Roman Engineering: Crash Course History of Science #6
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- Опубліковано 13 чер 2024
- The Romans developed a lot of infrastructure like roads and aqueducts to both help their cities flourish and to... you know... be better at war. But the interesting thing about Roman Engineering is how it was almost all focused on Techne and not Episteme. In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, Hank takes us down the road of road building, domes, and some really cool cement.
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Damn with those roads you could all it the Roamin' Empire
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
peace?
Oh, peace... shut up!
Romans go home
love me some Monty Python!
I don't know what kind of answer you expect... Like menstruating feminist on the loose, you can't win with people behind screen
It's a shame 'concrete' was never a specific tech in the civilization games. Special effect: aqueduct, courthouse, colosseum, city walls, temple, library require 50% less resources to build.
"Ironically, Flat Earth theory may have more proponents today"
He can't help but chuckle a lil bit.
Fun linguistic fact: Epistemei (the verb form of episteme) translates directly into English as "I stand upon," similar to the English, "understanding."
Thanks for bringing up that everyone knew the world was round. You missed an opportunity (either in this episode or the one on the Secratics) to mention a great knowledge-maker, Eratosthenes, who measured the circumference of the earth to within 1% of its actual value in the 3rd century B.C.E.
Actually it was within 10%-15% the actual value.
Yes but how are these round, flat discs frisbee’ing through space and who threw them??
Scientists are still asking that very same question to this day. We may never know who the great cosmic frisbee thrower is
TheBrunkYShow many are pretty certain it was Martius McFlyus
it was brahm gupta in india episode and he measured circumference accurate upto 4 decimal.
Even in ancient times, Engineers were bad at naming things, aside from Historians who are terrible at naming events.
Japhet Ye War of [YEAR]
[AMOUNT OF YEARS] War
Well, there are some great and cool names in historical event like the black death or great dying
Most of the names sucks though
Japhet Ye Nowadays most wars are named after places (Gulf War) or nations (Sino-Japanese War) rather than years, so at least war historians have improved their naming.
Engineers at NASA are damn creative.
Romans be like "big and awesome Jupiter's temple" and "largest sewer"
And yet, here in Quebec, we can’t get roads that last more than 5 years.
AuskaDezjArdamaath planned obsolescence is the worst idea mankind has ever conceived of.
Sadly, in Brazil the roads we have that are asfalt don't last that much too (and they crack everywhere, they have huge holes even in highways)
Well modern roads are supposed to carry hundreds of tons of steel, fiberglass, and rubber every day. The heaviest thing the Roman roads had to carry were a couple chariots and some sandaled soldiers.
Matt Zhang that's right, but my point is they never fix anything (and when they do it's still crappy after all)
Lucas Matos that sounds like the MTA in nyc lmao.
One of my favorite all-time CC videos! I hate not having the time and memory to study and remember these things. The world is so fascinating, complex and interesting; and such little time. Cheers!
Yet another excellent work by you and the team Hank. I can not express how good it feels to know that the future is in hands of young folks like you and your team. I can't wait for the next course.
"Roman Engineering"
15 seconds in: *shows picture of Parthenon, the most prominent Greek temple*
sub to mai chanell
yo mama
"In the natural world, engineering is knowing 'what;' science is finding out 'why'." -Z.G. Henderson
Hypatia was so cool! Also: Roma Invicta!
Too bad she had Hypatitis.
To be fair, she just edited a book that was already written.
All the discovery was done by Ptolemy. Just because she was a woman doesn't mean you patronize her by saying that. You wouldn't applaud a male editor, you shouldn't applaud a female one.
The opening question actually resonates with me, it's something I've always struggled with myself. I am not a very practical person, and that's mostly because I spend so much time trying to figure out exactly how things work, that I forget to actually do something with them.
This series is probably one of CrashCourse's greatest works. Nice work!
Oh, my love for romance languages has increased... when you mentioned the cloaca maxima and then translated I thought "I don't need a translation, we have those same words in Spanish"
I had the idea (or misconception?) that the Archimedes water screw was actually invented by the Chinese.
This script was one the best you have produced in years. It flowed, was poetic, as well as informative. A+
Thank you for numbering the videos in this series. Far too few contributors do this for their series.
arguably what made the Roman army superior to those it faced: magnificently constructed forts to hold entire legions that were created in hours. Half soldier-half construction worker
Stoicism, they had one great overarching awesome philosophy to which they contributed to.... Then again maybe I'm biased.... 🤔
Even though Seneca and Marc Aurel were great stoics, it was a Greek, Zeno of Citium (Cyprus), who founded it.
@@TrangDB9 he said "contributed", not "created".
@@Fpwc2 right, my bad.
