10 "MODERN" Things The Romans Actually HAD
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2024
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On this video we will look at 10 things that the Romans had which will absolutely blow your mind! Why? Because you probably thought that they were modern! Or did you? Well, let me know how many of these you already knew the Romans had access to, in the comments below! Thanks!
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#ancientrome #romanempire #atlasvpn - Ігри
I remember a quote from a Roman dog trainer's book, and it was essentially the same as the quote in a dog training book I have. It essentially goes thusly: "The worst mannered and most poorly trained dogs are often the toy breeds, who safe from discipline and repercussion often bark and nip at passerbys from the safety of it's mistress's arms."
oh god, the yappy hellspawns aren't a modern invention? I think that either my faith in the modern era has been restored, or my faith in humanity in general has been tarnished even further.
Mistresses are the problem if it comes to dog training.
Slaughter then all!
I hate “toy” breeds wholeheartedly. Genuinely. We should be eating them or using them for shark bait.
I love my toy dogs they are a good size for me
“And what have the Romans ever given us?” Uh roads. The aqueducts, …… 😂 Monty Python had it right
"Education?" "Law and order? "
"Let's face it, they're the only people who could in a bloody place like this"
“Great wine”
Sanitation
Freedom of religion too (at least a early concept of it)
Yup, that goes for many “evil colonisers” throughout history.
Something I found interesting when I visited Rome was that some of the Roman aqueducts are actually still in use to this day to provide potable water to public fountains. Obviously its not like the entire system of bringing water from a reservoir to the fountain is 100% of Roman design, but some components are still used.
The Romans incorporated fountains into their water system. They used them for pressure release, heavy rains could build up water pressure that could burst pipes. Their fountains also generally had low curbs allowing the water to run onto the pavement which added some humidity when the water evaporated to counteract the dry summer heat.
The city of Rome didn't match the amount of clean water that flowed into the city under ancient Rome until the 1950s.
Fountains were more a Roman thing.
Aqueducts were already been done by the Greeks hundreds of years before.
@@Z1BABOUINOS Sure the Romans weren't the first to make aquaducts, but Romans made them more effective and widespread throughout their empire. Comparing Greek aquaducts to Roman ones is like comparing a musket to a machine gun.
Would be great if we build some architectures with the supposedly superior Roman concrete today. Unfortunately we still don't know the exact recipe.
"Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, how much harder would life have been for people in the past?" Yes I have, and as a flint knapper and forager I've experimented with it. Just to see if I could, and how much work it would be to do so, I once made bread from scratch, and I don't mean from scratch as in starting with flour. I started by gathering wild grass seeds, threshing and winnowing them, grinding them with rocks into flour, mixing them with pounded cattail roots and water, allowing wild yeast and bacteria to grow in the dough for leavening, then baked small cakes on a hot stone. The bread actually turned out pretty well. It didn't get much rise because the seeds didn't have much gluten, and it was very high in fiber and coarse, but totally edible. It was a whole lot of work, but I'm pretty proud of myself for doing it.
Great read, thanks for sharing. 👍
don't mean to be rude, but vid or didn't happen
Gluten is not needed for yeast, sugar is. But that is just technical thing, modern grains (wheat, rye,...) have higher amount of sugar (or starch which is just complicated sugar) and also they are much bigger, because, well... if you have some space you want to grow as much as you can on it and bigger grains give you more flour (or whatever you want).
Anyway, congratulations and I hope you will proceed with your exploration. It is fun and lets you understand world much better.
@@simonspacek3670 gluten isn't needed for the yeast to grow, but it is needed to make the protein structure to trap the carbon dioxide the yeast produces. The reason for adding the cattail roots is for extra carbohydrates for the yeast to eat. I was a professional chef and baker for many years, as well as a homebrewer and vintner for over 25 years, so I know quite a bit about yeast and fermentation.
Would love to see a video of this process
The construction crane is one of my favorites. This technology was lost at some point during the decline of the Roman empire, and rediscovered in the late medieval period, probably from ancient Roman artwork depicting construction sites.
There is this common trope in science fiction and fantasy, that the ancients had some really advanced technology, and some of it is being "recovered". With the construction crane, it actually happened in real-life history.
The high tech ancients lived before the Great Flood.
@@wms72 No. Neither of these two things is real.
@@wms72 "If they're so good, why are they dead?" -NieR
@@modernxenophon1582 great answer
@@wms72 And to think, we could have been exploring the outer singularity by now!
There's a book called "Full Circle: How the Classical World came back to us" by Michael Mount, which illustrates the interesting similarities between the modern and ancient world. - *Arguably*, someone from the modern era would feel more at home in ancient times than they would in medieval times.
I'd honestly say late bronze age, Mid Imperial Rome and the modern age very much the tip of the curve before it falls again in a cycle. Hell even the Bevel Rim bowels of the Sumerians remind me of a peak in the cycle where suddenly mass-produced commodities are available for one use consumption.
@@shacklock01 late Bronze Age? Around what country?
Most definitely. We've been show time and again why we need to change the way we do things. It just isn't sustainable. It's only a vicious cycle
+1 In many cases ancient world was more "modern" than middle ages.
I would argue that 1st and 2nd century rome is more familiar to our modern world then 17th and 18th century europe. It was only in the 19th century that we started to surpass them in scale.
The romans didn't industrialise but archeology suggests that they still mass produced goods like pots and vases on a scale not matched until after the industrial revolution.
We know about the mass production of pots and vases because they last a long time without wearing away but imagine all the stuff they mass produced that didnt last as long like paper bags, furniture, clothing and other consumer goods.
