The ignorance of the ancient Romans

[jasc15]

"Romans today still use what is left of the aqueducts that their forefathers built.  Though the Roman slaves of old did a very good job, we can't say the same of the Roman engineers in charge.  Their knowledge...


This is one of those "holy crap, I never thought of that" realizations.

So before we talk ourselves silly about the wisdom of the ancients, remember stuff like this.

[rumborak]

That sounds like an urban myth tbh. I would think the difficulty of laying underground pipes through rocky terrain had something to do with it too.

rumborak

[ScioPath]

That passage read like a trainwreck...


Anyways, aqueducts were a solution. They may have been impractical, but they worked, and that's genius enough for me.

And besides that, we can't assume that what's elementary now was elementary then.

[yorost]

Obviously it wasn't elementary then.  It's illustrating how that knowledge is useful, not calling them bad students of physics.  Most of the difficulty in academics is discovery, not learning how to demonstrate or prove something already known.

[El Barto]

When you have as many slaves as they did, what's an extra 50 clicks?  And considering that some of them are still functioning 2000 years later, I wouldn't criticize them too much. 

[GuineaPig]

Hold on, I was under the impression that the majority of the Roman aqueducts were built underground.  

[Sigz]

The combined length of the aqueducts in the city of Rome is estimated between 490 and a little over 500 miles. However, only 29 miles (47 km) were above ground, as most Roman aqueducts ran beneath the surface of the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct

[LeeHarveyKennedy]

The combined length of the aqueducts in the city of Rome is estimated between 490 and a little over 500 miles. However, only 29 miles (47 km) were above ground, as most Roman aqueducts ran beneath the surface of the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct

Aw snap...