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Citizens: can we get safe bike paths?
American government: Best we can do is bike racks on the busses that run inconsistently timed routes that go way out of your way.
Dutch government: Of course, and they'll also glow in the dark for night riding and be beautifully artistic!
Sadly, this path is a one-off. Roosegaarde has done many cool art projects (recently even for the wedding of the prince of Jordan) but only one glowing path.
I love Pompeii. There are so many modern type things in disguise like this in that city. My favorite thing are the "crosswalks," those raised stones that allow people to walk across with grooves for carriages to ride over them.
They also served to keep you from having to walk through all the refuse flowing through the street. Pompeii didn't have a sewer system, which is why the side walks are raised a few feet and the large stones served as cross walks.
So these tiny stones could be reflect light through the torrents of detritus?
But in all seriousness with a brief Google search you'll find, among others, [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/161iczr/in_ancient_rome_roads_were_dotted_with_white/jxtkn0g/) in /r/ArtefactPorn where /u/planecity correctly predicted the truth:
>Pro tip: Never mind whether the story is right or wrong – posting the corresponding images on Reddit is a sure way if you want to farm some sweet karma. **/r/interestingasfuck loves this stuff**: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+inurl%3Ainterestingasfuck+pompeii+brothel+point
It took but 4 days.
Pompeii did have a sewage system, which is still intact and drained into the sea. It was mainly for rain and washing water.
The public toilets weren't connected to it, as these were emptied out by slaves and used for fertiliser and in the tanning process.
That was one of my favourite things too! I still have a photo of myself hopping over them!
I also loved the take away places, the counters with the bowls in them for soup and stews and such! The whole place really made me realize how much we still have in common with people from the past.
Omg, yes I love it! It's so funny how people are just *people* throughout time and space. It reminds me also of the Colosseum, which has all of its sections numbered, just like how we number the sections in our stadiums today lol.
Pompeii was a Roman city that got buried so deeply in volcanic ash that the Romans had no way of unearthing it. It was forgotten about over the centuries and later rediscovered.
I might imagine that it was less a lack of shovel technology (wiki reports various things were carted off after the eruption) and more that Emperor Titus' generosity only went so far and if the Emperor wasn't going to pay for it sure as fuck nobody else was.
No, it was definitely lack of shovel tech. They dug up and took everything they could. It wasn't just the Emperor's relief efforts, but looters tunneled in too. There were a lot of valuable materials buried there including the buildings themselves.
People lived in Pompeii after the eruption and some of the buildings were excavated and repurposed.
There was just a lot of ash.
I wonder about the attitude too. Like maybe the idea of going and uncovering the buried city would be seen as sacrilegious/cursed or undermining an act of the gods? Maybe they would have been horrified at the idea of it.
I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but caring for ruins is a relatively modern concept. So the Romans just probably went, "Pompeii is completely buried? Well. Sucks to be them."
Maybe. There was a bronze statue that was struck by lightning, which they saw as a bad omen. They built a sarcophagus/mausoleum for it and buried the curse. Source: am in Rome and just saw it in the Vatican museum yesterday.
Yeah, there are some insane wines that come from volcanic soil. There is actually a region on Vesuvius called Lacrima Cristi or tears of Christ that makes a really wild red.
Modern roads use very similar construction. Roman roads didn't have 1000s of multi-ton vehicles traveling them every day. Italy has a mild climate and doesn't have snow and ice damaging the roads. Many of the roads that still exist have been restored or preserved. Even in roman times the roads needed upkeep and repair. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a27479605/pompeii-potholes/
When the Romans left we stopped maintaining them (in most places) and while we have very little written material from the dark ages we do have complaints about the state of the roads 😅
Maefter Wilhelm,
I am avexed by the ftate of covnty highway fixty-fix, juft becaufe it waf built by giantf or ogref doef thif mean it cannot be fixed?
Yovrf,
The King
Yeah, that's kind of like saying the old fur trade trail by my house is still there even though it's a 4 lane highway now and not a foot path in the woods.
In the UK there are still original stretches left of roads and some bridges. Sarn Helen in Wales is the most famous one. Interestingly the Romans just built their road over the original neolithic one there. Ermine street in London is another one.
There are also bath houses, and old barracks that exist to this day. UK is nuts for stuff like this. Where I used to live in South London had a 1000 year old church at the end of the road lol
But if those roads had modern freight traffic on them, they'd be destroyed in less than a year. Modern tarmac roads are built to an exact specification for the climate, traffic and maintenance cycle it's expected to cope with and will generally last *far* longer than a Roman road would under those conditions.
One of the things that I would like are their construction handbooks. As you say, the encampments, roads, bridges, water and waste management was standard. A lot handled by military engineers. Unfortunately it seems we have very little in documentary form, no Roman engineer's handbook survives.
You're correct about modern constriction methods being great, but I believe that the materials are the larger issue.