The roman style of concrete is actually superior in many ways to most modern concrete. The largest advantage it has is that it doesn't absorb water, which prevents it from cracking in winter. This is a major reason some buildings from ancient rome still stand today.
One of the major problems with it though is it doesn't handle wet+cold particularly well. Great for the Mediterranean, becomes a problem in northern Europe. Roman walls, unmaintained, in Rome and Britain are about the same quality overall, most don't utilize concrete as a primary material, they are earth or stone. Things that DO utilize concrete as a primary material, like a lot of the Mile Castles along Hadrian's Wall....almost entirely gone. The ones that are best preserved were built out of more stone. It takes longer for cracks to form, but once they do the freezing and unfreezing in them is worse. Rather than cracking and crumbling off bit-by-bit like a modern sidewalk though, it is like it erodes from inside the cracks, until large portions are no longer solid. With our modern concrete, easier to patch a small crumbling area. With their concrete, it would often stand until the whole thing was nearing crumbling down in Britain.
@@Nick-hi9gx I'd imagine the salt content would also be a limiting factor, since that pretty much guarantees corroding any rebar even more than our concrete does.
As for Roman concrete, I do wonder if they really actually used the proper stuff in projects on the edge of the empire. After all, bringing in the ingredients was very time-consuming and expensive.
@@InfernosReaper Most of the ingredients would be relatively cheap because they were plentiful numerous places around the Empire. But up in Britain, or a permanent camp in Morocco, yeah I could see that being pretty cost-prohibitive.
@@Nick-hi9gx You're kinda underestimating the distance and time of travel due to the *size* of the empire.
The fact that the secret of making Roman concrete was lost does seem to lend support to the notion that the good stuff wasn't used everywhere, so substitutions had to be made.
@@InfernosReaper The "good stuff" WAS used everywhere. We have evidence of its use on Hadrian's Wall and Antonine's Wall, a Castrum's towers in Germany, the winter camps in Antioch and Alexandria are the exact same towers as out in Morocco and Romania. You are underestimating the logistical and trade network of Rome, and overestimating the difficulty of making their concrete. The required ingredients aren't rare. Not at all. Tuffa is OVERLY abundant in Italy, Greece, Sicily.
As to time travel...messages could get from Britain to Syria in a month. Food was shipped from the Chersonesus (Crimea) to modern southern France in an emergency two years in a row, it took a bit over a month to get there...and that was BEFORE the Romans, going from Greek polis to Greek polis.
I was surprised you didn’t mention the sewer system in Rome. Many people think of Rome’s streets as covered in feces. Although this was true in some parts of the city, it’s not entirely accurate. The sewers in Rome were so advanced that Agrippa traversed the system in a boat to gain public trust in the recent renovation he spearheaded.
When is Agrippa not a total boss?
Even nowadays we still have cities covered in feces like San Francisco!
@@adambielen8996 I sometimes wonder what Rome would've looked like had Augustus died of his illness and Agrippa became Princeps instead of Tiberius, his sons/Augustus's grandsons were already the favorites of the Princeps and the people loved them, had Livia been out of the way entirely it'd be incredible to see what could've been achieved.
Maybe it's because sewer systems are 1000 years older than the Roman empire. Uruk already had one.
ok furry
I've always loved the Romans just for how uncannily similar they were to us shows how little we truly changed at our core.... From fast food culture how they mourned for lost pets in epitaphs as quick examples..... Shows how similar we are to the ancients dispite the massive time gap.
Well if you live in USA you should know that they are entirely based on the Roman Empire example and principles
@@emeralddragongaming2930 true but I'm impressed with the smaller human elements to transcend time. Like government architecture and laws are a given but they were international..... Things like say the graffiti of Pompeii. Beware of the dog. The fast food etc. Things that just naturally happened to be passed down cuz of just being human. And not by any great design ya know...
Another example I love is a mural in a Pompeii bar esc area showing people gambling and drinking. A fight breaks out and in the mural the bar owner tells the two men to take it outside..... Just a fun glimpse at how similar we are
@@emeralddragongaming2930 Not really,the US is 1600s parliamentery Britain with a thin coat of Roman paint.
@@blob22201 the thin layer of paint makes all the difference
None of this surprises me as people have always been people. We have the same basic biology, needs, desires and such so it makes sense we would attempt to improve our lives in the same ways throughout history
Next decade, archeologists will discover that the Classical Romans actually built a fort on Mars where they specialized in studying quantum physics.
Those were Egyptians, although given how much Romans loved Mars...
Do not give history channel ideas
If you look closely there's a roman castra on Enceladus
@@jarskil8862 Dear god.... That channel needs to be renamed. It's a shadow of its former glory.
@@thedude8526 It was renamed.
Now the former "History Channel" is called "History".
They made it worse.
Two things you didn't mention were the Roman physician's medical bags were filled with tools that our physician would understand. The second was the Romans had coin operated machines. Some were entertainment devices that when activated would give a little show. The others were despisers, drop in a coin and get something in return such as water or offerings at temples.
Romans had five hundred years of peace, within the borders of their empire !
Yes, and the Romans were also able to remove cataracts with a small suction device. It was 700 to 800 years before Roman medical knowledge was reached by others.
Could you provide with a source on the entertainment devices? please, I want to read more about that.
@@OnTheRiver66 citation for Roman cataract removal?
@@dmoore5120 yes, it was in a documentary on TV, the History channel I believe. They showed an ancient Roman surgery kit next to a modern surgery kit and many of the items, scalpels, tweezers, etc. were almost identical, 2000 years apart. One item was a small tube with a plunger which they used to pull cataracts off the eye. The documentary showed that it was not until about 200 years ago that modern medicine actually caught up to where Rome was 2000 years ago. I was amazed, never knew any of this. Probably History channel back when that channel actually covered history.
