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Comment by jdmoreira | Hacker News Reader

I'm Portuguese so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Did the Romans really have the tech to cross the Atlantic? I mean... it's though job!

We know Roman history very very well and no where in their records is this mentioned? Sounds very weird to me.

That's the exact opposite of what my history professor said. He said we only have a tiny fraction of roman documents and most of roman history has been "lost to history". Almost all the writings of romans has been lost and "roman history" is the surviving writings of caesar and a handful of other writers. Granted those writings are great works of art, but still, it's an extremely biased and unreliable account of history.

Now that doesn't mean that the romans crossed the atlantic. It just means we know so little of the past that it is embarrassing.

A good example is we don't even know the details of how Roman concrete was made (apparently much stronger than modern concrete), and it was used to build everything.

We know how to make Roman concrete. Way may not know the exact historical techniques but we know chemical and material science behind it and can produce it using different methods.

My understanding is that modern concrete is stronger (rebar), ancient concrete was more durable (Pantheon, 126 AD).

It is the rebar that makes it stronger but unfortunately it is also what gives modern concrete such a tiny lifespan. If you want something to last millennia it is better to build it the Roman way, without rebar.

I respectfully disagree - the design goals are vastly different between ancient Rome and today. There is no reason one couldn't build something that would last milennia, it is simply not economically feasible (and you would have a hard time securing investors).

> it is simply not economically feasible (and you would have a hard time securing investors).

So are Romans really behind us, or are we behind them? We seem bound by the forces of compound interest to never make something durable. But somehow they were capable of it.

Not trying to just jump in an correct you, but there has actually been progress recently made in this area and we're starting to get a scientific understanding of what the Romans learned to do presumably through trial and error. Here's an article I found on the subject, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/04/why-roman-co...

According to Aristotle the Carthagineans had a secret island they treated as a military secret. It fits a description of the Americas:

> "In the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules they say that an island was discovered by the Carthaginians, desolate, having wood of every kind, and navigable rivers, and admirable for its fruits besides, but distant several days' voyage from them. But when the Carthaginians often came to this island because of its fertility, and some even dwelt there, the magistrates of the Carthaginians gave notice that they would punish with death those who should sail to it, and destroyed all the inhabitants. lest they should spread the report about it, or a large number might gather together to the island in their time, get possession of the authority, and destroy the prosperity of the Carthaginians."

http://www.archive.org/stream/demirabilibusaus00arisrich#pag...

It fits a description of the Americas in that it lies in the Atlantic (beyond "the Pillars of Hercules", the Gibraltar Strait). I think anything beyond that is a massive stretch.

It says navigable rivers. Most islands don't have that.

Are there any other places that fit the description ?

Azores, Canary Islands, Madeira

Those have navigable rivers?

British Isles ?

Perhaps. Weren't they already known at that time though?

>"Britain was known to the Classical world; the Greeks, Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded for Cornish tin in the 4th century BC." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Britain

That desn't fit with the idea that you don't go past the Pillars of Hercules though.

Whose idea is that?

I think the Americas are more than several days travel from Carthage.

I don't know the original term used, but in greek the same word translates to "several" and "some": https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=el&t...

So could have been "some days' voyage".

Correct. Sailing the Atlantic back then took over a month.

12 days was only achieved in 1905, and the official route is far shorter than a sail from Carthage.

Its not that hard to cross over to brasil from iberia/morocco.

I wouldn't be too surprised if a handful of roman ships were blown vastly off course and wound up in south america.

Coming back is a different story though, you'll be fighting winds most of the way unless you go the long way around, and i doubt whatever roman ships made the crossing would be able to come back.

I'm guessing if they wrecked off of Brazil, they never made it back to Roman territory.

There are stories of Japanese and Chinese fishing boats washing up in what is now Washington and California, so I definitely think it's possible.

I'm not sure how much tech you need. More like planning and luck.

Think about the vast ocean distances the Polynesian people covered, and it's my understanding that their level of technology was less than the Romans. Though I'm not really knowledgeable in that area.

If you have navigation technology and knowledge it switches from being luck to routine. Accurate clocks and maps of ocean currents make vast ocean distances much smaller.

So, your point is that the Romans could've easily crossed to the Americas because they had maps of the Atlantic's currents?

Polynesians never crossed large open oceans. They island hopped.

The longest distance between islands is longer than the shortest distance between Africa and South America. So it’s at least possible with relatively primitive technology.

Polynesians had and still have extremely sophisticated stellar and solar navigation techniques (as well as deep observational knowledge of oceans and marine life) that far exceeded recorded European techniques until the advent of tools like astrolabes and sextants in the 1700s, as far as the extent of travel distances. There has been growing evidence of Polynesian contact with South America, including the presence of sweet potatoes (South American origin) which may have just dispersed somehow westward over the Pacific as seeds. But chicken bones (a South Asian origin) have been radio carbon dated to the 1300s in Chile. And a Polynesian settlement in the Auckland islands in the sub-antarctic dating to the 13th century has been found.

The distance between New Zealand and Tahiti (the approximate origin of the founding population of NZ) is around 2600 miles, longer than the minimum distance between Africa and South America.

You’re not wrong about island hopping but the last hops in the Polynesian expansion - Hawai’i, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand were incredibly remote.

The Polynesians probably even made it to South America; they had sweet potatoes, native to the Americas, before European contact, and their word for it is very similar to the Quechua.

They were damn good navigators though. The level of technology of their boats were in some ways vastly superior to the Europeans who traveled to the South Pacific.

Remember that "technology" isn't a generic "I'm better at it than you are" kind of thing. Different societies have different levels of technology depending on what their needs are. Polynesians needed to cross enormous distances, so they were well developed in that area.

Polynesian sailing and navigation technology probably beats Roman on the open ocean.

The Mediterranean is warm, pleasant and calm (boats did and do get wrecked by storms, but it's a much smaller risk). Distances between landing sites are short. If the wind dies, then it's feasible to row. You can stay in sight of land for travel to most destinations.

The Atlantic and Pacific are wild and dangerous.

> Did the Romans really have the tech to cross the Atlantic?

In galleys designed for costal waters, with no maps and no means of navigation? Not by choice.

The Romans at their height were the dominant Mediterranean naval power, but they barely had the technology to cross the English Chanel. When Caligula tried to invade Britain, his troops refused to go.

An empty boat, or one full of inept or deceased sailors, could cross the Atlantic in that direction just by drifting with ocean currents.

The Romans still were unsure even about northern europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule#Classical_antiquity_and_...

> I'm Portuguese so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I know you didn't mean it like this, but this sentence is such a lovely depiction of (my impression of) the Portuguese psyche that I almost want to print it out and frame it.

what do you mean?

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