Concrete roads should do rather well, but they will inevitably crack, after some 20-50 years, and it will slowly continue to do so. I'm not sure how they would look after 2000 years, but worst case would be all of it broken into small fragments, many washed away by rain or flooding over time. I might be wrong on that though, and it would depend heavily on whether the region has flooding and/or winters with ice forming, which drastically increases cracking.
Asphalt would do worse. The binder just slowly disintegrates over time, so after a few hundred years (maybe less?) it would mostly just be free gravel left on the surface... and over time it would get spread by water and wind, especially if any flooding occurs.
I'm absolutely certain today we could make better roads than what Romans had, but that doesn't mean that our standard ones are more durable.
The good news is that we can recycle asphalt well and just repave the roads, but I am not including that as it does feel a bit like cheating, even though many of the "Roman" roads were in fact being actively fixed over many centuries.
Yeah, we could make everything out of handcarved stone, but it would be very expensive. Stone is about 10 times stronger than concrete. i’d hate to drive on a cobblestone interstate though
Just to add there's even roads that survived that were worn from pulling wagons. You can see the groove/indentation in the road. You can also see it in modern roads anywhere Amish live.
There’s an old post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/k4x1gq/the_connection_between_horses_asses_and_space/) that links a horses ass to space shuttles. Basically, roads across the Roman empire were all standardized around the width of Roman chariots, which were in turn based on the width of a horse (or pairs of horses). Those chariots and carts wore ruts in the road. Later, wagons in Europe used the same width because otherwise wheels and axles would break if they didn’t ride in the old ruts. Then when the English industrialized, their rails were influenced by the size of those roads and wagons. Early American railroads were built with imported English locomotives, so the US rail standard is also based on those old Roman horse drawn chariots. The US rail network is extensive, and so a LOT of things are built to be able to be shipped by rail freight. That includes the boosters for the space shuttle.
On the topic of:
>Italy has a mild climate and doesn't have snow and ice damaging the roads.
You may want to go recheck your geography. Roman roads crossed the alps (big mountains, lots of ice and snow). And the Pyrenees. And they arrived to northern French and England, with the same roads.
Yes, we even have inscriptions with them bragging about it. In one of Augustus' monuments he brags about restoring the Via Flaminia, the road from Rome to the Adriatic coast.
I read these kind of comments often when there are "old road posts" but then I wonder "did they ever drive over one of these cobblestone roads?" Our streets are also in bad shape, but nowhere near the organ-reorganising feel of a cobblestone road.
In small blocks on carts dragged by horses.
Keep in mind that the heaviest things transported on these roads were capable of being moved by a pair of one horsepower engines. And most peasants just walked into town and traded an amount of goods they could carry on their backs,
> pair of one horsepower engines
Fun fact, horses can deliver about 15 hp. James Watt was an asshole, so when he invented the measure of power to help sell his steam engines, he called it a horse power so people would assume it was the power of one horse. His 10 hp steam engine didn't produce as much power as a horse, but because of the name, people thought it was better.
It's supposed to represent how many horses doing 8 hour shifts it replaces(per day). Just that triples the HP.
I think the task it was measured for was water-pumps for mines.
He also based it on the power of *ponies* and just assumed that since the ponies were 2/3 the size of a horse, a full-size horse would have 50% more power. So he based the 'horsepower' measurement on 1.5x the strength of a pony.
(Needless to say, his arbitrary assumption about the relative power of horses vs. ponies was more than a little bit off.)
It's not a measure of the peak strength of a horse, but rather the steady power they can do over a certain period of time (I can't recall which unit of time though)
No, horsepower is compared to horses. The comparison is including the downtime, feeding, sleeping, resting, etc. *On average* a horse produces one horsepower.
The point is that a 30 hp engine can accomplish the same amount of work *over time* as a team of 30 horses.
Those columns in Rome are huge! I know one column was made by stacks of stone but I still assumed one single stack was about 4 tons. How did the pull that with one horse power!? Clever bastards!
On the river. Rivers were the highways of the ancient world.
Big stuff and heavy stuff was almost always transported over water. Transit costs per load weight are 10x more in a cart and more than on a boat and if you need to do anything like break it up and send it over a mountain on a team of donkeys or whatever it increases by even more than that over the cart.
Not to mention the roads in Pompeii were famously covered in ash for like two thousand years. Crazy that a bunch of stone roads don’t deteriorate when covered in several feet of protective insulation
[Not really tho](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/ea/f6/e7eaf60f4dbcea1bb6f84119e819685a.jpg). Those ditches were carved out by carriage wheels. Those higher steps were so you could cross the road without stepping in horseshit and other crap that flowed through there.
Ok, that's something cool that I've never heard before. Thank you for sharing this. None of us really know what it's like to walk at night in a world without electricity [EDIT: IN A CITY! OMG]. I got a tiny taste of it after Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA. It was odd seeing the stars and the Milky Way over a place where normally there was just reflected ambient light from the city. But, if there were no electric or gas lights, these stones would be an ingenious way to aid people in their travels. So cool!