I think Varro’s observation of unseeable organisms was just a logical extension of Democritus and the Milesian atomism.
I'm more inclined toward Hippocrates
and his invisible 'miasmata'.
I always had a feeling that ancients had some idea of germ theory based on their use of silver for medicinal purposes.
Not necessarily. Many ancients were doing the right things for the wrong reasons. The Romans correctly concluded that swamps was correlated with diseases and malaria and thus drained swamps....but the Romans thought this was causes by swamp miasma/poison gas rather than mosquitoes and other disease carrying creatures that live and breed in swamps.
@@Intranetusa I give them credit for at least going in the right direction. They weren't dumb, and without internet and easily accessible libraries, it makes sense that they would come to the conclusions that they did. They were trying at least lol, A for effort.
They also used honey as an antibacterial agent and lemon/vinegar for disinfectant.
@@samuraieko5408 Yes, credit where it's due. They wouldn't have known without a microscope. But I think the ancients, from North Africa to Sumeria, did suspect mosquitoes as the cause for malaria. Quinine, the treatment, only appears in the Andes or China.
When you read about the kind of shit europeans and ancients used to do... Literally shit because biological warfare was the norm... BUDDY, they knew exactly what they were doing
It literally takes me 20 minutes on foot to get to the Tower of Hercules.
Myth says Hercules defeated a giant named Gerion and built the lighthouse on top of where he buried his three heads.
Ancient Persia had an efficient postal service and could get a mail from one end of the empire to the other in less than 10 days. The Roman Road system seemed to be an innovation and improvement on the Persian road system.
I totally agree with you! NONE of the 10 things mentioned in this video was invented by the Romans, but by previous "Eastern" civilizations (Greek, Asia Minor, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian etc. You see, back then Rome and the rest of Europe were quite inferior to the afore-mentioned civilizations)
@@ThomasGazis I don't think that he said that the Romans invented all this but that they used it.
For what I was taught as a dental prosthetist Etruscans had dental bridges made of gold with human and animal (mostly animal) teeth.
Also Romans had a very straighfoward aproach to orthodontia; they pushed the tooth in place by hand.
Ancient Egyptians also used copper for braces, and Neanderthals stuffed cavities with tar.
Not to forget the wonderful Roman baths and underfloor heating…! Thank you so much Metatron. You’re always clear, concise and marvelously entertaining…..👌🌸
Underfloor heating is the best heating.
the so called "Roman" baths and underfloor heating was not a Roman invention! The Greeks i.e. already had "baths" and underfloor heating before the Romans! In reality none of the 10 things mentioned in this video was invented by the Romans, but by previous civilizations (Greek, middle-Eastern, Egyptian or Mesopotamian).
There is at least one you missed. The Romans had an information network. That is a method by which messages could be sent without using a physical object, such as a letter. This Netwerk was a combination of semaphore stations and signal fires that would allow any significant event that happened anywhere in the Roman empire to be known within 24 hours in Rome.
Thanks for posting this, Raff. I needed some cheering up. My puppy is sick right now and I've been really worried taking care of her. Thanks again, looking forward to playing more Valhiem this winter.
I wish a speedy recovering for the pupper
Im just a stranger but I hope she gets better.
Hope your pup is on the mend soon. My girl has been battling cancer for 5 months now, and it’s very hard on her (and all of us.) It’s almost like the world has stopped as we wait for a breakthrough…or the worst to come. ❤
It's going to die in a week.
@@notsans9995 Damn 😞
Another fantastic video. I was shocked to discover the Romans also had Taxi Meters and Swiss Army style knives. Even the modern surgeons could recognise and utilise Roman Apothecary tools. There was more lost in the fall of the Empire than we have yet even comprehended.
Keep making more videos please Magister.
And a reminder, Rome isn't all that ancient. It was the end of a world in Europe that took 5000 years to build. The early bronze age collapse was about 5000 years old, and Rome collapsed about 550 ad, leaving the end of rome 1520 years before our time. And if you were to consider the unification of Egypt in 3150 BC to be the "Start" of the classical era, the start of Egypt was much further in the past to Julius Caesar than Caesar was to us.
And in turn, not ALL that much was lost. Historians and archeologists are pointing out that dark ages and later Medieval Europe had actually higher technology in many areas than the romans. Like Roman concrete wasn't lost, it was what people called "lime mortar" but was used much more sparingly as a mortar instead of as a material itself. And late medieval blacksmithing and weapons technology was, understandably, generations ahead of Roman designs.
The big issue of so much being "lost" was the collapse of a continent-spanning empire to small kingdoms that could commonly be crossed by foot in under a week. That lack of scale meant everything got "smaller." Massive contraction projects vanished because nobody could afford them, and the population was too small to justify them. Elaborate social systems were not needed when most people lived in villages, and so on. Vast scale military operations vanished because an "army" went from 22,000 people, to 200. And yet despite all this people did travel and trade extensively in the Medieval era.
And honestly by the late Tudor period across Europe the kingdoms were about the scale of large Roman principalities, and you start seeing society building back up to were large public works happen again, and society grows sophisticated, bringing about the transition out of the feudal system that marks the renaissance.
And through all of this, the church kept careful archives of everything they could lay hands upon about roman understanding. So when intrest built in the sciences the Chruch was the primary institute of learning that would teach people what the romans knew, and it laid the foundation of the arrival of what might be called "modern" science, which was built on the shoulders of old classical writings preserved carefully by the Church.
