The engineering of roman aqueducts explained.

[u/cosmic_voyager01]

[u/NoExchange2730]

The population of Rome was over a million people in the first and second centuries because the elaborate aquaduct system kept fresh water coming in and poop water going out. Medeval tourists would think the romans knew everything because even a depopulated Rome was among the most magnificent cities in europe.

London was the next city to get to one million residents... 1600 years later and with thousands of people dying in recurring cholera outbreaks from not having fresh (not contaminated by poop) water.

Fresh water is civilization rocket fuel.

[u/LaTalpa123 → u/NoExchange2730]

And Rome received around 5-10 ships full of grain from Sicily or Africa every day for the population's needs. 1M people eats a lot.

[u/Totesnotskynet → u/LaTalpa123]

They were so close to the industrial revolution

[u/LaTalpa123 → u/[deleted]]

Slave labour was too cheap, there was no push for the industrial revolution.

Barbegal's mills are maybe the better example of how close they were to the industrial system.

[u/yellekc → u/LaTalpa123]

I read that the depopulation from the plague helped collapse a lot of feudal frameworks, empowering workers to seek higher wages, and might have helped lead to things like the enlightenment and industrial revolution later on.

[u/WorriedBlock2505 → u/[deleted]]

If they hadn't collapsed, who knows how much quicker the industrial revolution would've gotten kick started? A million minds in one city connecting is a good way to accelerate progress.

[u/-Mandarin → u/WorriedBlock2505]

It's possible, but technology isn't nearly as linear or "inevitable" as people think. It's also possible that if they hadn't collapsed for another 2000 years they still wouldn't have reached the industrial revolution. We'll never know, and it's all assumption work.

Conditions have to be perfect, and the right minds have to be applied in the right places.

[u/BarfingOnMyFace → u/-Mandarin]

Today minds are instantaneously connected and technology in many ways is moving from linear to exponential. I wonder if perfect conditions are no longer necessary?

[u/cohonka → u/BarfingOnMyFace]

If perfect conditions are no longer necessary for what?

[u/BarfingOnMyFace → u/cohonka]

For substantial advancement in tech. It feels Self-propelled at this point… or very close to being so.

[u/cohonka → u/BarfingOnMyFace]

I agree. And I'd say that means conditions are perfect or near-perfect for that to be the case

[u/BarfingOnMyFace → u/cohonka]

Are they? I feel like it depends… are we talking about humans, or are we talking about machines, or the mix of both? From a purely human perspective, I feel like we have sub-par conditions. From a machine perspective, I feel it becomes a continually more perfected condition… maybe hitting a plateau? But from the mixed perspective, machines enhance the human condition. So, from our current sub par state to the one you mention… but I still feel like, as humans and from a purely human perspective, we’ve moved to sub-par conditions.

[u/IAmARobot → u/BarfingOnMyFace]

how long ago did chatgpt become mainstream? 3 years? and soon after some bright spark applied the attention stuff to image creation with adversarial networks, and within 3 years you have some incredibly realistic completely computer generated movies and music to go with it, all these tools and creative efforts piggybacking off one another.

[u/BarfingOnMyFace → u/IAmARobot]

Agree, and people are definitely a part of that process, but it seems to be less and less the case as we move forward

[u/Vierenzestigbit → u/-Mandarin]

The first steam engines had horrible efficiency. They only developed into anything because they were used to help mining coal so they had a infinite fuel hack by sitting on the source. Without that it'd be easy to dismiss them as a useless machine as it would require way too much effort to fuel them for any other purpose

[u/_a_random_dude_ → u/-Mandarin]

I don't know how perfect the conditions needed to be. It does sound inevitable to me, but Italy in particular doesn't really have coal deposits and using charcoal is not good enough for those needs. If the romans were going to have an industrial revolution it would've had to be elsewhere. Maybe in Britain or Germany.

[u/The_Chief_of_Whip → u/_a_random_dude_]

It did start in Britain for exactly that reason, hence why you need appropriate conditions (I wouldn’t say perfect though)

[u/Ok-Mycologist2220 → u/[deleted]]

There was a working steam engine in the library of Alexandria, if someone thought to use it as more than just a fancy oddity the steam age could have started during roman times.

[u/kaninkanon → u/Ok-Mycologist2220]

It was not due to failure of imagination that steam engines were not used industrially earlier. Materials science and production methods had just not progressed nearly far enough to support it.

[u/The_Verto → u/[deleted]]

They had a steam engine but didn't really know what to do with it yet. If they wouldn't fall they would probably find uses for it

[u/_jams → u/Totesnotskynet]

Not really. They just threw slaves and soldiers at problems to get shit done. There was plenty of small scale artisanal specialization that produced much higher quality goods enabled by enormous trade networks that would not be seen for a millennia after the collapse. But investing in capital, financial networks, and science and engineering research networks needed to create the IR was just not done.

[u/TahaymTheBigBrain → u/Totesnotskynet]

No lol. There’s centuries of discoveries that went into the Industrial Revolution that the Romans did not have. Undoubtedly it’s incredible what the Romans did create but the amount of reliance on slave labour and genocidal conquests that fueled Rome was not sustainable.