Surprising tech found in Pompeii

Angela

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See:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/scie...fd89bd36d4e_story.html?utm_term=.65e99e8b236b
People in Pompeii had running water. They had cranes, pumps and shockingly modern streets. That ingenuity is on display at Pompeii: The Immortal City. At the Science Museum of Virginia through Sept. 3, the Richmond exhibition focuses on the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills of the Romans and what the trapped-in-time city reveals about a long-past age of innovation

The exhibition, on tour after a Belgian debut, includes more than 100 artifacts, some never before seen in the United States. Visitors can view everything from fishing hooks to frescoes. Earrings, hydraulic valves, medical instruments and even a bathtub provide windows into the thriving lives of the city’s inhabitants.

Pompeiians weren’t the only people with tech at their fingertips. The finds are accompanied by high-tech multimedia and plenty of screens to flesh out the tragic stories of the city’s residents. The exhibition will travel to Spokane, Wash., then Orlando before returning to Italy in September 2020.
Can’t get to Virginia? There’s still a way to experience Pompeii as it appeared before it was leveled by Vesuvius. Pompeian Households: An On-Line Companion has information on dozens of Pompeian houses, hundreds of rooms and thousands of artifacts found there — no museum passes, or passports, required.






 
See:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/scie...fd89bd36d4e_story.html?utm_term=.65e99e8b236b
People in Pompeii had running water. They had cranes, pumps and shockingly modern streets. That ingenuity is on display at Pompeii: The Immortal City. At the Science Museum of Virginia through Sept. 3, the Richmond exhibition focuses on the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills of the Romans and what the trapped-in-time city reveals about a long-past age of innovation

The exhibition, on tour after a Belgian debut, includes more than 100 artifacts, some never before seen in the United States. Visitors can view everything from fishing hooks to frescoes. Earrings, hydraulic valves, medical instruments and even a bathtub provide windows into the thriving lives of the city’s inhabitants.

Pompeiians weren’t the only people with tech at their fingertips. The finds are accompanied by high-tech multimedia and plenty of screens to flesh out the tragic stories of the city’s residents. The exhibition will travel to Spokane, Wash., then Orlando before returning to Italy in September 2020.
Can’t get to Virginia? There’s still a way to experience Pompeii as it appeared before it was leveled by Vesuvius. Pompeian Households: An On-Line Companion has information on dozens of Pompeian houses, hundreds of rooms and thousands of artifacts found there — no museum passes, or passports, required.







You can not think of history in terms of "what would have happened if" ...
But liberating the imagination, I think that if the Roman Empire had not been destroyed, the history of the Western World would have saved centuries of darkness and "start over" in many aspects ... and who knows what degree of civilization we would have now ...
 
It certainly would have been nice to have the technology, art, literature (more than the church was able to save) and trade networks that got swept away in the collapse. But, imperial government, bureaucracy and corruption (especially the corruption) were a dead weight on the people . . . makes me think of Asimov's Foundation series.
 
You can not think of history in terms of "what would have happened if" ...
But liberating the imagination, I think that if the Roman Empire had not been destroyed, the history of the Western World would have saved centuries of darkness and "start over" in many aspects ... and who knows what degree of civilization we would have now ...

That's how I always think of it too. I said years ago talking about another civilization that it's not really about my "ethnic identity" for me. I'm just always for the civilized core.

It's a cycle in human history. We claw our way up, learn how to irrigate the land, clear the marshes, build roads, trade, learn to read and write, build schools, write law codes, provide sanitation and clean water, decent food for most people, and then as time passes it gets harder to maintain, and the less civilized groups on the periphery are ready to pounce, helped in the case we're discussing by climate change and plague. To some degree it happened in Greece with the Bronze Age Collapse, and it certainly happened over and over again in the Middle East where it was often Semitic tribes who stormed the civilized core.

No empire can last forever, but the barbarians storming the borders running from the Huns, the downturn in food supplies and the plague brought it all crashing down sooner than it need have.

I've said before that I have spent a lot of time at the site of Luni and the museum there and have even spoken to some of the young archaeologists, and they assure me that what happened with the fall was so precipitous and such a change as to boggle the imagination. Kings in the Middle Ages lived less well than middle class merchants during the Roman Era. In my own area, the lifestyle didn't approach that of the people during the Empire until the late 19th century. Pardon me if I'm sad that we had to suffer like that for 1500 years.

All of that said, I posted this because it's a traveling exhibit and people might want to catch it.
 

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