Timeline for Is a modern dark age possible?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 22, 2023 at 16:52 | comment | added | Questor | We know how Roman Concrete was made now... We even can explain why it is self healing (Badly ground quick lime, that encourages cracks to develop to the large quick lime chunks, which when exposed to water react and seal the crack...) | |
| May 11, 2020 at 18:33 | history | edited | jdunlop | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 12 characters in body
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| May 11, 2020 at 18:00 | comment | added | Graham | @barbecue I didn't say that no-one is currently building huts. What I did say was that no-one building huts today needs to know how the Anglo-Saxons built theirs. For people currently building without modem materials, historians use that current knowledge to reverse-engineer how people did it in the past. It doesn't go the other way. | |
| May 11, 2020 at 17:04 | comment | added | barbecue | @Graham If you really mean that then you'd be wrong, because right now, today, as I'm typing this, there are people constructing buildings without using any modern materials or modern equipment. As I said, you're saying modern when you mean modern industrialized. | |
| May 11, 2020 at 13:13 | comment | added | Nosajimiki | If you mean the Roman concrete that they used in marine environments: engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/… | |
| May 10, 2020 at 18:57 | comment | added | Graham | @barbecue No, I do mean it does not inform any construction today whatsoever. Modern concrete is not even slightly influenced by Roman concrete; and whilst some places do still build huts, they do not in any way need to know how the Anglo-Saxons did it. | |
| May 10, 2020 at 15:03 | comment | added | quarague | I seem to recall that Roman concrete survived pretty much intact in sea water for 2000 years and with our moden understanding we do not know how to make concrete or similar materials that last more than a few decades in sea water. | |
| May 10, 2020 at 14:29 | comment | added | barbecue | @graham perhaps you mean it does not inform modern first-world industrialized construction. | |
| May 10, 2020 at 8:42 | comment | added | Graham | Re Roman concrete, why do you think it's relevant today? The Romans didn't understand the principles behind it - various bits of earth from various parts of their empire turned out to have different properties, but that's all they knew. For modern concrete, we know exactly what the principles are, so we can recreate it at any point. Historians are interested in how the Romans did it, sure, in the same way as they're also interested in how the Anglo-Saxons built timber-frame huts, but Anglo-Saxon hut-building and Roman concrete-making does not inform modern construction. | |
| May 10, 2020 at 4:27 | comment | added | Sidharth Ghoshal | roman concrete has been an active area of research for a long time: unews.utah.edu/roman-concrete i believe the realization of adding volcanic ash and seawater was a recent breakthrough in understanding how to make it, and why it has some its strengthening properties | |
| May 9, 2020 at 12:51 | comment | added | AlexP | Why do you believe that we don't know how Roman concrete was made? It's not some sort of supermagical material. Basically, low-cost Roman concrete was made with gypsum and quick lime, and high-quality Roman concrete was made with pozzolana. The Romans exported vast quantities of pozzolana volcanic dust from Italy to make concrete for the construction of harbors and other works which justified the use of high-quality concrete. | |
| May 9, 2020 at 10:01 | history | answered | L.Dutch♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |