Out of Place Artifacts and other things: Update and Review 2010!, page 10

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Sinter Klaas

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I'm an architect in training. Won't be able to actually practice architecture for another 7 years. Thank New York State for that . I live with it. I don't have a secret. I just study history to learn the future. I love the patterns of history.

One interesting thing is how Rome was so advanced, and the whole world destroyed it out of anger and hatred and some jealousy. Then for the next 2000 years they tried to rebuild it, realizing what they destroyed.

uh what? for someone who studies history, you don't seem to know much about rome and why it failed.
where are you getting the idea that they were really advanced? sure they had aqueducts and plumbing, and cement, but they still were limited to horses and fought with swords.
barely anyone could read, and very few people lived to be more than 60, most dying decades before that from disease and war.
also western rome fell 1500 years ago, not 2000.

It's not easy for many to accept, but realizing that we are only 200 years more advanced than Rome, and only 300 years more advanced than 1500 BC Minoan society, It sets off a fire in your soul. The need to make this life matter and not waste it. We've already wasted over 2000 years of human history doing nothing by sobbing over what we lost. I've sobbed. It's time to build and remake this world for mankind and make sure we don't make the same mistakes.

oh come on, how the heck would you know that? how do you even know that they would come close to anything we can make in 200 years? at most all the things we have invented might have come a few hundred years sooner, but a lot of things we have invented could well have been thought of as toys and never would have been developed.

I am no archeologist. I just read a lot about lost peoples.

And as to how old I am, I am not. lol. I'm barely through a 5th of my life and it scares me sometimes. I am grateful for my knowledge. lol. I've only recently learned to use it.

[edit on 25-7-2010 by Gorman91]

[edit on 26-7-2010 by Gorman91]

i think you need to work on your knowledge a bit, like maybe learning about the complex reasons rome fell, jealousy being the least of them.
no rome fell due to arrogance, an unsupportable economy, political strife, spreading the empire too thin, hatred, racism, and the migration of the germanic tribes being a large number of things.
some say even religious change might of had some effect, though it might just be anti-christian.

as advanced as rome was in comparison to the civilizations around it, it isn't close to modern times, unless you say discount all the technology and advancement in philosophy we have.

reply to post by demongoat

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Rome fell because they went bankrupt. That was due to selling off their nation to foreign causes. Rome was not stretched too thin. It stopped growing when it needed to. Then it got too caught up in it's own problems, then Christianity changed its morality and economics, then it started selling land for war assets. In actuality, Rome was effectively "terraforming" the culture. When it fell in the 400s, it was not conquered by undressed barbarians with no intelligence. The people who conquered Rome was in effect Roman. They may not have flown the flag of Rome, but they war its armor, had its technology, and spoke its languages, if only partially.

they
Now as to how advanced Rome was, They were very advanced. They started falling back as they became too concerned with other things. Their height of advancement was around 200 AD.

Your statement that just because they still used horses and words makes them primitive is ignorant at best. Rome had more than that.

In terms of war assets alone, they had semi automatic ballistas, compact sniper nest weapons like the Scorpio , which a well trained group of could take out the entire command structure of an invading enemy. They had semi automatic handheld variants called Cheiroballistra that were similar to Crossbows. Probably imports from China. They also had various Onager weapons, which might as well have been a form of mortar. Underground, during the siege of Ambracia, the Romans essentially used poison gas mines along side their other weapons.

Outside of war, the Romans had a steam engine, called Aeolipile. There is evidence for railroad work in Diolkos. There was no steam train, rest assured. But the technology existed in the day to create a train as we know it. They simply never put the two together. They even had paddle boats. The thing that, on the Mississippi, created the conditions for the steam boat. Again, they never actually did this. They simply had the means to.
www.sciencenews.gr...

There's even a few bits of data on Greek inventions that include programmable carts.

www.youtube.com...

You may have heard about the Antikythera mechanism I assume.

Rome as you know had plumbing and other such things. But their architecture, specifically cement, is more than you give it credit for. It's why the Pantheon still stands while most of the dark ages is in ruin.

Then there is the fact they knew about bacteria, God knows how:

"When building a house or farm especial care should be taken to place it at the foot of a wooded hill where it is exposed to health-giving winds. Care should be taken where there are swamps in the neighbourhood, because certain tiny creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes breed there. These float through the air and enter the body by the mouth and nose and cause serious disease." Marcus Varro.

There is also evidence for both brain and eye surgery to get things fixes when needed. Survival was descent, but not guaranteed.

Age was around 60-80 depending on wealth. Pretty good for its time.

And finally, Literacy. It existed. And many could read and write. They find graffiti in many towns written by the common folk, indicating it was something many knew. They find notes and letters between citizens and soldiers during campaigns, suggesting a literate army. Reading and writing education goes back all the way to ancient Greece and the Romans continued it. It was at around 20% of the population in Rome, which considering the population of slaves, makes sense. But even slaves were taught when needed and learned on the job. These estimates are based off actual schools, not offhand understanding by job experience or others. They could be higher, but nobody took statistics of it. It seems that the western provinces had it lower, but Rome was where it was highest in the Roman Era. Greeks were very interested in teaching as many as possible. It was usually private, but payment was reasonable.

All and all, we're looking at a very advanced people. They were as advanced as the United States circa early 1800s, plus or minus a few things. We had more industrial knowledge. But we didn't surpass their medical capabilities until WW1.

reply to post by Hanslune

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Well technically if you replaced one of the 4 base pairs of dna, you would have alien dna because it would be dna not based off Earth's standard "code".

And btw, there are huge variations besides just the 4 base pairs we use. Furthermore, changing the base pair changes the final form. Replacing one might make the brain into a stomach for another species, Who knows.

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