And while military technology is well understood today, as is roman civil technology, as they are the foundations of both in the modern eras, what was well and truely lost was primarily the detailed history of the Classical era, and and the culture and lives of people back then. How did the romans truely live, what were their customs, how did they actually talk, what was life in Rome like? These are things that were not preserved.
@@nordoceltic7225 there are many "Lost Technologies" we still do not understand. Such as the Baalbeck stones. Each weighing over 800 tonnes, quarried, moved around 1km then lifted into position. The ability to create the Lycurgus Cup, which shows a masterful understanding of materials as well as skill in craftsmanship we could not replicate for over a 1000 years. The destruction of the Library of Alexandria left us with a deficit of knowledge. Therefore we did lose a lot from the fall of the Empire as they did themselves from previous Empires.
Rome Rotted from the Top Down. Corrupt leaders spending vast fortunes on palaces and parties, corrupt legislators passing laws to confiscate the estates of Soldiers they had sent to slaughter barbarians and bring back their treasures, corrupt local officials demanding bribes to approve street vendors and brothels and all the small businesses.
just for instance,They needed crowds of inspectors to find and repair the thousands of contraband SPIGOTS people bored into the lead pipes distributing the water from the aqueducts to avoid the taxes. In the last centuries before the barbarians sacked the city, the hundreds of public fountains frequently ran dry because of the massive theft.
Gee, something sounds hauntingly familiar there. Can't quite put my finger on it...
@@nordoceltic7225 the Renaissance only happened after Greek texts preserved by Arab and Eastern Roman scholars entered western Europe.
Living in Spain we respect the romans so much, incredible advances for their time, left so much stuff for us, our roads follow their paths, aqueducts, buildings like churches, theaters... I've seen the Hercules tower myself and it's beautiful
let us praise our conquerors who just got all that stuff from the Greeks... i.e. 'Herakles'
@@Kinuhbud greeks didn't build those roads, nor thermas nor aqueducts, nor the Hercules tower. What are you on about? Greeks also did great stuff, just not in Spain
The romans ploughed you for centuries, exploited you while they were the ones living the high life and you were the drones.
It's how empires work.
@@eu29lex16 the romans exploited the celts. Actual spanish people are so mixed (celts, romans, germans, saxons, arabs, goths...) that I'm far from feeling a conection with people from 2k years ago.
Also yeah, but just like many other examples through history, it turned out for the better in the end, upgrading the lifestyle of the citizens. It's not like they were enjoying what they harvested themselves (kings, nobility...)
@@sergiopepe2210 " that I'm far from feeling a conection with people from 2k years ago. "- That's a stupid analogy, the point is that the exploited you and that you are glad about that.
"it turned out for the better in the end, upgrading the lifestyle of the citizens."- Lol, it didn't upgrade anything, the resources the romans took could have been used to develop yourselves 5 better.
"It's not like they were enjoying what they harvested themselves (kings, nobility...)"- They did actually, the resources exploited from all areas(and labor) made life overall better in Rome, while the rest of the provinces were ATM machines.
"Better living conditions", lmfao, you could have done 5 times better if you kept the resources.
When romans came in England they exploited the hell out of it, they build stuff for themselves to do the job better and when they left people still lived in mud huts.
Use your brain, why would a freaking invader/conquerer be interested in YOUR living conditions ?That's your problem, what's he interested is is your taxes, resources and labor.
Always love your videos about Rome, Italy, and Latin. With Halloween just days away...have you ever thought about doing videos about some of many lesser Roman festivals and celebrations. I'm not talking about the Saturnalia or Ferragosto but some of the many lesser known festivals and celebrations.
Central heating, swimming pool, steam bath, library, road network, signal towers, central government ... I feel you can make a second part of "modern Roman things".
10:40
Honestly, the way the weights look just like modern weights surprised me more than the underwear.
You could probably list hundreds of things like this to be honest. I remember when I saw an exhibition of Pompeii they had a cast of the body of a dog. The dog's collar had rotted away but they knew it was there because it had iron spikes all around it, exactly like a modern dogs collar. Its crazy to think we've been doing that since Roman times.
A good number of Roman mosaics
display dogs with spiked collars.
Not really surprising, as the spikes are not decorative, they serve a practical purpose.
Rotweillers are derived from a Roman breed. At least according to the Sopranos
@@dango470 no, according to many books about dogs. "According to the FCI Standard, the Rottweiler is considered to be one of the oldest surviving dog breeds. Its origin goes back to Roman times. These dogs were kept as herder or driving dogs. They marched over the Alps with the Roman legions, protecting the humans and driving their cattle."
My late husband was a member of the Pony Express Association, in Nevada... The group did “re rides” of portions of the actual route... He loved it!! ❤🐎❤
Shout-out to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus
for the same *year* delivery service! 👌
When I visited Pompeii, the fact about the water system that really blew my mind was not that the aqueduct served private homes, businesses and public water fountains, but that they were tapped in at different levels so that, in the event of a drought, private homes lost water first, then businesses, and finally the public fountains.
That and that some of the Roman drinking fountains are still running off of basically the same system.
Just imagine if the Romans had developed steam power effectively! They had the metallurgical skills to build rudimentary steam engines, but only used steam for toys and novelties. Think how they could have developed manufacturing, mining, quarrying, irrigation, powered ships etc.
Virgin Carthaginian elephant
Vs
Chad Roman Caesar 3 Tank
@@spiffygonzales5160 who would win: a mighty war elephant or some roman boys with javelins?
They had no incentive to. They had slaves for all of that
They didn't have the metallurgical ability to make _useful_ steam engines, Hero's engine only really works as a toy. To get a real amount of useful work out of a steam engine it needs to operate at much higher than atmospheric pressure.
