Reconstructing Roman Industrial Engineering
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"Creativity" isn't a modern invention. "I have a problem to solve and will use engineering!" isn't a modern invention.
They've existed since the beginning of humans, and it remains quite irritating to see people who are shocked and amazed that ancient people were able to solve problems - often in ways we don't fully understand. How long was Roman cement a mystery?
Human nature doesn't change with time, and while the things that people groups care about tends to change, it baffles me that someone studying ancient Roman ruins of what's pretty clearly an industrial facility sounds surprised that they did something less than the most obvious solution - especially when it worked better.
Wasn't like you had Twitter to distract you - engineering solutions to problems is very clearly something the Romans were good at, given how much of their infrastructure rather outlasted the nation.
Modern civilization isn't what it is because we're somehow smarter or more creative than people were 1500 or 2000 years ago - it is what it is because, about 300 years ago, we finally figured out how to make fossil fuels do something mechanically useful for us.
If the Romans had figured out a steam engine, and had cared to continue developing it (a technology without an application is just a curiosity, and history is littered with those), they certainly could have accomplished plenty of what we consider modern today.
First rudimentary steam engine was the Aeolipile produced in the first century in Roman Egypt. In this light one can also say China had the steam engine during the Song Dynasty(960-1279). https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2012/did-the-chi...
The point is that for steam engine technology to take off, there had to be an economic problem it solved. In a nation with prevalent slavery or abundant human labour, an early steam engine is superfluous.
Hero's Aeolipile boiled water, but didn't resemble what we call a steam engine in any other way: it's just a jet. And in fact, it's very difficult to get it to work; you need modern bearings, extremely lightweight modern materials, and very large burners to give it enough power to spin itself. It's pretty unlikely it ever worked in antiquity, it was probably a concept sketch.
Likewise, the illustrations of "steam engines" in China show no boilers, no pipes, no evidence of pressure vessels of any kind.
A steam engine that produces useful power requires strong steel pipes and connections. It was technology gates being passed that led to the steam engine being invented and improved, not a change in economic condition. Agreed slavery can slow down technological adoption, but keeping slaves has its expenses too. It's easy to imagine there being an economic advantage to mechanical power even in a slave tolerating society.
Were all of these institutions different from what was practiced in Ancient Greece and Rome? Somewhat. But they are more similar than we often think.
It was for this reason that Britain began mining coal at scale (as well as harvesting peat), and found herself in need of an efficient way to de-water her mines.
And when the prerequisites (metallurgy, abundant fuel, and economic necessity) converged, the steam engine emerged.
The Romans had a curiousity in the form of the steam engine but it could do no useful work because they couldn't manufacture a shaft or bearings it could turn without breaking.
The Romans skirted around a lot of these things, but they couldn't have known these were the things they needed: the best steel they ever produced probably wasn't very good, compared to working with bronze, and unless you knew it could get better, there was no reason to think it was revolutionary at the time - i.e. because you could make it a lot better and then get the steam engine and mechanical motion out of it.
IMHO the Roman Empire was build on the back of its civil engineers, and not its legions. At least in the long run.
Interesting thought but why would the Empire have fallen then? Most likely, civil engineering remained top notch throughout.
Binding of territories to the Roman state worked primarily by co-opting local elites by giving them a fair bit of local power and protection from their enemies.
No they wouldn't. Because they would face both their internal rivals and external rivals most importantly the empire itself.
> and imperial protection didn't mean much during the decades of civil wars
There was not as much civil war as you think and not in most regions even if there was.
During a civil war local elites had to pick sides. Often those choices happened above their heads.
> People tolerated Roman rule for centuries, during good times and bad, because they recognized that quality of life was better under the Romans.
Very questionable. Quality of life has little do with it. People for the most part didn't have much say in it, rather the elites. Their standard of life might get better because they get imperial titles, trade monopolies and things like that.
Maybe your point is true for the late imperial period around the med, but its certainty not generally true.
> However in late antiquity Rome stagnated, infrastructure projects weren't being built anymore and various tribes were no longer being effectively assimilated into the empire.
Yes, but what matters is the integration not the infrastructure. In fact, if you really track this, the falling apart of infrastructure does not at all correlate with the Fall of the Western Empire. Much of the infrastructure had already been having issues since the 3rd century.
> Rome's military was still very large, and the elites were more powerful than ever, but the empire fell because those elites and armies were no worse off setting themselves up as independent rulers of small kingdoms.
The elites with actual power (not just money) were no longer centralized or unified. If you actually look at trade pattern and urbanization they don't actually decline until much later. For the most part the Fall of the formal empire is a non-event.
The collapse of the Roman Med economy and the de-urbanization of Italy mostly happens later.