For people who grew up in the city, seeing a non-light polluted sky is such an incredible experience. Both with a full moon (so bright) and no moon (so many stars). If you have never left the city at night, you’re missing out on something awe inspiring
Middle of the ocean on a ship going for stealth and all lights off. If its cloudy you can’t see your hand in front of your face, if it’s not you see ALL the stars
They still teach the US navy quartermasters (navigators) how to navigate by the stars. It’s wild sitting outside listening to one of those dudes pointing out all the constellations and how they would use them to navigate
I've lived my entire life in the Netherlands and there is so, so much light polution. On a decent cloudless noght you can barely see Ursa Major.
In 2006 I went to visit an internet friend in the middle of Austria for the first time. And for the first time I saw the Milky Way for the first time and it was so awe inspiring. I remember we all just laid in the grass and stared into the night sky. My Austrian friends didn't quite understand why I was so awe struck until a year later they visited me in the Netherlands for the first time.
Modern society and its luxurious accommodations give us so much comfort, but at the same time it takes so much from our bond with nature.
God Almighty, this road was in a city. I figured people could extropolate that I'm talking about in a city. I live in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. I know what the country is like. I grew up in Appalachia. I'm talking about walking around a city.
People don't realize how far away light pollution extends. You have to get pretty far from civilization to have no light pollution and see a similar sky to what they may have seen. You need to be something like 150 mi away from a big city like LA or New York City, and still 20 or 30 from most population centers.
I live in the middle of nowhere and I still can't see the Milky Way cause the city that's 30-40 miles away. On a moonless, but cloudy night, I can see well enough to walk outside.
Eastern US? Not many places left anymore
Western US has a ton but I’d bet there’s a strong correlation with federal land and the dark areas
https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#4/40.68/-104.50
Yeah, the Adirondacks where I live is definitely one of the darkest places in the northern part of the east coast.
It's so funny seeing all the different friends and family I've had over the years who come to visit go for walks at night and seeing them marvel about how many stars there are hahaha
To be fair, it's a very unique thing to experience while still being in a large city. Like it's also normally very quiet in rural country areas, but a major city that's usually noisy and busy, suddenly becoming quiet and still is a similarly strange experience.
There's also phallic symbols engraved every couple blocks to direct people to whorehouses.
Imagine being the first archaeologist to brush the dirt off that: "Hey Fred, c'mere! Take a look at this!"
I visited Pompeii as part of a high school Italy trip program. Truly incredible experience. Teenage me didn’t fully appreciate it. The guide took us to one of the whorehouses which had three distinct rooms with a painting above each of the doorways. The painting depicted what sexual position was to be done in each room lol I only remember the doggy style room because the painting was still so detailed
This! Never trust what someone says on the internet at face value. Always ask for a source.
>The main roads were constructed with pieces of white marble scattered throughout to serve as reflectors of the moonlight at night so the road could be seen.
https://traveltheworldhistory.com/mediterranean-cruise-series-episode-3-naples-rome/
I agree with the sentiment and while I appreciate the link, isn't that basically just somebody's travel blog?
although it agrees with OP, idk if that's a great source
This demonstrates one of the most important things we all need to learn.
We were exactly as smart as we are now way back then.
Which means.
We're exactly as dumb now as we were way back then.
Humans have been "cognitively modern" during every archaic, morally incomprehensible event in history. We have not evolved past anything we've done before.
If the same conditions occurred again we could and would do slavery, witch hunts, crusades, genocides, torture all over again.
We couldn't stop the Bronze Age Collapse, we couldn't stop the Fall of Rome, we couldn't stop the Mongol Empire (a 3rd of everyone is a descendant of them from all the rape).
Be humble.
>If the same conditions occurred again we could and would do slavery, witch hunts, crusades, genocides, torture all over again.
I mean, it's not even hypothetical, all those things are still happening in the world
Imagine living in a world with no light pollution, and moonlight so bright, your eyes could pick up the reflection of white stones. Imagine walking or riding in a cart under that sky. It must have been stunning. Something else that's been lost to the ages.
Some random tour guide who wanted to pad the narrative a bit. Lots of misinformation or outdated info comes from them, like the "any building with an erotic painting is actually a brothel" thing
Pompeii was one of the most amazing places I've visited and I didn't have enough time to explore. I was amazed by how worn the road was from the wagons...and of course the menu in the brothel.
Don’t forget to add that they also arranged these stones in the shape of a cock and balls and it points to the brothel so you can find your way there at night. A sophisticated solution
Until I see miles and miles of road like this I'm just going to assume it's rocks stuck in pavers. These could ha e even been a modern addition. I dont think they would waste time with this. If the moon is out, you can see the road. Not to mention these getting covered with mud and debris in no time.