@@WJS774
And if you get the pressure too high or if the construction of the boiler isn't sturdy enough, well. It isn't pretty.
Ooh that one about bacteria was really neat.
I think I heard somewhere that some Roman soldiers carried glass lenses so they could start fires with the sun. If that's true, maybe somebody was able to put together a very crude microscope, and they were able to see something.
One requires 200x mag. to see Eucaryotes, 400x for E. Coli and 1000x for most general bacteria..(with modern grade optics)..
It would be a wild stretch to say they had optics for such viewing.
@@r0ky_M You can see microscopic pluricellular life even with not that much zoom. 20x is more than enough to see paramecia and other microscopic pluricellular life, more than enough to suppose smaller things might exist. After all, Greek philosophers already had postulated an atomic theory of sorts centuries previously!
@@nowaki23
The discussion is about bacteria..and Democritus atomic theory was just that , they had zero demonstrable evidence of such.
@@r0ky_M The discussion was about microorganisms, not bacteria specifically. There are microscopic organisms that can cause illness. And erroneously, you are talking specifically about unicellular life (still incorrectly tbf, considering dimensions may vary wildly, amoebas can be as big as to be visible to the naked eye if you have above average vision, some eukaryotic egg cells are huge etc. Even Bacteria and Archaea can vary in size by orders of magnitude) and even still, the original comment here refers to seeing something that is microscopic, not necessarily seeing bacteria.
As per your second point yes, it was a theory, no evidence of such... And so? It shows they had a concept of things that might exist even if they are not visible. I did not assume they knew what atoms where, just that they were able to suppose something smaller than what is visible to the naked eye might exist.
@@nowaki23
Read the first line of the OP where it says bacteria.
There's a Roman lighthouse in Dover in England. There were 2 others but sadly their stone was plundered to build other things - like Dover Castle - as so many Roman buildings were. The remaining one only survived because it was converted into a belfry for the church. Its not as impressive as that Spanish one though!
The Romans either invented or polarized I door heating systems. I rember reading about Roman ruins in the British Isles having indoor heating systems.
The lighthouse amplifier brings to mind the Lake Nemi pleasure barges with piston hydraulics, ball bearings, and folding anchors that would be re-invented centuries later. The Romans could apparently invent just about anything if the situation called for it.
Nope! Actually, the Romans invented NONE of the 10 things described in this video! The Greeks and the Egyptians/ Middle Eastern /Mesopotamian people had already invented every single one of them. The Romans were good soldiers and organizers but scientifically and culturally they were considerably behind the people I mentioned!
Imperial Rome also had an advanced banking system which used fiat currency, which facilitated the exchange of money using physical coins. The earliest banks in ancient Rome were located in temples. They would charge interest on loans, exchange money, and track their finances through written records.
Thus, Jesus throwing the money-lenders out of the temple. Although they were essential in converting different types of currency into a common one.
Except it wasn’t a fiat currency, it was backed by gold and silver.
@@Slender_Man_186 they had both at different points in time, just like us.
@@Slender_Man_186 That is exactly the definition of a fiat currency.
@@lamwen03 That is the exact _opposite_ of a fiat currency. By definition, a fiat currency is _not_ backed by anything.
The first thing I recognized when I was watching the show Spartacus was that almost all the dialog felt like it was a script in Roman period Latin that was translated word for word, literally into modern English. Add to that the point made in this video on profanity being extremely recognizable. Whether it was an accurate representation or not, it gave a sense of authenticity or immersion to it that I have not seen replicated (or tried, for that matter) anywhere else.
I actually knew about the Cave Canem-Beware the Dog thing from way before I even went to school cuz my grandpa used that phrase quite a bit when we were on walks(our dogs were always well behaved and never attacked anybody but my grandpa sometimes just told me trivia/little bits of knowledge like this. He was a very well-read individual) he also taught me this sort-of mix-latin(and Polish in original version) line/sentence. I walk down the street a canis barks at me, I hit the canins with a lapis the canins runs away.
Thank you for continuing to create these entertaining and educational videos. I've learnt so much from following your channel.
Roman surgery and medical treatment was quite advanced as well, Caesarian sections and cataract surgery for instance.
"a computer pretends to be a phone" this just made me smile
Something you didn't mention was forced air central heating, which I had always thought of as being quite modern, and was quite surprised when I found out that it dated back to the Romans. Although I don't know how prevalent it was. Also, Roman concrete was quite superior to ours, which has a relatively limited lifespan due to the type of ash we use.
I’ve heard it may be because they added animal blood and hair to the mix, which would be complicated to do on an industrial scale.
Plus, I don’t want to have to hear whinging about needing Vegan buildings.
@@kielbasamage Wood buildings have been around a long time although Vegans don't generally eat that part of the trees.
The forced air heating was called "hypocauston" (a greek word) and it was used in the "thermae" (another greek word), where the heating was needed to heat some spaces (laconicum, calidarium, tepidarium) and pools. But it was used also in some big mansions of wealthy people.
Using urine as toothpaste sounds nasty, but it has ammonia in it. A base that kills germs. I just wonder how they got the taste of the other byproducts out of it.
I also read that in some places urine was boiled in a pot until evaporated, and the leftover ammonia salts scraped from the inside of the pot would be used to make poultices for wound dressing for similar purposes.
Healthy urine has very low amounts of ammonia in it. You can get a bladder infection with bacteria being present in urine because it does not work well as an antimicrobial agent. You would need very concentrated urine to get enough ammonia to achieve that effect.
