[HN Gopher] 'Once-in-a-century' discovery reveals luxury of Pompeii
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'Once-in-a-century' discovery reveals luxury of Pompeii
Author : pseudolus
Score : 154 points
Date : 2025-01-17 11:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| noduerme wrote:
| It's amazing what people built 2000 years ago, and sort of
| depressing too. I went over to a friend's house recently who had
| gotten a new outdoor hot tub. That thing isn't going to last 3
| winters let alone a volcanic eruption.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Wealthy Romans had a bit of a culture-boner for leaving a
| lasting legacy, maintaining the dynasty, and that sort of
| thing, and conversely often relied on ancestral clout to borrow
| credibility from. I don't think anyone today would try to base
| their credibility on being the distant relative of Ben Franklin
| in the way an upstart roman might invoke their familiar
| relationship with Scipio Africanus.
|
| Makes sense they built stuff to last in such an environment.
| beardyw wrote:
| I think also they were very much more in touch with their own
| mortality than is common today.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or
| public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant
| general during the procession and remind him from time to
| time of his own mortality
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
| pjmlp wrote:
| Other thing would not be expected in a war driven society,
| where being a legionary was quite common, and very few
| managed to return back (alive) to civil life after doing
| their part on the assigned legion.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| It was also impossible to make things out of fiberglass, but
| hand-carved stone was actually available.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| So was non-permanent building materials such as wood, to be
| fair.
| toyg wrote:
| Not really, that's the resource that disappeared faster
| than anything, being the simplest to get. Mediterranean
| forests have never been particularly dense, already the
| Greeks were moving lots of wood on the sea from the best
| locations. Stone was easier to get from the areas around
| Rome.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Survivorship bias. The only artifacts we see are the ones
| that were meant to last. Those Romans who did not build for
| eternity have not been remembered, which distorts our view of
| thier society. It is akin to classic car enthusiasts who
| think cars were made better way back when. They think that
| because they only see the survivors. They do not see all the
| junk that history has rightly forgotten.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| The city was buried in two days, if anything we may not see
| the most valuable possessions.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Something like 90% of romans did not live in cities.
| Survivorship bias again. We judge them buy the solid
| cities, or lord's manor houses. We have lost the
| mud/brick/wood farms where the vast majority lived.
| YouWhy wrote:
| > That thing isn't going to last 3 winters let alone a volcanic
| eruption.
|
| Could it have been a case of survivorship bias? I.e., perhaps
| jankier facilities have been built at Pompeii but simply did
| not make it at all or were not prioritized for excavation?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| People are downvoting you because it is simply due to the
| different materials and building methodologies of the past.
|
| Things took much longer to build and were much more
| expensive, but they were very durable as an effect.
|
| There were no plastic hot tubs in Pompeii that burned when
| the pyroclastic flow swept past.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| There were no plastic ones but there were very probably
| some wooden ones, or other luxurious wooden items which
| were destroyed without a trace and we'd never know
| perihelions wrote:
| I mean, they certainly knew how to make wooden water
| containers: they wrote it down. This context is dye-
| making rather than baths,
|
| - _"...This water is boiled with an equal quantity of
| pure water, and is then poured into large wooden
| reservoirs_ [original: "piscinas ligneas"]. _Across
| these reservoirs there are a number of immovable beams,
| to which cords are fastened, and then sunk into the water
| beneath by means of stones; upon which, a slimy... "_
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/62704/pg62704-images
| .ht... ( _" Chalcanthum, or shoemakers' black: sixteen
| remedies"_ (77))
|
| https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3At
| ext...
| therealpygon wrote:
| "People" often fancy themselves to be smarter than they are
| and capable of judging others wrong based on their limited
| information and passing knowledge, as well as what they
| have decided to be true rather than what is fact. Things
| like "because things were made of stone, all things were
| made of stone", or "because some things survived the tests
| of time, all things were built better".
|
| It is exactly the bias that was pointed out by the
| commentor.
| Aniket-N wrote:
| Well, this bath house was owned by some one ultra wealthy.