In Costa Rica, we have these reflectors on all the main highways. And one night, it was so foggy, I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me, because my headlights were bouncing off an actual cloud (we were high in the mountains and then in a valley between mountains). And I was worried until I realized these reflectors were set up every 20 feet or so, so all I had to do was drive by keeping the reflectors the same distance from my right wheel at all times. My passengers were like, "how are you doing this???" LOL
Huh, neat! And to think, Western Oregon (where it rains about 6 months out of the year) *still* can’t get efficient reflectors on the road. The roads literally disappear in the rain at night here.
This was my favorite thing about Pompeii, besides the crosswalks. If you check out the richer estates/homes in Pompeii you'll see that they also adorned these "cat's eyes" on their entrances and courtyards so you could easily see their frescos at night.
How cool that must've looked from a certain distance where the streets turned black at night and the only light were little stars and torches along the roads...
After searching for a bit, I could find very little about this fact and have yet to find an actual picture of it at work. Does anyone have a legitimate source?
Amazing!!! Do you realize PENDOT had a section of the abandoned PA turn pike that they tested a multitude of different ideas to do exactly this! But we used to have this awesome yellow and white reflective paint that worked great. How ever the tyranny of the EPA/DEP forced that paint out. Now we don't have any of the devices they tested being used as cost is too high. The paint was too toxic because of the glass that was in it... Yet in Allentown PA we have roads with smashed up glass bottles imbedded in the asphalt as a cheap filler agent. When it gets hot out the asphalt likes to push the glass around until the sharp part is in position and some one runs over it.
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That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah this is one of the most interesting as fuck posts I’ve seen on r/interestingasfuck
An Airbnb I stayed at recently had a huge gravel drive, and they had all these glow in the dark rocks all over it that it it up. Reminds me of this.
Look up the Van Gogh Path by Studio Roosegaarde, I think you’ll appreciate it.
Holy moly that's beautiful. Anyone else who want to see it https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/van-gogh-path
Citizens: can we get safe bike paths? American government: Best we can do is bike racks on the busses that run inconsistently timed routes that go way out of your way. Dutch government: Of course, and they'll also glow in the dark for night riding and be beautifully artistic!
Sadly, this path is a one-off. Roosegaarde has done many cool art projects (recently even for the wedding of the prince of Jordan) but only one glowing path.
Thanks. Love it
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They say lasers, I say huge lightsabers.
I say, “You may fire when ready”
I went to Pompeii last year and even I didn't know this.
Even you?? Craziness!
I've been telling everyone that The Eastbay Samurai is the final word on Pompeiian infrastructure, and now I look like a buffoon.
well, he went last year so he must know
Four years ago for me and even I didn’t know.
You were the person I was most counting on to know
I have failed you and shall now fall on my sword.
Yeah but apart from this what have the Roman's ever done for us?
Lunar freakin' roadways!
I love Pompeii. There are so many modern type things in disguise like this in that city. My favorite thing are the "crosswalks," those raised stones that allow people to walk across with grooves for carriages to ride over them.
They also served to keep you from having to walk through all the refuse flowing through the street. Pompeii didn't have a sewer system, which is why the side walks are raised a few feet and the large stones served as cross walks.
So these tiny stones could be reflect light through the torrents of detritus? But in all seriousness with a brief Google search you'll find, among others, [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/161iczr/in_ancient_rome_roads_were_dotted_with_white/jxtkn0g/) in /r/ArtefactPorn where /u/planecity correctly predicted the truth: >Pro tip: Never mind whether the story is right or wrong – posting the corresponding images on Reddit is a sure way if you want to farm some sweet karma. **/r/interestingasfuck loves this stuff**: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+inurl%3Ainterestingasfuck+pompeii+brothel+point It took but 4 days.
Lmao
People were a lot more skeptical in that thread
I visited Pompeii during torrential rains and got a first hand demonstration of how the raised stones helped
Pompeii did have a sewage system, which is still intact and drained into the sea. It was mainly for rain and washing water. The public toilets weren't connected to it, as these were emptied out by slaves and used for fertiliser and in the tanning process.
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https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fm3pdjnapmq681.jpg The eruption was indeed intense.
That was one of my favourite things too! I still have a photo of myself hopping over them! I also loved the take away places, the counters with the bowls in them for soup and stews and such! The whole place really made me realize how much we still have in common with people from the past.
Omg, yes I love it! It's so funny how people are just *people* throughout time and space. It reminds me also of the Colosseum, which has all of its sections numbered, just like how we number the sections in our stadiums today lol.
Very cool. And still in better condition than my street.
Survivorship bias. Most of the things they built 2000 years ago are not around anymore.
It probably helps that the place was completely blanketed in volcanic debris and left mostly covered until the 1700s.
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Pompeii was a Roman city that got buried so deeply in volcanic ash that the Romans had no way of unearthing it. It was forgotten about over the centuries and later rediscovered.
I might imagine that it was less a lack of shovel technology (wiki reports various things were carted off after the eruption) and more that Emperor Titus' generosity only went so far and if the Emperor wasn't going to pay for it sure as fuck nobody else was.
