone tablets or scrolls. However, by the first century AD. e. The Romans created the first "codices", which consisted of sheets of papyrus or parchment bound together. However, actual books only appeared in 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 system of lead piping. 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 in transmitting messages and tax information from one place to another. The emperor based the service on the Persian system, but modified it so that only one person carried packages or information from one place to another, rather than transmitting information to many people. This was a slower process, but provided greater security.
7. Newspapers
Newspapers have come a long way. Initially, the Romans began publishing records of Senate meetings called Acta Senatus, which were available only to senators. Later, after 27 BC. e., “Acta diurna” appeared - 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 a “hypocaust” and was installed mainly in large public baths. A fire was constantly burning under the false floor, which heated the room and the water going to the bathhouse.
9. Graffiti
It turns out that graffiti is not a modern art form, and it originated in Ancient Rome. Scientists have found graffiti during excavations in Pompeii that were “preserved” 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 collapsed from all these writings."
10. Sewerage
The first Roman sewer system was built by the Etruscans throughout the Italian peninsula in 500 BC. After this, the Romans expanded the sewers. It is worth noting that it was mainly used not for waste water, but to reduce flooding.
11. Caesarean section
Caesar decreed that all women who died during childbirth must be opened to save the child. It is worth noting that this procedure was never intended to save the mother's life, but today the procedure has changed radically and has become more common.
12. Medical instruments
Thanks to the surviving ruins of Pompeii, scientists have 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 their many roads and highways they used large "landmarks" to give travelers information about the direction and distance from Rome and other cities.
14. Urban planning
The Romans pioneered the urban planning that is so common today, creating some of the first street grid designs. Many of these cities became early models for later designs, as by designing cities the Romans discovered that they could control the flow of traffic as well as increase the efficiency of trade and production.
15. Fast food
McDonald's executives probably like to think that they invented fast food, but that couldn't be further from the truth. For example, in ancient city Pompeii apparently no one liked to cook, as several kitchens were found in people's homes. Instead, townspeople went to "popins" or ancient restaurants. Snacking on the go was quite common.
Do you think that 2 thousand years ago people were so primitive that they lived in the 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 still use with pleasure to this day.
11 incredible inventions of the ancient Romans on which modern civilization rests!
1. Sewage system
The idea to build a sewer pipe through which city sewage would flow away appeared in Babylon. However Ancient Rome is the first city to implement this idea so effectively that we still use it now. The Great Cloaca was a canal lined with stone and buried at a depth of 4 meters under the city. Moreover, the construction itself was executed so masterfully by the ancient Romans that it still serves as a storm drain.
2. Road rules and signs
Since the 5th century BC. e. 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 mile posts - prototypes of modern road signs, which indicated the distance traveled, the name of the emperor and the nearest resting place for travelers. Isn't that impressive?
3. Fast food establishments
While servants prepared food for wealthy gentlemen, the poor could not afford such luxury, because many did not even have a proper kitchen. This is why thermopolias, the prototypes of modern eateries, were so common during the time of the ancient Romans. They were small establishments with open counter, on which vats of food were boiling. The food was prepared cheaply and quickly - lentils, peas, beans - and visitors were often on the go, so no chairs were offered. Doesn't remind you of anything?
4. Heating
You say: “It can’t be!” But it can. It was the Romans who came up with a kind of heated floor, which was initially used in baths, but then the design migrated to the homes of wealthy slave owners living in cold provinces. It was called “hypocaust” and was wood stoves under the floor, the fire of which heated the vats of water above, forming hot masses of air that penetrated the rooms and provided heat.
5. Caesarean section
This procedure itself became a forced measure to save the baby if the woman died during childbirth, so there was no need to talk about any humanity towards mothers. But later this medical practice of the ancient Romans improved, becoming one of the main achievements of medicine. In addition to Caesarean, the following were already invented important tools for doctors as a vaginal speculum and catheter.