Wow! This is very interesting and fun to learn. I already knew Romans took plenty of knowledge from Greeks. Still they did plenty of amazing things
Camilo Iribarren if you want to learn more about the Greco-Roman world, check out the channel Historia Civilis
And Greeks took it from Mesopotamians and Phoenicians.
They didn’t just take from the Greeks they also took ship building from the carthiginains,bridge building from the Etruscans a tribe in central Italy.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Camilo Iribarren. We increase our knowledge by adding to previous civilisations.
I wish Crash Course was around when I was in high school. I might have wanted to go to school!
This is my favorite of the new generation of Crash Course series :)
I feel a great need to conquer Carthage as the Scipii
*TO ROME: TOTAL WAR!*
Flat-earthers prove humans aren't getting any smarter.
they are in minority and hence statistically irrelevant
No, it's only one example. Stupid people are the majority. It's evident with the voting public. As the great George Carlin said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
With the risk of ruffling a few feathers here, I think you're right :) There are billions of people in the world who believe a life-altering tale for no other reason than because their parents and teachers told them so ^^
HAHAHAH
I think it actually proves that militant atheists are obsessed with flat earthers, even though they are statistically irrelevant, and have nothing to do with anything.
This is awesome. I have a final today for my history of science class, and this is great. I just wish that there were videos through the scientific revolution! Can't wait for more :D
11:42 I love myself some crash Chris.
Amazing series! I can't wait to you guys talk about 1800s, 1900s german science, their chemistry change the world
Absolutely beautiful architecture
You and your brother both seem to be natural-born story tellers! Keep up the fantastic work!
Funny to think concrete can last several millenniums.
Zeldas Champion the more concrete ages the stronger it gets
Roman concrete, not modern
@@error5202 of which the formula is sadly lost to history
The Chinese cement still lasts today, meanwhile the stones are withered. Apparently they mixed rice starch in it, hence it's color.
@@dojokonojo I heard they mixed in vulcano ash.
The uses of a machine is much more important than what's inside the machine
The only bad thing about this video is that it ended :(
Please do a part 2
Love how Greek or Roman conquest is a “Supervillan Rampage” - funny how he never mentioned the same about Ashoka’s ancestors conquering in the India episode!
Seriously I love the shows, just is symptomatic of the apologetic tone for mentioning the Roman Empire.
It's refreshing to see no bias here, no propaganda at all.
Thanks for these videos, much appreciated
The beginning discussion of this episode reminds me of the whole question of anaesthetics. Like, we've gotten pretty good at using them effectively and safely, but we still have no f'ing clue how they actually work.
this series is amazing!
I appreciate those comments that correct or clarify information from the video, but WOW! There are also some petty gripes! My hat is off to Hank and John and the entire staff at Complexly and Thought Café for providing so much excellent educational material. Crash Course is an example of the internet at its finest.
It's no petty gripe to object to the fact that Rome's contributions to natural philosophy have been ignored outright here, and the entire civilization belittled by a hopelessly biased individual with a pathological hatred of the foundations of Western civilization.
With so many dead civilizations, it's extremely easy to imagine our own dying as well.
It's just a Mater of time
Deus Augustus
We are more peaceful today than back in the ancient times, no doubt, but we also live in the most dangerous time in history thanks to the invention of said nuclear weapons.
All it takes is one bad argument or an accidental crossing of a border to set of WW3 and then it’s bye-bye 90% of human civilization.
sadly the US is dying. it pretty obvious we are in the ending and not the beginning.
I am surprised people found this statement particularly deep. Before consuming science and history over youtube, I heard it often in theological podcasts. The book of Daniel in particular hit this lesson home.
We can all recognize patterns. Was it not obvious enough that our civilization could one day fall? Is there anything more meaningful we can say after that statement? Otherwise, it’s not very deep.
Thank you sooooo much for that video and all the videos.
This is the best series made by crash course
Good knowledge communicators perform a valuable service: Making complex subjects accessible to everyone. Hank and John Green stand with a long line of excellent knowledge communicators such as Malcolm Gladwell, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and many others. One of my favorites for his idiosyncratic perspective and breadth of subjects covered is Hendrik Willem Van Loon. You can feel his love of learning in his writing, even when he is inaccurate or just plain wrong. He is most famous for his Newbery Medal winner “The Story of Mankind,” but his other books are worth searching out and reading too.
Thanks!
Yesssss, my favorite topic
Great video - enjoyed it!
Speaking of roman roads the main roman road in the U.K. from London going north is still a road. It has since been paved with modern equipment but it is still a well used road. It is called Watling Street now and I believe the M1 (the first motorway) follows its path broadly.
A video on just aqueducts would be sublime :)))))
There are some mistakes which harm a usually good job: showing the Parthenon, the structure of Roman roads, the use of slaves for a lot of these things.