I don't think they got the taste out. I think they just dealt with it. I remember when I was a kid i hated toothpaste and my parents had to hold my nose to brush my teeth. I was like a toddler. I said it was "too spicy" lol
Then when I got older it just didn't bother me at all. First of all I'm sure they had mint which is what we use or emulate in dental products now. But I can imagine they just grew accustomed to the taste of urine after a while. It sounds gross but try to imagine it.
I can imagine they would laugh If we went back and told them we wipe our asses with PAPER or "papyrus"
Or if we tried to get them to use toothpaste. They would probably think it tasted horrendous and prefer the natural urine which they can gather or produce themselves.
My friend had really bad acne in his teenage years. He used urine to treat it and it actually helped 😅
Tho he only told this recently.
@@Intranetusa It may have been used just to whiten the teeth, just as it was used to whiten laundry.
We underestimate the ancient civilizations too much.
Modern day hubris, my friend
Amazing video as always! Keep up the great work❤️ Also the last point was mindblowing😱
Romans had machinery too. I would've liked to hear what kinds of mechanical devices were used in daily life.
They had steam engines.
@@sugarnads The steam device you alude to was a mere curiosity -- it wasn't used as a tool. I'm curious about things used in daily life, and perhaps in warfare (like catapults and balistas, for example, or the elevators in the Colosseum). Even something as simple as scissors, and padlocks -- I'm curious about those, how elaborate or advanced they were.
Don't know much about daily life, but thier water powered mills were really impressive, and no they did not need steam to do some real industrial scale stuff. Rome's entire demand for flour was met by 12 industrial scale water powered grain mills, and the thin wooden sheets for plywood was processed by large water driven saws cutting away at a log on a lathe like device.
@@nosajimiki5885, those are some of the kinds of machines I am curious about. Thank you for the information.
Ok the last one really blew my mind, it really makes me wonder how much did the romans know and we didn't find out yet.
I always loved the Asterix comics. I like how they always compare Roman things with a wink to modern life. And as far as I know. They are not far off. Or it is simply accurate.
What an awesome video. I stuck till the end, my mind was blown too. I enjoyed the energy you portrayed telling these things. Thank you, it was fun
Such a great video full of interesting information!
Thank you for all you do. :)
In regards to bacteria, the Romans believed swamps contained some sort of miasma (toxic air) that caused diseases such as malaria. That is why Romans drained swamps. So in that case, they were unaware that mosquitoes and the diseases they carried were actually responsible for illness, so they did the right thing of draining the swamps for the wrong reasons.
Great video.
That building in Spain was very interesting. I always like to see how older cultures built tall structures with multiple floors.
The Romans had augers, known as the Archimedes Screw, used to pump water uphill. We think of augers today as drills for boring holes, but if you reverse the auger, you pump the drilled material out. Since they didn’t have electricity, they were controlled by rotating a large screw manually, most likely cranked by slave labor.
I agree. History is my passion and I do often contemplate how difficult life was in the past. I think many people in developed countries take things for granted, but the reality is most people today, even if they think they don’t have much, have it a lot better than most of humanity prior to the mid/late 20th century.
My parents were born in the 50s. When my mum was a child the family home didn’t have an indoor toilet. My paternal grandfather started work down the pit (that’s Northern English for mine) at 14. This was in the early 1900s when this job was still hard labour and was probably one of the most brutally physically demanding jobs you could have. Of course, health and safety wasn’t a thing back then, and accidents resulting in multiple deaths on the job could and did happen. When my father was a child they had red meat once a week. Which interestingly may be where the British tradition of Sunday dinner came from: less tradition in those days, more practicality because you couldn’t afford meat more often. Both my parents related how a bathtub back in those days was literally a tub that you got out of the cupboard and filled with manually heated water. And as you also touched on, these things are nothing compared to what most of our ancestors had to cope with on a daily basis.
In contrast to today, I have a friend who has never had a job, yet has a roof over her head, hot and clean water on tap and enough food (internet too).
Also, not living with the constant threat of war, where invading/conquering forces often raped, looted and murdered the local populace, is a nice bonus.
You know history? Than can you tell me whether or not ancient people had square jawlines? Or is the square jaw a only a recent genetic feature?
I would posit that the 'Tower of Hercules' was preceeded by the 'Pillars of Hercules', which were two pillars on which were placed a fire of burning wood. The reason there were two pillars is that they would make one fire ready while the other was burning and with two pillars they were able to keep one fire burning at all times. These are the famous Pillars of Hercules mentioned by Solon in the legend of Atlantis.
Why couldn't they add more wood to the already burning fire?
@@TheGingey because
@@TheGingey It is just a simple matter of practicalities, as the first fire burns, you clear the remains from the previous fire on the second pillar, and build a new pyre of wood, it would have to be built up by stacking in a stable way, and would probably be a very high stack of firewood.
So it is a simple practical matter of preparing one pile of wood on one pillar while the other pillar's fire is burning.
With time this was upgraded to a proper lighthouse by the Phoenicicans and then upgraded again by the Romans.
It is a very strategic lighthouse for sea trade.
And is probably the most important historical lighthouse
Don't you know the Pillars of Creation came first many millions of years before the Pillars of Hercules?
If only I had encountered so great of a history teacher in lower and middle school. It would have whetted the appetite to go farther down these roads of discovery and interest. Kudos and thanks to the professor, as always.
Steal BLACK FRIDAY deal and get Atlas VPN Premium for $1.70/mo + 6 months extra. Limited-time offer! atlasv.pn/Metatron
Before I watch the video, I gotta wonder if you mention doggy bags from restaurants.
Verry informative! Enjoyed it a LOT 👍 Thank you, sir 👍
Wow! awesome video Metatron I didn’t know some of these, thanks for sharing them with us.