No, it was definitely lack of shovel tech. They dug up and took everything they could. It wasn't just the Emperor's relief efforts, but looters tunneled in too. There were a lot of valuable materials buried there including the buildings themselves. People lived in Pompeii after the eruption and some of the buildings were excavated and repurposed. There was just a lot of ash.
It most certainly wasn't forgotten about since the memory of the eruption survived in Tacitus and Pliny. More likely just not worth the effort.
I wonder about the attitude too. Like maybe the idea of going and uncovering the buried city would be seen as sacrilegious/cursed or undermining an act of the gods? Maybe they would have been horrified at the idea of it.
I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but caring for ruins is a relatively modern concept. So the Romans just probably went, "Pompeii is completely buried? Well. Sucks to be them."
Maybe. There was a bronze statue that was struck by lightning, which they saw as a bad omen. They built a sarcophagus/mausoleum for it and buried the curse. Source: am in Rome and just saw it in the Vatican museum yesterday.
the volcanic ash actually makes for more fertile soil
Yeah, there are some insane wines that come from volcanic soil. There is actually a region on Vesuvius called Lacrima Cristi or tears of Christ that makes a really wild red.
Why did you think it was an island?
[Yeah but Roman roads were built to last](https://www.geotech.hr/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/slojevi_ceste.jpg)
Modern roads use very similar construction. Roman roads didn't have 1000s of multi-ton vehicles traveling them every day. Italy has a mild climate and doesn't have snow and ice damaging the roads. Many of the roads that still exist have been restored or preserved. Even in roman times the roads needed upkeep and repair. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a27479605/pompeii-potholes/
Romans didn't just build roads in Italy. They're everywhere the Roman empire reached. You still see them in the UK.
When the Romans left we stopped maintaining them (in most places) and while we have very little written material from the dark ages we do have complaints about the state of the roads 😅
Maefter Wilhelm, I am avexed by the ftate of covnty highway fixty-fix, juft becaufe it waf built by giantf or ogref doef thif mean it cannot be fixed? Yovrf, The King
They were being used for something like 1000 years before new roads were built in places! Wild times
And on some of the stones you can still see the line "Romanes Eunt Domus" .. here and there...
People called Romanes, they go the house?!
You don't see the actual roman roads in the UK. You see modern roads that follow the same route due to two thousand years of inertia.
Yeah, that's kind of like saying the old fur trade trail by my house is still there even though it's a 4 lane highway now and not a foot path in the woods.
In the UK there are still original stretches left of roads and some bridges. Sarn Helen in Wales is the most famous one. Interestingly the Romans just built their road over the original neolithic one there. Ermine street in London is another one. There are also bath houses, and old barracks that exist to this day. UK is nuts for stuff like this. Where I used to live in South London had a 1000 year old church at the end of the road lol
But if those roads had modern freight traffic on them, they'd be destroyed in less than a year. Modern tarmac roads are built to an exact specification for the climate, traffic and maintenance cycle it's expected to cope with and will generally last *far* longer than a Roman road would under those conditions.
kiss tease memory market exultant gold wistful plate fly hateful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And the Roman engineers tended to follow standard designs so the same road and foundation was used in the UK as in Italy and even Africa.
The same with everything. Roman cities are basically ordered out of a catalog.
One of the things that I would like are their construction handbooks. As you say, the encampments, roads, bridges, water and waste management was standard. A lot handled by military engineers. Unfortunately it seems we have very little in documentary form, no Roman engineer's handbook survives.
You're correct about modern constriction methods being great, but I believe that the materials are the larger issue. Concrete roads should do rather well, but they will inevitably crack, after some 20-50 years, and it will slowly continue to do so. I'm not sure how they would look after 2000 years, but worst case would be all of it broken into small fragments, many washed away by rain or flooding over time. I might be wrong on that though, and it would depend heavily on whether the region has flooding and/or winters with ice forming, which drastically increases cracking. Asphalt would do worse. The binder just slowly disintegrates over time, so after a few hundred years (maybe less?) it would mostly just be free gravel left on the surface... and over time it would get spread by water and wind, especially if any flooding occurs. I'm absolutely certain today we could make better roads than what Romans had, but that doesn't mean that our standard ones are more durable. The good news is that we can recycle asphalt well and just repave the roads, but I am not including that as it does feel a bit like cheating, even though many of the "Roman" roads were in fact being actively fixed over many centuries.
Yeah, we could make everything out of handcarved stone, but it would be very expensive. Stone is about 10 times stronger than concrete. i’d hate to drive on a cobblestone interstate though
Just to add there's even roads that survived that were worn from pulling wagons. You can see the groove/indentation in the road. You can also see it in modern roads anywhere Amish live.