6. Right of veto
Not only did Roman law become the basis for the legal systems of many European states, it was the ancient Roman rulers who invented the veto, which made it possible to block short-sighted decisions of consuls or reject discreditable laws passed by the Senate. Today, every head of state that is a member of the UN and supports global security has it.
7. News papers
The Internet may not have existed before, but the first prototypes of newspapers were very popular, representing scrolls of parchment filled by hand with texts on topical topics. This program was called “The Affairs of the Roman People”; it was often hung in squares or delivered directly into the hands of noble citizens. What did they write about? About new laws, unusual incidents on the city streets, rumors, natural phenomena, finally, simply about the lives of outstanding ancient Romans. Over time, Julius Caesar made this notification format mandatory by founding the world's first news newspaper.
If you want geometry explained to you, it would be best to turn to a Greek, but if you need to build a floating bridge, sewer network or build a weapon that shoots flaming balls of gravel and tar up to 274 meters away, then you should take 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 internal space of the modern world for granted, but we shouldn’t do this. Our huge vaulted arches, great atriums, glass walls, ceilings and much more - all this was unthinkable in ancient world.
Before the Romans perfected the domes of buildings, even the best architects of those times had to struggle for a long time with the creation of stone roofs. Even the greatest architectural achievements created before the advent of Roman architecture, such as the Parthenon and the pyramids, looked more impressive on the outside than on the inside. They were dark inside and presented a limited space.
Roman domes, on the other hand, were spacious, open and created a real sense of internal 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 had the same strong supporting force, but "acted" on larger area, dome technology became available mainly thanks to concrete, another achievement of the ancient Romans, which we will talk about later.
The oldest dome in existence is believed to be located in the Roman Pantheon, built around 128 AD.
Weapon
Like many technologies, Roman siege weapons were originally developed by the Greeks and later improved by the Romans. Ballist, essentially a giant crossbow that could shoot large stones during a siege, was constructed from Greek weapons that had fallen into Roman hands.
Using animal tendons, the ballistas worked like springs in giant mousetraps, so they could throw projectiles up to 457 meters away. Since the weapon was light and accurate, it was equipped with spears and arrows, thereby being used as an anti-personnel weapon. Ballistas were also used to siege small buildings.
The Romans invented their own "siege engines" called "wild donkeys" due to a powerful blow inflicted by a wild donkey. Although they also used animal tendons in their work, "wild donkeys" were much more powerful mini-catapults that shot fireballs and entire buckets of large stones. At the same time, they were less accurate than ballistas, but more powerful, which made them ideal weapons for blowing up walls and setting fires during sieges.
Concrete
Regarding innovations in the field of construction, 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 denoting words such as mortar for the construction of walls, vaults, foundations, piers and similar structures, the Roman lexicon used the phrase “opus caementitium”, which became the name for Roman concrete.
Roman concrete was a mixture of crushed stone, lime, sand, pozzolan and volcanic ash. It could be poured into any form to build a particular structure, and it was also very strong. Although it was originally used by Roman architects to build powerful bases for altars, starting in the 2nd century BC. The Romans began experimenting with concrete in order to construct free-standing 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 placement of columns and heavy walls along the entire perimeter of any building. Moreover, concrete, like building material was cheap and fireproof. It was also quite flexible, being able to survive the numerous earthquakes that plagued the volcanic Italian peninsula every now and then.
Roads
It is impossible to talk about the achievements of Roman engineering without talking about the roads, which were so well built that many of them are still quite usable even today. Comparing our today's asphalt highways with ancient Roman roads is like comparing cheap watches with Swiss ones. They were strong, durable and built to last for centuries.
The best Roman roads were built in several stages. To begin with, workers dug a pit, about a meter deep, in the area where it was planned to build the road. Next, wide and heavy stone blocks were installed at the bottom of the trench, the remaining space was covered with a layer of dirt and gravel.
Finally, the top layer was paved with slabs with raised areas in the center to allow water to drain away. In general, Roman roads were extremely resistant to time.