Also, could you do one of these for the Middle Ages too? Would make a great mini series.
Cool and impressive video! It made me think of the TV Tropes "Older Than They Think" trope.
That *itself* is a trope *within* a trope called "Truth in Television".
The Romans had some pretty sophisticated uses for glass...I think with the addition of lenses and possibly even the addition of water, the Romans could theoretically see micro-organisms in a very rudimentary way. Maybe a philosopher or academic invented something very delicate that didn't last 2,000 years? He said they could not be seen with the naked eye, but that they still could be _seen..._ It's a shame Alexandria and it's records burned.
One requires 200x mag. to see Eucaryotes, 400x for E. Coli and 1000x for most general bacteria..
It would be a wild stretch to say they had optics for that.
Lol, the even wider stretch is Varro just said they "cannot be seen by the eyes". He didn't say anything about "naked" eyes, or hat they "still could be seen". That are quotes from a 21st century UA-cam commenter, not from a 1st century BC Roman statesman.
Great work like always!
Now we see the real reason Metatron moved to the US, he is forming a legion to take us over!
Animal or human urine as a dental rinse was an extreme advance for the time, it was the first mouthwash with urea I don't think the Romans invented it but they were surely the ones who made it fashionable (I'm a dental surgeon 👍 excellent video greetings from Argentina...
And yes it work but I don't recommend at all 😁
Love that cinematic intro! Great quality video, as always!
I really like your presentation. First time I've seen your work. Thanks
off the top of my head:
Thermae, which is basically modern spa - state owned, no less!
Cement - which was handy substitute for stone in many buildings
Fast food - sold in small shops on the streets of rome
Aquaeducts - of course!
Highway system - and all of them led to Rome...
The Antikythera mechanism, Ancient Greek hand-powered, oldest example of an analogue computer, recovered from a shipwreck, May 17 1902, and dated to be between 150 BCE to 100 BCE.
I guess ancient people were smarter and more advanced than we give them credit for.
We know that certain temples in Egyptian and ancient Greece used hydraulic system to make doors open and close and statues sing and ove as by magic.
I wonder how common it was though. It must have been made out of desperation for a very specific purpose.
@@juanmccoy3066 It may have been may to keep track of religious dates, festivals. Planets were named after Gods, so keeping track of them, would also be very important to them.
@@juanmccoy3066 The Antikythera mechanism is too complex and well developed to be a prototype or one off, it's something that had to go thro a product development cycle. There were probably lot's of these things and they probably took decades to develop, however the Greeks would have had good reason to not share them with anyone else. The device was recently (last few years) laser scanned and computer modeled to figure out what it did, and not only was it an astronomical calendar, but it could keep time like a spring-loaded pocket watch. If you look at renaissance and earlier maps, they regularly had an odd width distortion. This is b/c it was easy to determine ones latitude while at sea (star and sun positions), but not your longitude. You needed to be able to determine the exact time down to the minute to properly gauge longitude while at sea when using the stars. A sundial doesn't work at night (when you can sea the stars) and a gravity powered clock (like a grandfather clock) gets out of sync at sea due to the waves. The single biggest leap forward the Antikythera device gave to the ship it was aboard was the ability to accurately determine longitude and thus make superior maps. This sort of mechanical time keeping device wouldn't be replicated till the late 1700s. Now, as anyone with military experience or has ever crewed a ship can tell you, having accurate maps is the difference between life and death, victory or defeat. Whoever made this device, whatever city-state or university that spent probably decades developing it, probably held it a closely guarded secret since it was such a massive boon. Huge strategic implications.
@@igorscot4971 To add on to the religious significance of the device, there's actually some records from the Macedonian Wars that suggest one of these devices was used. The Roman Legion won a battle decisively b/c they knew about an upcoming eclipse and knew it would spook both sides, but they were able to warn their own troops about it beforehand. Their enemies panicked on the field while the Romans used it to their advantage. Supposedly, they got the forewarning from their Greek allies and an astronomy device they had. It's quite possible that it was indeed a Antikythera mechanism used, or perhaps a related model of device. The one extant example is simply too complex to be some one off that some eccentric inventor made and never replicated. Too much precision work in making the bronze gears and cogs. There were almost certainly many of these things. One key rule of archeology is of course if you find one instances of something, it's assumed to be not unique at all, but rather it's simply the only example of it we've managed to find.
Always enjoy your videos Noble Sir!
Your videos always cheer me up.
Heres a good video idea.
How close were they to industrialization. I have recently seen evidence the were very close and had to some degree done it for flour production.
Raff, I'd like to see you do a video regarding Roman soldiers leaving the solder's life and if it was possible/easy. Not sure if you have ever addressed that subject. I realize it's unlikely to be accurate, but in the movie Gladiator the main character, Maximus, is commanded by the emperor to remain with the army. I wonder if this has any historical precedent. Keep up the great work you do.
Always love your videos.
This was a really great informative video, just like your older videos nice to see that again.
That's awesome. Actually there is one part that you only passingly mentioned which caught my interest: that the upper apartments were cheaper because they didn't have water supply. Lately I've been trying to get my head around a particular topic. What is the density of the ancient world? What brought my attention to it was my recent discovery that the ancient city of Rome was only 24 square kilometres in size. Most mid-sized towns are bigger than that, so that threw me. And it was the largest city in the ancient world, and continued to be the largest city to have ever been built until the 18th century. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Well, that's roughly 1 million people living in 24 square kilometres. They would have to have lived in stacked apartments, and with a significant number of people living in one apartment.
Then I went down the rabbit of trying to figure out what the total population of the entire world was back then, which is really hard to estimate. But I don't think I've seen an estimate above half a billion.