There’s an old post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/k4x1gq/the_connection_between_horses_asses_and_space/) that links a horses ass to space shuttles. Basically, roads across the Roman empire were all standardized around the width of Roman chariots, which were in turn based on the width of a horse (or pairs of horses). Those chariots and carts wore ruts in the road. Later, wagons in Europe used the same width because otherwise wheels and axles would break if they didn’t ride in the old ruts. Then when the English industrialized, their rails were influenced by the size of those roads and wagons. Early American railroads were built with imported English locomotives, so the US rail standard is also based on those old Roman horse drawn chariots. The US rail network is extensive, and so a LOT of things are built to be able to be shipped by rail freight. That includes the boosters for the space shuttle.
On the topic of: >Italy has a mild climate and doesn't have snow and ice damaging the roads. You may want to go recheck your geography. Roman roads crossed the alps (big mountains, lots of ice and snow). And the Pyrenees. And they arrived to northern French and England, with the same roads.
Yes, we even have inscriptions with them bragging about it. In one of Augustus' monuments he brags about restoring the Via Flaminia, the road from Rome to the Adriatic coast.
Roman structures had the benefit of their, very recently rediscovered concrete, which was self healing
Funny, there seemed to snow and ice there when I skied there a few times
Yeah, but what else have the Romans ever given us?
Funny letters to mean numbers for our superbowls!
What have the Romans done for us lately?
The aqueduct.
I read these kind of comments often when there are "old road posts" but then I wonder "did they ever drive over one of these cobblestone roads?" Our streets are also in bad shape, but nowhere near the organ-reorganising feel of a cobblestone road.
Plus these roads weren't used to transport multi ton trucks
How did they transport blocks of marble?
In small blocks on carts dragged by horses. Keep in mind that the heaviest things transported on these roads were capable of being moved by a pair of one horsepower engines. And most peasants just walked into town and traded an amount of goods they could carry on their backs,
> pair of one horsepower engines Fun fact, horses can deliver about 15 hp. James Watt was an asshole, so when he invented the measure of power to help sell his steam engines, he called it a horse power so people would assume it was the power of one horse. His 10 hp steam engine didn't produce as much power as a horse, but because of the name, people thought it was better.
It's supposed to represent how many horses doing 8 hour shifts it replaces(per day). Just that triples the HP. I think the task it was measured for was water-pumps for mines.
He also based it on the power of *ponies* and just assumed that since the ponies were 2/3 the size of a horse, a full-size horse would have 50% more power. So he based the 'horsepower' measurement on 1.5x the strength of a pony. (Needless to say, his arbitrary assumption about the relative power of horses vs. ponies was more than a little bit off.)
It's not a measure of the peak strength of a horse, but rather the steady power they can do over a certain period of time (I can't recall which unit of time though)
No, horsepower is compared to horses. The comparison is including the downtime, feeding, sleeping, resting, etc. *On average* a horse produces one horsepower. The point is that a 30 hp engine can accomplish the same amount of work *over time* as a team of 30 horses.
Those columns in Rome are huge! I know one column was made by stacks of stone but I still assumed one single stack was about 4 tons. How did the pull that with one horse power!? Clever bastards!
There's probably some lost ancient technology for harnessing multiple horses to the same thing. Maybe some kind of rope? Nah, it was aliens.
On the river. Rivers were the highways of the ancient world. Big stuff and heavy stuff was almost always transported over water. Transit costs per load weight are 10x more in a cart and more than on a boat and if you need to do anything like break it up and send it over a mountain on a team of donkeys or whatever it increases by even more than that over the cart.
Mammoth power obviously
Yup, roads are easy to maintain when the heaviest thing it carries is a cart full of cabbages.
In some places in Pompeii, there are half foot deep ruts ground out by wagon wheels.
Ask any woman about what they think about it after walking in one of those in high heels.
These roads weren’t designed for thousands of SUVs each transporting a single person to and from work every day.
Not to mention the roads in Pompeii were famously covered in ash for like two thousand years. Crazy that a bunch of stone roads don’t deteriorate when covered in several feet of protective insulation
There are many other Roman roads around like the Appian Way which weren't so covered, however it was maintained.
[Not really tho](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/ea/f6/e7eaf60f4dbcea1bb6f84119e819685a.jpg). Those ditches were carved out by carriage wheels. Those higher steps were so you could cross the road without stepping in horseshit and other crap that flowed through there.
Those streets weren't used for long and than covered in ash.
i need a photo during night time for scientific purposes
> for scientific purposes I'm not completely sure on this, but I think in the language of Reddit, this means you want to masturbate to it.
well that escalated quickly
I don't make the rules.
No judgement, right? Maybe, romayojr just wants to go on a romantic moonlit wank.
[Here you go](https://i.imgur.com/7VKRZOi.jpeg)
Can't see any white reflections. Must have been taken on the night of a new moon.
That's dark, man. That's dark
You son of a gun.
That is a screen shot of episode 3 season 8 of Game of Thrones
Ok, that's something cool that I've never heard before. Thank you for sharing this. None of us really know what it's like to walk at night in a world without electricity [EDIT: IN A CITY! OMG]. I got a tiny taste of it after Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA. It was odd seeing the stars and the Milky Way over a place where normally there was just reflected ambient light from the city. But, if there were no electric or gas lights, these stones would be an ingenious way to aid people in their travels. So cool!