| There were multiple people (possibly slaves), just toiling away
| to keep the furnace going.
|
| Today a hot tub can be had by millions.
| perihelions wrote:
| Isn't it the exact opposite? Every single house in the modern
| world has running water--it wouldn't be code-compliant, in any
| functioning country, to not have that. That was a high-status
| luxury in Rome. (It was even a largesse of the Emperor to be
| gifted[0] the right to have a private plumbing connection to an
| aqueduct--something considered highly desirable in that world).
|
| The fact people today build inexpensive plastic Thermae as a
| novelty object, reflects how thoroughly we've solved all the
| *actually hard* problems of water infrastructure. The formerly
| expensive parts are now unimaginably cheap, so, we're exploring
| new places to cut costs that we previously wouldn't think of.
|
| (It's akin to how computer keyboards are now 10x cheaper and
| junkier than they were in the 1960's-1980's (?), because, the
| other problems having been solved, that became a new focus of
| economization. No one would think twice about paying (the
| modern equivalent of) $100 for a well-engineered mechanical
| keyboard, in an era when the corresponding PC went for $5,000.
| The expensive object reflects an economic difficulty elsewhere;
| and the expensive Roman stonework baths perhaps reflected the
| costliness of water in general).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct#Distribution
| mschild wrote:
| I don't think they are lamenting the fact that these things
| have reduced in price but rather significantly in quality as
| well.
|
| There is something to be said about price reductions, but at
| some point the quality lowers to a point where it has become
| a waste of resources as the product you bought will seize
| working within a short time frame.
|
| I've always made this unfortunate experience with shoes. With
| good care, 100 Euro sneakers would last me about 2 years. A
| pair of handcrafted leather shoes I bought 12 years ago are
| still going strong. While the leather shoes were almost 4
| times the price, they've paid for themselves at this point.
| pdfernhout wrote:
| Obligatory mention:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory "The Sam Vimes
| "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called
| simply the boots theory, is an economic theory that people
| in poverty have to buy cheap and subpar products that need
| to be replaced repeatedly, proving more expensive in the
| long run than more expensive items. The term was coined by
| English fantasy writer Sir Terry Pratchett in his 1993
| Discworld novel Men at Arms. In the novel, Sam Vimes, the
| captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, illustrates the
| concept with the example of boots. The theory has been
| cited with regard to analyses of the prices of boots, fuel
| prices, and economic conditions in the United Kingdom."
|
| Tangentially related on the bigger picture:
| https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1280581-the-state-
| of-t... "Money is a sign of poverty. (Iain M. Banks)"
| EncomLab wrote:
| My former house was built in 1927 - it had every modern
| convenience and was 100% better constructed than the terrible
| house we live in now that was built 2 years ago that was
| thrown together in the cheapest ways possible but still cost
| multiples of the inflation adjusted price of out former home
| when new.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I think this is the key.
|
| As a generally smart person with disposable income, I am
| unable to figure out how to find/purchase higher quality
| products that are not optimized for obsolescence.
| Increasingly it seems that _everything_ is as cheap as
| possible: expensive products are not higher quality, but
| are instead designed to appeal to the premium market
| segment.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Largely everything has been solved so instead of some
| ultra expensive coffee maker just buy a Moka pot, and buy
| old/used stuff. Every 'scene' alive has associated gear,
| and of that gear, a small fraction is revered by the
| ultra-nerds. Find the ultra-nerds and follow them. They
| really don't like when their stuff breaks.
|
| I've bought a ton of old stuff off eBay and similar sites
| and antique stores especially with this mentality. I can
| likely toss a grenade into my living room and most of my
| stuff will survive. I know my WWII sonar recorder will
| survive.
|
| I bought a BMW 325is from 1988 and I've put well over
| 150k miles on it since I bought it a few years ago.
| Nothing leaks, nothing breaks, nothing squeaks, and it
| still gets 7.5L/100KM. A 36 year old car I got for $7k.