And under the empire they'ed be competing with those same rivals to be the ones that the empire keeps in charge.
> There was not as much civil war as you think and not in most regions even if there was.
The crisis of the third century had 26 people claim the title of emperor in 50 years. Wikipedia lists 111 civil wars and revolts between 30 BC and 476 AD with the longest period between civil conflict being the 26 years between the revolt of Saturnius and the Kitos war. From the year 227 to 324, there wasn't a single period of peace lasting 5 years.
It doesn't matter if it's happening elsewhere in the empire, the fact is a large portion of the Roman military is doing something other than defending the empire.
> Very questionable. Quality of life has little do with it. People for the most part didn't have much say in it, rather the elites.
If the people are unhappy, new elites rise to power by leading people in overthrowing the old ones. Yes, there wasn't a democratic process by which the local populace could simply choose to leave the empire, but the populace did need to be placated. Who do you think the "bread and circuses" were for?
The empire was just as capable of granting titles and monopolies in the fifth century as in the first, that clearly wasn't enough to keep the provinces in line.
> Maybe your point is true for the late imperial period around the med, but its certainty not generally true.
We are talking about a change in behaviour in the late imperial period that caused the fall of the roman empire.
> Yes, but what matters is the integration not the infrastructure.
I'm arguing they are one in the same. A strong and cohesive society builds and maintains valuable infrastructure like aqueducts and roads that improve quality of life and thus make people want to integrate with it. A weak and divided society stops building and maintaining this infrastructure which causes quality of life to stagnate or decline which in turn makes people less invested in preserving a unified empire.
> Much of the infrastructure had already been having issues since the 3rd century.
You don't see any correlation between the crisis of the third century and the onset of infrastructure issues? Rome did not suddenly collapse, it was a gradual decline over the course of centuries, which correlates very well with the slow but steady decline of its infrastructure.
> The elites with actual power (not just money) were no longer centralized or unified. If you actually look at trade pattern and urbanization they don't actually decline until much later. For the most part the Fall of the formal empire is a non-event.
> The collapse of the Roman Med economy and the de-urbanization of Italy mostly happens later.
Yeah, and the aqueducts didn't poof out of existence in 476 AD. But the question is why were the elites with actual power decentralized? Why were they no longer unified? You're right, the population was still there, the money was still there, so why not the power? Clearly something had changed.
Now I'm the first to admit that blaming the fall of Rome solely on a lack of infrastructure spending would be absurd. There were many changes over the centuries which contributed in a myriad of ways. But the fact is in that time period the ability to quickly move armies via roads, the ability to produce massive quantities of food via irrigation, and the ability to house large populations in cities via plumbing were major selling points for the empire. People were proud to be Roman, people would spend years in service to become Roman, people would willingly die for Rome, because in their minds this was the beacon of civilization and their children would live better lives as Romans. Eventually, people no longer thought that way. The barbarians which started ravaging the empire and setting up independent kingdoms from the fourth century onward were not particularly numerous - any particular group was only a few thousand people, and there were never more than 1 million total, compared to the empire's population of 40 million, but the provinces put up little resistance and shifted their cultures to match the invaders. The end of euergetism and the decline or roman infrastructure was likely both a cause and consequence of this ideological shift.
For the cost of shuttle NASA could have recreated the J-2 and F-1.
We unfortunate don't have good data on Roman private and public infrastructure spending detailed enough to really make a god case for how it changed over time.
An interesting aspect of this is that the legions were civil engineers. Every legion had craftsman as part of their workforce. The craftsman didn't build only their forts, but also streets, bridges, mills ... I think this combination may have been Romes greatest advantage. Not only were they able to conquer regions, but also to build them out pretty fast after the fact.
When it comes to the a Rhine, it's a mistake to think that the Romans were simply more civilized than the Germanic people. That may have been true at one point in time, but over time, the societies on the borders of the empire gained quite a bit of sophistication. The borders were also porous, and the "barbarians" spent years of their lives in the Roman world. This is a big reason the power vacuum created by the collapse of Roman authority was readily filled by "barbarian" kings. The Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Arabs, and Vikings didn't come out of nowhere.
What was lost in the west was institutional complexity. Although it's interesting that the Arabs founded empires that did match Rome in this regard. At least until the Mongols came smashing in.
I don't want to drag this discussion into the minutiae of what distinguishes civil from mechanical from industrial engineering, especially since there's so much overlap (I met a lot of civil engineers in my graduate industrial engineering classes, especially from transportation engineering). But what I'm reading here doesn't really strike me as something that would be notably "industrial engineering," which I see as more abstracted from impressive mechanical innovations in infrastructure projects like aqueducts.