I think we lack a perspective on demographics from back then. For example, we think "women didn't go to war back then because they were sexist back then." Well not denying that, but if your population is only a few tens of thousands of people, sending too many of your women into battle seems awfully risky. One bad battle and the future of your people is gone. Or how about the idea that all of this advanced technology around us comes from us just figuring out how to solve a problem. You see that idea sometimes in idealistic movies and shows where civilization is "reset" and they just casually rebuild everything from scratch. No, I think having an incredibly massive complex interconnected workforce may also have something to do with it.
Upper floor apartments were also cheaper because you had to walk up so many stairs to get to them. The same thing happened in Paris in the 19th and into the 20th century. The apartment blocks of the time would have wealthy merchants and minor nobles living on the "ground floors" (technically a half floor up as the basements weren't completely below ground) with each floor up from there being progressively poorer and lower-class until you had single shop girls being on the last full floor and the proverbial starving artist living in the attic/lofts. It wouldn't be until elevators became common that the upper floors of building became "high end" because you'd be further away from the street noise.
Please review season 2 of Barbarians. It went form being mostly historically accurate, to a completely new story. I did like the show, but it bothered me that it wasn't historically accurate.
:/ i hadn't started season 2 yet...
Done!
@@metatronyt Your season 2 review video was on point. You mentioned other historical misrepresentations that I did not think about before. Your video was also comical and I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you Sir
@@FieldHoodGaming I’m glad to hear that!
You have a giant head and tiny shoulders. No offense!
Thanks for the video, always enjoy watching!
Pedant here: not"transportaion", but" transport." Your quality is usually perfect! Always so interesting ans clearly explained. THank you.
imagine how much more advanced we all be if Rome never fell and all this knowledge wasnt lost
I love this topic. And there is much more to it. For example, the Romans knew about gears, crankshafts, piston-cylinders, etc.
I also think the Egyptians had that also
top notch sponsor transition right there, saw it coming but was smart af.. incredibilis
Fascinating! I had no idea about Terentius' 'germ theory' . Thank You!
Raph, are you going to do a review on the 2nd season of Barbarians? There's actually an example of Roman underwear in it, although I have no idea of how historically accurate the design was.
Done but I didn't talk about the underwear.
I believe the earliest known iron was found in the Indus River Valley as rings
One ring to rule them all. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Always interesting, cheers!
A theory pops to mind about the microbes, since the person was talking specifically of swamp water. It's an environment where you might see tiny creatures of various sizes in the water and find that those creatures cause a range of maladies. You might then find that if you look with magnifying glasses, you can see even smaller creatures than you were able to see before and after that you might find that even if you remove these tiny creatures that you can find, the swamp water might still cause a variety of sickness. You still know it's the tiny creatures that are the cause, not the water itself, since when those creatures visible with the naked eye infest your body, you can find them in the tissues that the sickness attacks. So from all this one might easily conjecture that there remain even smaller creatures that continue to cause sickness, but they're too small to see with the visual magnification techniques available.
I'm sure they had magnifying glasses back then, would have been hard to miss that with all the glass they made. Perhaps microscopes of a sort did exist then. It is entirely possible they stacked multiple lenses to achieve something like it.
We actually do have such an account of a sort of "magnifying glass" which is recounted in Pliny's "Natural History" if I'm not mistaken. Within it, the emperor Nero is stated to have looked through something like an emerald to get a better view of the events when he was at the colosseum (Perhaps Nero had poor vision?)
One requires 200x mag. to see Eucaryotes, 400x for E. Coli and 1000x for most general bacteria..(with modern grade optics)..
It would be a wild stretch to say they had optics for such viewing.
@@r0ky_M If they had mere 4x magnification, they could stick 4 in line to get 256x magnification, 5 in line for 1024.
It would be difficult, but surely some rich guy with too much time and a wish to see what materials are actually made of could do it.
@@frantisekvrana3902
You are fantasizing.
@@r0ky_M Am I?
That is how microscopes and telescopes work.
The guy would only need a number of clear gems or pieces of glass cut into a particular shape.
So long as one shape that magnifies is known, it is only a matter of price.
Metatron: "That's not a computer."
Tartarian keyboard warriors: 😡
That quote really blow my mind. I love this channel becouse i'm a Rome Fan boy. And every day i surprise about their knoledge and their culture.
always makes me happy to watch your vids metatron.. Also I never said what rumor is being spread about me. I have a great respect and admiration for your people
Will you make videos about the second season of barbarians?
That season absolutely sucked
Yes I’m already working on it 🎃
I really want to see a Roman use a computer
They had them. The Antikythera mechanism was an ancient computer used for astronomy I believe. It's attributed to the Greeks but existed in the Roman would and when it was made as Greece was part of Rome.
Educational and Entertaining as Always.
Grazie
What a wonderfully educational and charming video! Thank you!!
There is no language without Profanities. Profanities are always the first thing anyone learning a new language learns, so I never considered Romans to not be the same way everyone else is.
I knew they had Socks and Underwear, I did not know about the Guard Dog signs, and Plywood though or BACTERIA. That's pretty crazy.
One wonders if Caligula was the Roman Andrew Dice Clay among his other unlovely attributes.
Huge respect for actually pronouncing Latin well, a lot of people with an interest in Roman society and history have no clue how to actually pronounce their language.
My Roman Brother! Salve!! It's good to see you again
This was an interesting video. Thank you
Fantastic video thanks
Great video as always, love the skyrim map in the back I need to get me one
Very good video! :D
Very cool stuff. I did like the quote from Varro.
Your videos about the Romans are the ones I like the most. Thank you!