| One weekend, a Bentley manual, and youtube, and I was
| able to fix up the throttle body, replace ball joints,
| update my steering rack, and offset my wheels how I
| wanted. (On the flip side if I get into a crash I am
| insta-dead).
|
| Like I wanted good outerwear but as you said, it's all
| premium market segment stuff without the quality. So I
| asked my friend who does bike-packing year round and
| lives outside what he wears and he gave me an entire
| notebook of gear, prices, longevity, and especially
| weights. I've had that jacket for 16 years now.
|
| Same with laptops. Cheap modern $500 laptop, or ancient
| Thinkpad I can upgrade in an evening for $250, that will
| last me 10x longer? Infinite examples of this.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Why would you want a house to last so long? Are you
| expecting your children and your grandchildren to keep
| living there after you die?
| Jensson wrote:
| A house that lasts long will stay well longer, you don't
| want to live in a house that will fall apart next year.
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| the reasons are myriad.
|
| Because in a general way you can't say "I want X that
| will work perfectly until time Y". Instead, Xs are made
| my a process. That process can cost more or less: more
| meaning better quality ingredients, higher quality
| processing, tighter quality controls, whatever. This all
| yields end results are on a spectrum of quality - a
| likelihood that the item will last Y time within Z margin
| of error.
|
| As chain is only as good as its weakest link - many
| systems will fail with a single broken element. And every
| time one of those elements breaks, I have a new problem
| with which to deal. Spend my precious free time figuring
| out how to do it myself? Try finding someone who will fix
| it for me, and hope they aren't going to just rip me off?
|
| The example of a home lasting long is especially wild to
| me. In the US at least, the home is one of the major
| mechanisms of increasing wealth over lifetime and inter-
| generational wealth. People frequently buy homes in order
| to build equity. Having homes that only last a few
| decades means that they are worth significantly less,
| and/or require significant repairs and remodels after
| relatively short time. I know that when I bought my home,
| which was made circa 1920, I was really happy that, while
| old, I could be fairly confident it wasn't about to fall
| over.
| astrange wrote:
| > In the US at least, the home is one of the major
| mechanisms of increasing wealth over lifetime and inter-
| generational wealth.
|
| That's mostly because of land values, not building
| values. And it's largely not a natural occurrence, but
| it's due to NIMBYism and property tax regimes designed so
| that young people will pay for all the services used by
| retirees.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Isn't this circular, since by definition non-retirees pay
| for retirees...?
| astrange wrote:
| That's not by definition, although it is how social
| security works.
|
| Retirees have assets but not income (or they have low
| income). Younger people are the other way round. So
| depending on how governments use income taxes vs sales
| taxes vs property taxes it changes who pays for things.
|
| California is the worst about this because of Prop 13,
| which basically means if you don't move then your
| property tax is much lower than it should be and newer
| residents pay for you.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Who else would pay for retirees, if not the non-retirees?
|
| Most of their assets are paper value, because they are
| located in stocks, their only home (and they have to live
| somewhere), etc... that if sold en masse would simply get
| pennies on the dollar or require expenditures elsewhere.
| johngladtj wrote:
| The retirees would pay for their own retirement?
|
| Is the concept of saving and then drawing down your
| savings to pay you living expenses unknown to you?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > In the US at least, the home is one of the major
| mechanisms of increasing wealth over lifetime and inter-
| generational wealth.
|
| I just don't buy that. Most people who do that seem to
| ignore the heavy costs of owning a house in the meantime:
| taxes, repairs, maintenance, insurance, commissions,
| upgrades, lawn care, pest control, utilities, alarm
| systems, etc.
|
| I've serially owned houses over the decades. Sometimes
| I'll look at what I sold them for, when, and compare with
| their current zillow value. The return on every one is
| less than if I'd invested the money in the stock market,
| and that's NOT counting all those major ongoing costs I
| listed. It's just on the price.
| araes wrote:
| Had a very similar conversation with a plumber last
| winter. Pipes exploded because of the cold and flooded
| the basement. Plumber came over to fix the issue and we
| talked about the tools while working.
|
| Paraphrased statement was something like "The company
| that makes these tools could make a high quality product
| that was rust, corrosion, and abrasion resistant. Except
| they don't. They make me a cheap wrench, that's planned
| for obsolescence, and rusts after a few months on the
| job. The company I work for could buy me a high quality
| set of tools. Except they don't. They buy me whatever's
| cheap and don't especially care that they have to buy it
| again in a year. And then they expect me to go to your
| house and care."