In typical Roman fashion, the empire's engineers insisted on creating and using straight roads, that is, driving them through rather than around any obstacles. If there was a forest along 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 out. The disadvantage of this type of road construction, of course, was huge amount human resources needed for the job, but labor force(in the form of thousands of slaves) - this was something that the ancient Romans owned in abundance. By 200 B.C. The Roman Empire had about 85,295 kilometers of highways.
Sewerage
The huge sewers of the Roman Empire are one of the strangest creations of the Romans, since they were not originally built to serve as sewer systems.
Cloaca Maxima (lat. Cloaca Maxima from lat. cluere - to clean) - a sewage system in Ancient Rome. It was originally built to drain some of the water from the local swamps. Construction of the "sewer" began in 600 BC. and over the next hundreds of years, more and more waterways were added. Since canals continued to be dug regularly, it is difficult to say exactly when Maxim's cesspool ceased to be a drainage ditch and became a proper sewer. Originally a very primitive system, Cloaca Maxima spread like a weed, spreading its roots deeper and deeper into the city as it grew.
Unfortunately, the Cloaca Maxima had access directly to the Tiber, so the river quickly filled with human waste. However, the Romans did not have to use the Tiber's water for drinking or washing. It is worth noting that they even had a special goddess who monitored the work of this system - Cloakina.
The large cloaca is preserved and functions as storm drain up to now. Perhaps the most important achievement of the Roman sewer system there 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 to relieve its natural needs, but constructing and maintaining such a massive sewer system required serious engineering minds. The system was so complex in design that Pliny the Elder declared it a more grandiose human structure than the structure of the pyramids.
Heated floors
Effectively controlling temperature levels is one of the most difficult engineering problems humans deal with, but the Romans managed to solve it, or at least almost solve 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 furnace to other rooms.
Unlike other, less progressive heating methods, the hypocaust neatly 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 a confined space often played a fatal role.
However, because the hypocaust system had a raised floor, the hot air from the furnace never came into contact with the room itself. Instead of "being" in the room, the heated air passed through hollow tiles in the walls. At the exit from the building, clay tiles absorbed warm air, causing the room to become warm.
Aqueduct
Along with roads, aqueducts were another marvel of Roman engineering. The point of aqueducts is that they are very long, very long in fact.
One of the difficulties of supplying water to a large city is that when the city grows to a certain size, you cannot access it from any point in the city. clean water. And although Rome is located on the Tiber, this river was very polluted by another Roman engineering achievement, sewage.
To solve this problem, Roman engineers built aqueducts—a network of underground pipes, overhead water lines, and bridges designed to carry water to the city and surrounding areas.
Just like 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. There were 11 aqueducts in Rome, with a total length of 250 miles.
The city of Rome itself was supplied with water 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 above ground: most were underground.
The longest Roman aqueduct was built in the 2nd century AD to supply water to Carthage, its length was 141 kilometers.
Pontoon bridges
Developed by the Romans, pontoon bridges, built primarily during wartime to allow legions to quickly get to their destinations and leave quickly, were the brainchild of Julius Caesar. Pontoon bridge (floating) consisting of floating supports and floors.
In 55 BC. he built a pontoon bridge, some 400 meters long, to cross the Rhine River, which traditionally the German tribes considered as their defense against Roman invasion.
Caesar's Bridge over the Rhine was an extremely clever construction. Construction of a bridge across a river, without disturbing the flow of the river itself, is a very difficult undertaking, especially in a military situation, where the construction site must be guarded 24 hours a day, and engineers must work very quickly and efficiently. Engineers installed supports on the river bottom at an angle against the current, thereby giving the bridge additional strength. Protective piles were also installed to eliminate any potential threats that might have floated down the river. Eventually, all the piles were brought together and a wooden bridge was built on top of them. In total, construction took only ten days, using only lumber. Thus, information about the comprehensive power of Rome quickly spread among the local tribes: if Caesar wanted to cross the Rhine, he would do it.