I forgot how much i liked these
Thank you. Great work.
Great video!
This would’ve been much more useful 3 days ago when I needed to write about Roman engineering for my Latin class but it’s still interesting now :)
1:23
North Indian King: We're prepared to defend against Alexander
Prime Minister: Using our deadly Elephants, my lord?
North Indian King: Rajesh, open the dams!
Yoooo these dudes have everything. Thank you so much. I'm a comp sci student is there any work I can do for you guys?
excellent. dont let them forget
This is so, so cool.
Ah yeah, excited for that HOUSE OF WISDOM next time.
The narrator has an underappreciated sense of humor.
Did cloaca mean sewer first or did it start out as the birds everything hole? It would make sense either way
How about doing a program on Chinese ancient devices.
I always thought the Romans built bowling alleys
Bobble Head its a secret lost to history
No joke; I am going to look for those books on Roman sewers.
actually, natural philosophy did advance under the Romans... just not in Latin.
Could you elaborate? If you’re talking about the rest of the world during that time I think it’s gonna be discussed in another video
Under the Roman Empire, the most cutting-edge research continued to be done in Greek, not in Latin, and usually by Greeks rather than Romans. Examples: Nicomachus of Gerasa (ca. 60-120 AD) wrote the Introduction to Arithmetic in Greek; Ptolemy of Alexandria (ca. 100-170 AD) wrote the Almagest in Greek; Galen of Pergamon (ca. 129-216), the greatest medical scientist of antiquity, wrote his astoundingly voluminous body of work (check out the Wikipedia page "Galenic corpus") in Greek.
Very true, but these Greek writers were Roman citizens. So it's a little unfair for Hank to claim that the Romans didn't advance theoretical science
The Romans were more interested in practical thought rather then interesting but not very useful thought.
elfarlaur He actually very specifically mentioned that theoretical science did advance under Romans, just that it wasn't the focus of Roman culture or state.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Pipe2DevNull the Aqueduct?
Bigus dickus
legal system
Western civilization.
...peace?
Nice video, but I think another major component of Roman science/knowledge of the natural world that you didn't mention comes from Pliny the Elder, who wrote the Natural Histories, which explained weather phenomena, astronomy, plants and animals, and a whole wealth of other subjects. Also, we also have a description of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius from Pliny the Younger, which, while not inherently scientific, provided enough detail to have that type of eruption called a "Plinian eruption"
You might want to check out, "The scientist in the early roman empire". It argues for a much larger involvement with the Romans in science, in particular it points out that we know of a lot more books written on the topic of science were written than preserved.
I had to watch this for school
2:31 Ship One has the great watch tower
Do you have a source for the colosseum being filled with water? I know it's a popular story, but my classical culture teachers always said it probably never happened, or at least not after they built the hypogeum, since they would get flooded (and all the slaves and animals inside would die) if the Colosseum would be filled with water. I know that there are classical writers who described at least one sea battle in the Colosseum, but having been there multiple times, I highly doubt you could fit the two described armada's in there.
Agreed. I'm surprised that Crash Course wouldn't offer the more reasonable if slightly controversial theory that it was too costly an engineering feat to make naval battles in the colosseum.
They had pools. They had pretty good hydro engineering. If they did have a naval battle in the Coliseum, they likely built a separate structure within the Coliseum to hold the water.
The engineers dug tunnels to a local lake to fill the Colosseum.
Also weren’t the romans less enthusiastic about navy? They thought it had the least glory/honor and was a lackluster job to command it, so why would they celebrate it and entertain with it?
Rome had a great Navy and they won quite a few impressive battles. they had marines and special operations with smaller boats. Maybe you are thinking of the Spartans.
Hank - this series - and this episode - are just soooooo good! Thanks for them!!
Ya, I liked this vid before even watching it!!!
Hopefully he wont forget to cover medieval Europe.
i was assigned this for quarantine work lol
It's interesting to think of Roman Engineering being so much better and having such great longevity, but there are some considerations to be made.
1: Building massive structures that are heavily labor-costly due to their remarkable overengineering, like the Aqueducts, is much easier when your labor is effectively free. Slaves were very much a thing. It's also much easier to build a long stretch of road because, again, your labor is free.
2: Roman engineering has withstood the test of time in their construction in large part due to the fact that Rome almost never dips below freezing. When we look at our own roads, with their significantly increased traffic numbers, and then we look at our weather patterns, it's very easy to start noticing why our roads look like the surface of the Moon. Water gets in the tarmac, turns to ice, expands, breaks up the tarmac, and suddenly you've got potholes all over the place and have to repave after a year.