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad told me that tools were expensive, and were
| lucrative targets for theft. I inherited that mentality,
| but over time I realized that tools had gotten rather
| cheap. I buy tools from the pawn shop, they're cheap as
| dirt. For example, I bought an electric chain saw for
| $10. It works fine. A nice toolbox for $5. I can't see a
| market for stolen tools these days.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Similar thing happens in Formula 1 with Pirelli making
| intentionally fragile tyres.
|
| #ExperienceAzerbaijan
| dylan604 wrote:
| New homes are a bit of unique version of the "built to
| last" theme. Most of the individual components are some of
| the best we've ever had, while some of them are the worst.
| Modern windows are amazing. Modern insulation is amazing.
| Insulation is so good, you need less of it in appliances so
| you gain space inside fridges/ovens even though the unit
| itself is the same physical size. If you built the house
| out of something besides #2 pine, homes could be amazing.
| On top of that, you have nail guns where the builder
| doesn't even notice (or care) if the nail misses or not.
| People just don't care about the attention to detail during
| construction. It's not like they're building their own
| home.
| Gare wrote:
| Sounds like a "shortage of (quality) labor" problem.
| Industrial products are great, but craftsmanship is
| lacking because almost nobody can afford it.
| astrange wrote:
| Services become expensive when the servicepeople have
| better/more productive things to do, because you need to
| pay them more to keep them in the industry.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Modern windows are amazing
|
| The double pane ones, however, leak after a decade or so.
| Then the interior of the window fogs up, and you're
| looking at a major cost to replace them.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Currently living in an 1800's converted church. It's
| ridiculously well insulated and solid. It's -15 outside but
| with a little fireplace, and $50 in oak slabwood per month,
| I'm solid in the winter. The upstairs stays 22 and only
| drops 2 degrees at night. Meanwhile my old condo had a 4
| foot "cold front" in front of the floor to ceiling windows.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| I mean, the insulation of a modern house is clearly better
| than your house stuffed with horse hair in the 20s, also
| using 10 times the wood to build a house I suppose is
| better...
| thijson wrote:
| I think what you are describing is what the central bank
| calls hedonics. They substitute one good for another in the
| basket of goods used to calculate inflation. Otherwise the
| inflation figure would be much higher than it is. So
| instead of solid 2x6 studs in the floor, we use engineered
| struts. I visited Pompeii, I was amazed at how well
| preserved all the marble was.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Prior to the industrial revolution most people did not
| live in stone palaces, and I doubt Pompeii was any
| exception. The population of Pompeii was 10k-20k people
| and they were probably supported by one or two orders of
| magnitude more subsistence farmers living in homes that
| mostly don't exist today.
| astrange wrote:
| If it has modern conveniences and is even vaguely up to
| modern electrical code, that means someone renovated it at
| one point.
|
| All modern buildings are compliant with building codes and
| there is very little room for creativity. If you don't like
| the building then you don't like the code.
| baq wrote:
| You can build better than the code allows would be the
| point. Code cares about minimum levels of safety, not
| planned obsolescence or market segmentation. E.g. why not
| build homes out of concrete instead of wood? Why not use
| better roofing material than asphalt shingles? Etc.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that labor is the most expensive part of
| building a house.
| infecto wrote:
| You could still build a hot tub out of tile in such a way that
| it will last for a very long time.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _That thing isn 't going to last 3 winters let alone a
| volcanic eruption._
|
| He can have a hot tub that could survive a volcanic eruption,
| he just has to to pay for it. Is your friend willing to
| allocate the resources, or is he happy with 'good enough'?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Ability to buy cheap stuff, accessible to regular people and
| not ultra-wealthy is new.