Perhaps the same apocryphal story accompanies Caligula's pontoon bridge, built across the sea between Baiae and Puzzuoli, approximately 4 km long. Supposedly, Caligula built this bridge after hearing from a soothsayer that he had about the same chance of becoming emperor as crossing the Bay of Bahia 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 crenellated doors and water wheel, the Romans were able to develop their advanced sawmills, mills and turbines.
The inverted wheel, another Roman invention, was rotated by flowing rather than falling water, making possible the creation of floating water wheels used for grinding grain. This came in very handy during the siege of Rome in 537 AD. when General Belisarius solved the problem of the siege by cutting off food supplies by building several floating mills on the Tiber, thereby providing the people with bread.
Strangely, archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans had all the necessary knowledge to create various types of water devices, but they used them extremely rarely, preferring instead cheap and widely available slave labor. However, their water mill 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 neighboring communities.
Segmental arch
As with almost all of the engineering feats mentioned above, the Romans were not involved in the invention of the arch, but they are confident that they perfected it. Arches and arched bridges had been around for almost two thousand years when the Romans took them up.
Roman engineers realized that arches should not be continuous, that is, they should not cover a given span "in one go." Instead of crossing space in one jump, they can be divided into several, more small parts. This is how segmental arches appeared.
U new form there were two arches clear advantages. Firstly, the potential space of the span bridge could be increased by geometric progression. Second, because they required less material to construct, segmental arch bridges were more pliable when water passed underneath them. Instead of forcing water to flow through one small hole, water under the segmented bridges flowed freely, thereby reducing the risk of flooding and the rate of wear on the supports
The Romans created a world empire that lasted for several centuries and left to their descendants the imperial idea, the idea of the special mission of Rome, which passed through many subsequent civilizations. The Greeks laid the foundations of law; the Romans created a system of law that 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 a majestic world of gods. The Romans, without abandoning their gods (Vesta, Janus), tolerant of the gods of Egypt and other countries, accepted greek gods without worship, but with respect for them, as a force capable of acting for the good of Rome and the Romans. 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 influence on the development of the national languages and cultures of many peoples. The Romans created a language that was spoken by all of 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 philosophical schools 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 aimed at solving earthly practical problems, be it war, building temples and roads, cultivating fields or treating wounds and illnesses. 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 specific person. Is this 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 earthly man, 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, tracing the family of the completely earthly emperor Augustus to Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, i.e. to the Olympian gods. And he writes Georgiki a poem about agriculture. Horace and Ovid create beautiful poems, far from the sublime passions and deeds of the gods, but filled with subtle lyricism. And, probably, only a Roman could, like Ovid, write the elegant and mocking Science of Love and the Cure for Love. And his Metamorphoses, together with Apuleius’s Golden Ass, 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 centuries later.
Ancient Roman civilization was measured by its historical period. But, like the Greeks, the Romans proved the possibility of historical immortality of their civilization. The ancient Roman civilization is 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 it’s probably worth learning from the pragmatic Romans, for whom historical science was a worthy occupation, and historical works attracted no less attention than the speeches of Cicero. 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 fair. We are accustomed to exalting ancient Greek culture, while we assign a secondary role to Roman culture. Roman poetry was not as exalted as Greek; Hellenic philosophy set the tone for the ancient world. Learning from the Greeks was the norm for the nobility of Ancient Rome.
If you want geometry explained to you, 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 tar up to 274 meters, then you should take a Roman to help. The inventions of Rome still 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. Even though their knowledge of mathematics was rudimentary, they built models, experimented, and built as solidly as possible at that time. As a result, their work can be seen to this day: it extends from the Limyra Bridge in Turkey to Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland. Below are the most significant achievements of the ancient Romans.