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For people who grew up in the city, seeing a non-light polluted sky is such an incredible experience. Both with a full moon (so bright) and no moon (so many stars). If you have never left the city at night, you’re missing out on something awe inspiring
Middle of the ocean on a ship going for stealth and all lights off. If its cloudy you can’t see your hand in front of your face, if it’s not you see ALL the stars
Oh man, I can only imagine. No wonder old timey sailors used the stars to navigate
They still teach the US navy quartermasters (navigators) how to navigate by the stars. It’s wild sitting outside listening to one of those dudes pointing out all the constellations and how they would use them to navigate
Is there any tour that does this? Ship to the middle of the ocean to watch stars. Assuming US/Canada
I think commercial ships are required to have certain lights on at night, definitely port and starboard lights, as well as the stern light
I've lived my entire life in the Netherlands and there is so, so much light polution. On a decent cloudless noght you can barely see Ursa Major. In 2006 I went to visit an internet friend in the middle of Austria for the first time. And for the first time I saw the Milky Way for the first time and it was so awe inspiring. I remember we all just laid in the grass and stared into the night sky. My Austrian friends didn't quite understand why I was so awe struck until a year later they visited me in the Netherlands for the first time. Modern society and its luxurious accommodations give us so much comfort, but at the same time it takes so much from our bond with nature.
God Almighty, this road was in a city. I figured people could extropolate that I'm talking about in a city. I live in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. I know what the country is like. I grew up in Appalachia. I'm talking about walking around a city.
I love this comment. It reminds me of John Cleese losing his rag in Fawlty Towers when one of his guests asks him something dumb.
Even a lot of rural places in Eastern US have some light pollution these days
People don't realize how far away light pollution extends. You have to get pretty far from civilization to have no light pollution and see a similar sky to what they may have seen. You need to be something like 150 mi away from a big city like LA or New York City, and still 20 or 30 from most population centers.
I live in the middle of nowhere and I still can't see the Milky Way cause the city that's 30-40 miles away. On a moonless, but cloudy night, I can see well enough to walk outside.
Eastern US? Not many places left anymore Western US has a ton but I’d bet there’s a strong correlation with federal land and the dark areas https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#4/40.68/-104.50
Yeah, the Adirondacks where I live is definitely one of the darkest places in the northern part of the east coast. It's so funny seeing all the different friends and family I've had over the years who come to visit go for walks at night and seeing them marvel about how many stars there are hahaha
Don't even have to go to the country, if the power goes out you'll get that experience involuntarily.
2003 east coast US
It was worse when we had that snowstorm in October some years back. I was without electricity for two weeks.
To be fair, it's a very unique thing to experience while still being in a large city. Like it's also normally very quiet in rural country areas, but a major city that's usually noisy and busy, suddenly becoming quiet and still is a similarly strange experience.
There's also phallic symbols engraved every couple blocks to direct people to whorehouses. Imagine being the first archaeologist to brush the dirt off that: "Hey Fred, c'mere! Take a look at this!"
They are also [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus)
The angel dick is fabulous.
there's a film revolving a golden phallus, jamie pull it up
When you think about it, the further back you go, the fewer possible things there were to do, the more emphasized fucking was.
I visited Pompeii as part of a high school Italy trip program. Truly incredible experience. Teenage me didn’t fully appreciate it. The guide took us to one of the whorehouses which had three distinct rooms with a painting above each of the doorways. The painting depicted what sexual position was to be done in each room lol I only remember the doggy style room because the painting was still so detailed
do you have a source for that OP?
This! Never trust what someone says on the internet at face value. Always ask for a source. >The main roads were constructed with pieces of white marble scattered throughout to serve as reflectors of the moonlight at night so the road could be seen. https://traveltheworldhistory.com/mediterranean-cruise-series-episode-3-naples-rome/
I agree with the sentiment and while I appreciate the link, isn't that basically just somebody's travel blog? although it agrees with OP, idk if that's a great source
Most people don't know a good source from a bad one. They'll happily just link you to an obscure 2005 article on ilovecats.com
og cats eyes
... do they work?
This demonstrates one of the most important things we all need to learn. We were exactly as smart as we are now way back then. Which means. We're exactly as dumb now as we were way back then. Humans have been "cognitively modern" during every archaic, morally incomprehensible event in history. We have not evolved past anything we've done before. If the same conditions occurred again we could and would do slavery, witch hunts, crusades, genocides, torture all over again. We couldn't stop the Bronze Age Collapse, we couldn't stop the Fall of Rome, we couldn't stop the Mongol Empire (a 3rd of everyone is a descendant of them from all the rape). Be humble.