|
| You can still spend massive piles of money on long-lasting
| stuff.
|
| This hot tub cost was likely higher than lifetime earnings of
| average citizen.
|
| Also, its cost was likely greater than what would cost to buy
| several slaves. And likely was in fact built by slaves.
|
| Of all things I see nothing to be depressed about here given
| our situation.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Nothing stops any modern person from building in this long-
| lasting style if they want to; except for the incredible
| expense, that is.
|
| In your defense, I still think your friend could do better than
| a three-year outdoor hot tub, but that was them being
| unnecessarily cheap.
| tumsfestival wrote:
| Kind of depressing how some people two millennia ago had bigger
| homes than most people alive today. Then again, if they were
| alive today their homes would be 10x the size.
| YouWhy wrote:
| The home in question is thought to have belonged to the
| wealthiest family around - which, for a society where economics
| are generational and local, practically means super-rich.
|
| In modern societies such super rich people flock to major
| cities, but in pre-industrial societies relocating would leave
| familial assets under-attended. Accordingly a well adjusted
| wealthy person would arrange for an excellent standard of
| living adjacently to their possessions
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| From what I understand it, affluent Romans typically moved
| back and forth between countryside villas in the summer, and
| a smaller residence in the city during the winter.
|
| Also Roman economics were not really very local. The Romans
| had a large road network and were very mobile and traded even
| farther. You have for example Pelagius, a figure in church
| history, who was born in Britain and died in Egypt.
| chgs wrote:
| The side of the planet 2000 years ago was the same as today.
| The population today is a thousand times larger.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| Estimates for the world population 2000 years ago seem to be
| some 150M-300M
| matkoniecz wrote:
| And in turn if you take random/average/low-income citizen and
| compare their situation (like their home) with what equivalent
| has now, their situation would be much better nowadays.
|
| Even if you compare homes of ultrawealthy then and now I expect
| that most would take homes of XXI century.
| dboreham wrote:
| There are plenty of smaller houses in Pompeii. Another thing to
| consider is that the ash covered basically the first floor of
| buildings, while the upper floors were either blown away by
| blast or pillaged by later generations. So there could have
| been one or two upper floors of accommodation for poorer people
| no longer visible. Also possible there were lower quality
| buildings on the town outskirts that haven't survived.
| Archeology understandably focuses on the larger villas.
| qq66 wrote:
| "The bodies belonged to a woman, aged between 35 and 50, who was
| clutching jewellery and coins"
|
| Funny to see that some things never change. You're about to get
| vaporized by a pyroclastic avalanche and your first thought is to
| grab your bling.
| mimentum wrote:
| Probably were prayer beads or something. Still 'bling' I guess.
| melling wrote:
| No banking system. I imagine without any money in ancient
| times, you could end up in trouble quickly.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| They must've had banks. I don't think you can have organised
| society without some form of banks.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Local banks don't necessarily mean your balance would be
| safe if the city were destroyed.
| neuronic wrote:
| Roman bank offering geo redundance is probably not what I
| was thinking about this morning.
|
| "italia-south-1 was hit by a volcano yesterday, we are
| failing over to dalmatia-west-1 until issues are
| resolved. There may be some latency with obtaining coins
| today."
| Terr_ wrote:
| "Experts do not believe the sudden liquidity of local
| currency will help this issue."
| cjs_ac wrote:
| There were money lenders ( _argentarii_ ) but they were
| just individuals setting up stall in the local _forum_. If
| you exhausted your credit with one _argentarius_ you just
| went and found another who didn 't talk to the first.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| The Romans actually didn't think that killing people was
| wrong per se, so maybe that wasn't the best strategy.
| neuronic wrote:
| Archaic banking existed since 4th-3rd millenium BCE. This
| was surprising to me.