1. Pontoon bridges
Roman engineering technology is often said to be synonymous with military technology. The world-famous roads were not built for everyday use by ordinary residents, they were built so that legions could quickly get to their destination and just as quickly leave from there. Developed by the Romans, pontoon bridges, built mostly during wartime, served the same purpose and were the brainchild of Julius Caesar. In 55 BC. he built a pontoon bridge, some 400 meters long, to cross the Rhine River, which traditionally the German tribes considered as their defense against Roman invasion.
Caesar's Bridge over the Rhine was an extremely clever construction. Construction of a bridge across a river, without disturbing the flow of the river itself, is a very difficult undertaking, especially in a military situation, where the construction site must be guarded 24 hours a day, and engineers must work very quickly and efficiently. Engineers installed supports on the river bottom at an angle against the current, thereby giving the bridge additional strength. Protective piles were also installed to eliminate any potential threats that might have floated down the river. Eventually, all the piles were brought together and a wooden bridge was built on top of them. In total, construction took only ten days, using only lumber. Thus, information about the comprehensive power of Rome quickly spread among the local tribes: if Caesar wanted to cross the Rhine, he would do it.
Perhaps the same apocryphal story accompanies Caligula's pontoon bridge, built across the sea between Baiae and Puzzuoli, approximately 4 km long. Supposedly, Caligula built this bridge after hearing from a soothsayer that he had about the same chance of becoming emperor as crossing the Bay of Bahia on horseback. Caligula took this as a challenge and built this very bridge.
2. Segmental arch
As with almost all of the engineering feats mentioned above, the Romans were not involved in the invention of the arch, but they are confident that they perfected it. Arches and arched bridges had been around for almost two thousand years when the Romans took them up. Roman engineers realized that arches did not have to be continuous, that is, they did not have to cover a given distance in one go. Instead of crossing space in one leap, they could be broken into several smaller parts. This is how they came into being. segmental arches.
The new arch shape had two clear advantages. First, the potential span space of the bridge could be increased exponentially. Second, because they required less material to construct, segmental arch bridges were more pliable when water passed underneath 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 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 the cogwheel and the water wheel, the Romans were able to develop their advanced sawmills, mills and turbines.
The inverted wheel, another Roman invention, was rotated by flowing rather than falling water, making possible the creation of floating water wheels used for grinding grain. This came in very handy during the siege of Rome in 537 AD. when General Belisarius solved the problem of the siege by cutting off food supplies by building several floating mills on the Tiber, thereby providing the people with bread.
Strangely, archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans had all the necessary knowledge to create various types of water devices, but they used them extremely rarely, preferring instead cheap and widely available slave labor. However, their water mill 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 neighboring communities.
4. Aqueduct
Along with roads, aqueducts were another marvel of Roman engineering. The point of aqueducts is that they are very long, very long in fact.
One of the difficulties of supplying water to a large city is that once the city gets to a certain size, you cannot have access to clean water from anywhere in the city. And although Rome is located on the Tiber, this river was very polluted by another Roman engineering achievement, sewage.
To solve this problem, Roman engineers built aqueducts—a network of underground pipes, overhead water lines, and bridges designed to carry water to the city and surrounding areas.
Just like roads, Roman aqueducts were a very complex system. Although the first aqueduct, built around 300 BC, was only 11 kilometers long, by the end of the third century AD. 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 problems humans deal with, but the Romans managed to solve it, or at least almost solve it.
Using an idea that is still used today in underfloor heating technology, the hypocaust was a set of hollow clay columns located under the floor, through which hot air and steam were pumped from a separate furnace to other rooms.
Unlike other, less progressive heating methods, the hypocaust neatly 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 a confined space often played a fatal role.
However, because the hypocaust system had a raised floor, the hot air from the furnace never came into contact with the room itself.