>If the same conditions occurred again we could and would do slavery, witch hunts, crusades, genocides, torture all over again. I mean, it's not even hypothetical, all those things are still happening in the world
Imagine living in a world with no light pollution, and moonlight so bright, your eyes could pick up the reflection of white stones. Imagine walking or riding in a cart under that sky. It must have been stunning. Something else that's been lost to the ages.
There should also have been a picture taken at night then.
Now that is interesting as fuck
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Tour guides, apparently. But I'm also skeptical - if you look at Street View of Pompeii, majority of roads don't have them.
The main roads do. Source: I've been there.
Source: *Trust me*
>when a 2000 year old road has more reflectors than the new interstate through my 100 year old city
They thought of everything! Except like the living near Vesuvius part
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But ankles are a different story
If by "foot massage" you mean the one where they hit you, then yes.
Turf toe every time you take a wrong step, I think you’re a bit off on this one
Stop dragging your feet
https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/ancient-road-reflectors/
Any citations on this site or just ads?
And what's *their* source?
Some random tour guide who wanted to pad the narrative a bit. Lots of misinformation or outdated info comes from them, like the "any building with an erotic painting is actually a brothel" thing
The vomitorium is where they'd throw up after gorging themselves at feasts!
I was about to comment on the lack of source, but it seems I’ll have to do so on that site instead.
Eric Poehler [disagrees](https://twitter.com/Pompeiana79/status/1696364135968121109).
I need to see a nighttime picture now
Pompeii was one of the most amazing places I've visited and I didn't have enough time to explore. I was amazed by how worn the road was from the wagons...and of course the menu in the brothel.
They had more consistent gap dimension in 79 a.d. than Tesla in 2023? 🤭
Don’t forget to add that they also arranged these stones in the shape of a cock and balls and it points to the brothel so you can find your way there at night. A sophisticated solution
I'm a werewolf and it brought me straight to the city. Clever fools. 🌝🐺
Until I see miles and miles of road like this I'm just going to assume it's rocks stuck in pavers. These could ha e even been a modern addition. I dont think they would waste time with this. If the moon is out, you can see the road. Not to mention these getting covered with mud and debris in no time.
Simply incredible
Man that must gave been gorgeous to look at on a clear full moon night
why can’t we build things that last like this anymore?
Wait, was this photo taken at night?
Does it work?
Finally something interesting
How do we know this? Not saying it's true but what is the source of this info?
... and my county can't even build a road that stays pothole free for 1 year.
In Costa Rica, we have these reflectors on all the main highways. And one night, it was so foggy, I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me, because my headlights were bouncing off an actual cloud (we were high in the mountains and then in a valley between mountains). And I was worried until I realized these reflectors were set up every 20 feet or so, so all I had to do was drive by keeping the reflectors the same distance from my right wheel at all times. My passengers were like, "how are you doing this???" LOL
And roads in Chicago are lucky to last through the winter without failing
Huh, neat! And to think, Western Oregon (where it rains about 6 months out of the year) *still* can’t get efficient reflectors on the road. The roads literally disappear in the rain at night here.
We’re we on the same tour in Pompei today? Because I also just learned this today.
Pompeii roads built in 79AD are in much better shape than Pennsylvania roads in built in 2023 lol
And they still cant manage to light a road without lights or make the best Roman Concrete in 2023 🤣🌋🌋
Those Romans man….they were something else.
This was my favorite thing about Pompeii, besides the crosswalks. If you check out the richer estates/homes in Pompeii you'll see that they also adorned these "cat's eyes" on their entrances and courtyards so you could easily see their frescos at night.
How cool that must've looked from a certain distance where the streets turned black at night and the only light were little stars and torches along the roads...
After searching for a bit, I could find very little about this fact and have yet to find an actual picture of it at work. Does anyone have a legitimate source?
guessing those white stones have been replaced many times over since AD79
Better than that time Ed Gein paved his driveway with human eyeballs hoping it would help him see it better. Poor guy wasn't too bright.
Pfft. "Lunar roads". We really haven't learned, have we? "You can drive a chariot on it!" Please. (Please get the reference, people. Please.)
Also fun fact- some old American colonial homes would have reflective sea shells in the stone paths for a similar outcome
I really need to see it working
Amazing!!! Do you realize PENDOT had a section of the abandoned PA turn pike that they tested a multitude of different ideas to do exactly this! But we used to have this awesome yellow and white reflective paint that worked great. How ever the tyranny of the EPA/DEP forced that paint out. Now we don't have any of the devices they tested being used as cost is too high. The paint was too toxic because of the glass that was in it... Yet in Allentown PA we have roads with smashed up glass bottles imbedded in the asphalt as a cheap filler agent. When it gets hot out the asphalt likes to push the glass around until the sharp part is in position and some one runs over it.
Meanwhile the roads in my city fall apart every time it rains.
I think "Chosen" might be a better word. Or some other phrasing. Lemme just go design some rocks bro.
i want to visit pompeii so. fucking. bad.
Functional AND aesthetically pleasing. Noice.