|
| The modern form of banking is rooted in 14th century Italy
| (Medici and so on) [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank
| ginko wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_ancient_Rome?usesk
| i...
| rsynnott wrote:
| They had... bank-like things, but in general they'd have
| been quite local; if your city is in the process of being
| destroyed, the prospects of your bank are poor.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Coins are an iron age invention. Bronze age civilizations
| didn't know money.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Rome wasn't a bronze age civilization.
|
| Bronze age civilizations had money. Coins as we think of
| them became widespread in the iron age. Shekels, for
| instance, go back much further.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| I didn't say it was. It was meant to refute the claim
| that you can't have an organized society without banking.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Romans produced so many coins that you can buy genuine
| Roman coins relatively cheaply online. They are found
| absolutely everywhere in the ancient port cities and Rome
| itself, every construction project will unearth a ton of
| lower denomination coins.
|
| The Roman empire was thoroughly monetized.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| The bronze age wasn't. The way it worked seems to be that
| there was a guy who knew what you wanted, knew what you
| produced, and knew people who could produce what you
| wanted, and he supplied you with it, and wanted what you
| could produce in return. Acting as a sort of intermediary
| between everybody else.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, neither was the Stone Age, but why are you even
| talking about the Bronze Age under a link that discusses
| Pompeii?
|
| The relevant event took place in 79 AD, long after the
| end of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| Because somebody claimed that you can't have organized
| society without banking, while for a long part of history
| there were organized societies without MONEY.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, yeah, now I understand.
|
| You can definitely have organized society without
| banking, but AFAIK there was no organized society without
| some form of taxation, and few organized societies
| without long-distance trade (only in isolated places).
| thfuran wrote:
| Taxes can be assessed as a percentage of production and
| collected as goods rather than collecting money amounting
| to the value of those goods.
| rsynnott wrote:
| While, with the exception of China, Bronze Age
| civilisations didn't have _coins_, they did sometimes
| have some concept of money.
|
| From the Code of Hammurabi (~1750BCE):
|
| > If a man rents a boat of 60-[kur] capacity, he shall
| give one-sixth [of a shekel] of silver per day as its
| hire.
|
| At this point, a shekel is a unit of weight, not a coin,
| but is already being used as, effectively, money. Coins
| were initially more a convenience thing than anything
| else.
|
| Primitive banking-type activity is also showing up in
| this time period; institutions, mostly temples, taking
| deposits and lending with interest. And really, for most
| of the world (Ancient India did have some _slightly_ more
| sophisticated bank-like behaviour), that's more or less
| where it stayed til the 17th century or so.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is hard to build a distributed banking system without
| reliable accounting, and reliable accounting in Europe only
| became possible with the import of Indian/Arabic positional
| numeric system.
|
| We underestimate just how much of a burden on arithmetics
| the previous systems were. Too unwieldy.
|
| On a similar note, I believe that for the same reason, the
| Chinese language will never achieve mass adoption in the
| rest of the world. The script is too complicated and
| reaching effective literacy takes much longer than with
| Latin characters.
| mkehrt wrote:
| Oh come on, no one was doing arithmetic in Roman
| numerals. They were using abaci and writing down the
| results.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is precisely the problem. Abacus sorta works, but
| arithmetics is much more efficient for the same purpose,
| and gives you ability to do calculations that can't be
| done using an abacus.
|
| It is a difference similar to the one between a horse and
| a car.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Wouldn't using an abacus imply using a base-10 system
| (i.e. not Roman numerals)? Or were there specific abaci
| designed around the Roman system?
| mkehrt wrote:
| Wikipedia says it was base 10:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That's interesting that it implies that they had concepts
| of zero and place-value number systems. I can imagine
| Romans complaining about people sticking with the Roman
| number system as they converted numbers to and from their
| abacus.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals
| that abacus makes lot more sense. It was not base 10
| system, but bi-quinary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-
| quinary_coded_decimal). For larger numbers very messy
| number, but one must think of how V is 5, L 50 and D 500.