Instead of "staying" in the room, the heated air passed through the hollow tiles in the walls. As it exited 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, since they were not originally built to serve as sewer systems. Cloaca Maxima (or the Largest Sewer, if translated literally) was originally built in order to drain some of the waters of the local swamps. The construction of the "sewer" began in 600 BC and over the next hundreds of years more and more waterways were added. As canals continued to be dug regularly, it is difficult to say exactly when the Maximus Sewer ceased to be a drainage ditch and became a proper sewer. Originally a very primitive system, Cloaca Maxima spread like a weed, spreading its roots deeper and deeper into the city as it grew.
Unfortunately, the Cloaca Maxima had access directly to the Tiber, so the river quickly filled with human waste. However, the Romans did not have to use the Tiber's water for drinking or washing. It is worth noting that they even had a special goddess who monitored the work of this system - Cloakina.
Perhaps the most important achievement of the Roman sewer system was the fact that it was hidden from human eyes, preventing the spread of diseases, infections, odors and unpleasant sights. Any civilization can dig a ditch to relieve its natural needs, but constructing and maintaining such a massive sewer system required serious engineering minds. The system was so complex in design 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 the roads, which were so well built that many of them are still quite usable even today. Comparing our today's asphalt highways with ancient Roman roads is like comparing cheap watches with Swiss ones. They were strong, durable and built to last for centuries.
The best Roman roads were built in several stages. To begin with, workers dug a pit, about a meter deep, in the area where it was planned to build the road. Next, wide and heavy stone blocks were installed at the bottom of the trench, the remaining space was covered with a layer of dirt and gravel. Finally, the top layer was paved with slabs with raised areas in the center to allow water to drain away. In general, Roman roads were extremely resistant to time.
In typical Roman fashion, the empire's engineers insisted on creating and using straight roads, that is, driving them through rather than around any obstacles. If there was a forest along 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 out. The disadvantage of this type of road construction, of course, was the enormous amount of manpower required for the work, but labor (in the form of thousands of slaves) was something that the ancient Romans had in abundance. By 200 B.C. The Roman Empire had about 85,295 kilometers of highways.
When it comes to construction innovations, liquid stone, which is lighter and stronger than regular stone, is the greatest creation of the Romans. Today, concrete is an integral part of our daily lives, so it is easy to forget how revolutionary its invention once was.
Roman concrete was a mixture of crushed stone, lime, sand, pozzolan and volcanic ash. It could be poured into any form to build a particular structure, and it was also very strong. Although it was originally used by Roman architects to build powerful bases for altars, starting in the 2nd century BC. The Romans began experimenting with concrete in order to construct free-standing 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 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 quite flexible, being able to survive the numerous earthquakes that plagued the volcanic Italian peninsula every now and then.
Like many technologies, Roman siege weapons were originally developed by the Greeks and later improved by the Romans. The ballista, essentially a giant crossbow that could fire large stones during a siege, was constructed from Greek weapons that had fallen into Roman hands.
Using animal tendons, the ballistas worked like springs in giant mousetraps, so they could throw projectiles up to 457 meters away. Since the weapon was light and accurate, it was equipped with spears and arrows, thereby being used as an anti-personnel weapon. Ballistas were also used to siege small buildings.
The Romans invented their own “siege engines,” called siege engines, called siege engines because of the powerful blow the wild ass delivered. Although they also used animal sinew in their work, siege engines were much more powerful mini-catapults that shot fireballs and whole buckets of large stones. At the same time, they were less accurate than ballistas, but more powerful, which made them ideal weapons for blowing up walls and setting fires during sieges.
We take the internal space of the modern world for granted, but we shouldn’t do this. Our huge vaulted arches, large atriums, glass walls, ceilings and much more were all unthinkable in the ancient world.
Before the Romans perfected the domes of buildings, even the best architects of those times had to struggle for a long time with the creation of stone roofs. Even the greatest architectural achievements created before the advent of Roman architecture, such as the Parthenon and the pyramids, looked more impressive on the outside than on the inside. They were dark inside and presented a limited space.
Roman domes, on the other hand, were spacious, open, and created 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 had the same strong supporting force but "acted" over a larger area, dome technology became available primarily through concrete.