3: One of the most potent traps in the world of engineering is the rose tinted shades of looking at the past. Even when we look just thirty years into our own, we look at things like Bakelite telephones and that sort of thing and think "Wow, they made everything so sturdy back then, these things are still in one piece". Well, you think that because all you're looking at is what survived. What kept working. What wasn't discarded or stripped down or destroyed. In the case of Rome, we're looking at all these arches and aqueducts and such that have the amazing perception of being nigh-on indestructible because they've been around for almost 2000 years or so, but then we have to consider how much Else was built back then? What else would have been built with less care, such as houses, food storage buildings, and plenty else? What was the difference in frequency between an engineering project that we can still see the results of clearly to this day, and an engineering project that failed within a year of its construction?
And lastly...
4: The war between Science and Engineering in terms of theory versus doing is a longstanding one, and Rome provides a classic example of fantastic Doers failing to understand the materials they were working with. Which is why so much of Rome's system of pipes and such for bath houses were lined with Lead.
TacComControl. So many pot holes? Because the lowest bidder gets the jobs and use inferior materials, unlike Germany who pays bonuses if the pavements on the roads last 5 years. They also add money for better materials.
zelen plav as much as it would be nice to think that there is a just world where in we are given potholes because we don't pay properly for the roads, unfortunately, the truth is far more mundane than that. Simply put, water in the road freezing breaks up the road surface contact. Ice is an incredible erosion medium.
More on architecture!
Is that a picture of the Parthenon at 0:16 seconds? I'm not a historian or anything but I'm pretty sure that's Greek lol
Romans had very similar temples, copied from the Greek Parthenon.
And of course there was the great cloaca which ran under the Via Appia, known to the Army as the "Appia Pipe." :D
Interesting fact about the pantheon... instead of using gravel as aggregate like we do these days they made tiny hollow pottery balls which are much much lighter... it keeps it from collapsing under its own weight.
Thank you for saving me from an art interrogation
I agree with Hank in that perhaps the Romans' greatest invention was the Republic, which, ironically, they weren't able to hold on to.
Well, about four and a half centuries is not a bad run for a regime.
+varbalvarbal True but I kinda thought that a government like that would last indefinitely.
Four and a half century is REALLY long in terms of regime. Especially, considering their lack of knowledge. The oldest sovereign political entity is Portugal, but its government changed recently. Whilst the oldest continuous government alive today is less than 300 years old.
Sure you think; But the UK has had a king/Queen for ages... Yes, but its government changed.
I like this.
If you are doing Roman engineering you have to do Aztec engineering too!!
Brandon Kelley why?
I don't understand the logic here but regardless I'm all for Aztec engineering!
Previous episode.
Historical segments of Crash Course ought to do a crossover with Extra History at some point, you're both great educational UA-cam series, Mike Rugnetta has even done collaborative work with them before.
Answering at 1:01 before I watch the rest of the vid. I say a little column A and a little column B. Understanding in the abstract and real world usage are both necessary and viable measures of knowledge.
Never know Roman time has such engineering achievement
The dome on the Parthenon to my knowledge is still the biggest non-reinforced concrete dome in the world. Some 2000 years on.
One big thing that Greeks and Romans invented : Stadium and Theatre 😎
Amphitheater. How they did it with the acustica, for example in the amphitheater in Verona, is still unknown today. Btw, that theater is still intact and in use.
@@TrangDB9 the
@@TrangDB9 they
@@TrangDB9 99
Do you have sources and/or further reading resources for this content?
Don't neglect the medieval Romans (Byzantines), who brought us not only weapons like the first flame thrower and counterweight trebuchet, but also the first true hospitals, surgical advancements, engineering concepts like pendative construction techniques, and even the physical theory of impetus, which would influence later Muslim and Western thinkers in classical physics.
That seems to be a more hopeful time to be alive
"do not disturb my circles."- Archimedes
I love this! you guys should do historiography (the history of how history is studied and communicated) next!
Hypatia of Alexandria? Wow, and I thought the team for Dishonored pulled that name out of nowhere.
There's a good article [edit: google 'roman concrete salt water' and there are many articles!] somewhere about Roman concrete! Paraphrasing, archaeologists couldn't work out how Romans made concrete that lasted so long and so well in coastal constructions. The recipe said 'water' so they added water, and the sea would still tear it apart. However, turns out 'water' meant seawater to the Romans, they just never felt the need to specify since it was such common knowledge (think of how many times you've seen 'egg' rather than 'chicken's egg' in a recipe). As a result of using seawater, the concrete could - to an extent - repair itself because of a reaction between the cement and the seawater.
pretty apt expect that the legions built many of the roads, aqueducts, and fortifications as make work to keep them too busy to think about rebellion.
Woo! Missoula!
Hey, great series!
Why is 4th episode deleted from the playlist?
Nice
I feel like a party pooper that is Parthenon at 0:15 built centuries before Romans arrived to Greece.