|
| So they did not really have place value system. Or at
| least logical leap from abacus to place value. Instead
| they had 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 and summed or
| deducted these. Sometimes in stylistic ways.
| Ekaros wrote:
| But not certificates of credit. So you could store money,
| but you could not deposit it and then get fungible currency
| from other bank.
| dboreham wrote:
| There was some sort of financial system. Evidence for this
| is a large lead "whiteboard" in the museum in Rome that
| records a bunch of mortgages.
| chgs wrote:
| People who have a grab bag will have some cash in it today.
| araes wrote:
| Something to acknowledge. Slightly wanted to mock because of
| how predictable it is that they're holding money while they
| died. And that the priority seemed like it was the coins and
| jewelry.
|
| However, even in the modern era, somebody with a "bug out
| bag" or a "Wake Up, Stuffs Happening (WUSH) bag" still
| includes "cash" as one of the main includes in the top
| priorities [1]
|
| [1] Basic 72-Hour Bug Out Bag List,
| https://www.bugoutbagbuilder.com/learning-tutorials/bug-
| out-...
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Perhaps they were in the process of evacuating and they wanted
| to gather their valuables to protect from looters?
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| "The woman was still alive while he was dying"
|
| If I ever die, I hope it's after I'm long gone...
| INTPenis wrote:
| I'm convinced that most of the victims found are part of the
| working/slave class. So I can't help but fantasize that they
| had gone through their already evacuated owner's possessions
| thinking the world was ending, they died clutching whatever
| they could grab.
| morkalork wrote:
| When you said something about things never changing, I thought
| you were going with the part where they think she (30s) could
| be the rich man's (50s) wife.
| dzonga wrote:
| also shows - how on a basic comparison some rich people back then
| lived way better than some poor folks do today in terms of
| assets. though in terms of relative access to goods poor folks
| today are better off.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > though in terms of relative access to goods poor folks today
| are better off.
|
| What's that meant to imply? The people starving today certainly
| aren't better off than those wealthy Romans were. Not in any
| way other then a theoretical "if they stopped being poor"
| sense.
| Oarch wrote:
| What always jars me the most is how modern ancient Roman taps and
| valves look.
| kibwen wrote:
| Alternatively, you can consider how ancient our modern taps and
| valves look, and not in a bad way. Sometimes engineering
| problems get solved once and don't have a pressing need to be
| revisited.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Exactly. You can see this in all sorts of things. Sure an
| clean sheet design of a adjustable wrench or semi trailer
| coupling generic roller chain or whatever other 100yo item
| might net a few % improvement in some areas by no longer
| having to design to the manufacturing tech and material costs
| of 100 years ago but often times the ecosystem that
| standardization enables is worth more than a couple percent
| of improvement somewhere.
| araes wrote:
| Came here to post almost the same. Always have this impression
| from modern media that Roman civilization was thatch roofs and
| aqueducts with maybe a hole in the wall that poured water out
| or a well you went to the local square.
|
| May have been that way for the poor, or the less status
| enabled, like many commenters have noticed. Yet it's still a
| dissonance that such high quality piping, boiler rooms,
| insulated engineered waterworks, and other similar ideas were
| available. Even if in limited quantities.
| dboreham wrote:
| Quick note for anyone who hasn't visited, and has an interest in
| western civilization: Pompeii, and the somewhat more impressive
| nearby Herculaneum are well worth visiting at least once. It's
| really not possible to have the experience remotely from pictures
| or videos, not the same as being physically immersed. Best to
| avoid the high summer due to heat and load, but go then if you
| have no alternative. Herculaneum in particular is never that busy
| because harder to get to and less publicity.
| dottjt wrote:
| I don't know if this is a silly train of thought, but won't
| Pompeii just get buried again in the future? Is it a waste of
| time to try and unbury it?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| All of humanity will die eventually, and all of its
| accomplishments will be buried, so why do anything?
| axus wrote:
| The information (history/discoveries) can be distributed
| throughout the world and not dependent on one place anymore.
| Past that, we'll have to leave the planet.
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