GUYS THEY FIGURED OUT THE ROMAN CONCRETE RECIPE THAT MAKES IT IMMUNE TO SEAWATER
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mystery-of-2000-year-old-roman-concrete-solved-by-scientists/ar-BBDO5VC
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I KNOW RIGHT?!???
I canβt help but feel this is one of those things where we had actual documents saying βit was done with this and thisβ, and some old rich white guys looked at it and went βoh mirth, the ancients were so silly. They probably wrote this basic stuff down and the actual builders had Secret Techniques we need to Discoverβ
For a long time, archeologists didnβt know how greek women did their high-piled braids and hair. There was a word that translated to βneedleβ in the descriptions. They went, βseems like weβll never know.β Then a hairdresser took a fucking needle (big needle) and did the fucking thing you do with needles, which is sew - and by sewing the braids into place, she replicated ancient styles.
The Egyptians had diagrams of construction steps for their pyramids. Archeologists went βoooh, ancient primitive people, how they do this?β LITERALLY MYTHBUSTERS OR THE OLD DISCOVERY CHANNEL or someone went βwhat if we did the thing the pictures said they didβ AND GUESS FUCKING WHAT. GUESS FUCKING WHAT.
Also that thing with native Americans saying squirrels taught them how to get sap for maple syrup, and colonizers going βthatβs a myth sweatyβ
Sincerely, if the scientists had to do actual analysis like spectroscopy or whatever, kudos, and no flame. But swear to god, if all these years, weβve had the recipes and there was just this fuckin institutional bias against just TRYING THE THING THEY SAID WOULD WORK, HELLFIRE AND DEMENTIA.
In this case, it was more they had roman writings saying what went into it but figured there was some secret because when they followed roman recipes it never turned out quite right.Β
Because the sources left by Romans always just said to mix with water. Because, if you were a Roman??? Obviously you knew that you used seawater for cement. Duh. Thatβs so obvious that they never really bothered specifying that you use seawater to mix it, because it wasnβt necessary, everyone knew that.Β
But then the empire fell, other empires rose and fell, time passed, and by the time we were trying to reconstruct the formula theΒ βmix the dry ingredients with seawaterβ trick had been forgotten, until chemical analysis finally figured it out again.Β
Itβs sort of like the land of Punt, a ally of Egypt thatβs mentioned all the time, but we donβt actually know where it was located. Because it isnβt written down anywhere. Why would they write it down? Itβs Punt. Everyone knew where Punt was back then. Itβd be ridiculous to waste the ink and space to specify where it was, every child knows about Punt.Β
3000 years later and we have no damned clue where it was, simply because at the time it was so blindingly obvious that it was never written down.Β
So moral of story is be specific
I was thinking it was stupid that they didnβt specify seawater but then I had the thought that we donβt specify to use chicken eggs in baking because DUH so we just write eggs
2000 years in the future people are going to be making scrambled fish eggs and crying bc the ancient recipes make no sense
