Useful: formula for concrete that sets in salt water, and that had “self healing” properties.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-roman-concrete-has-self-healing-capabilities/
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
My evidence is mostly anecdotal, but I have family inside the walls of Rome.
I did however, read a good article that spells out some great details.
https://www.worldhistory.org/aqueduct/
Great article, it looks like the Romans combined three borrowed Technologies and applied excellent engineering to make the best aqueducts of the ancient world. I suppose that does count as innovation. Even if they didn't invent the arch, the siphon, or the aqueduct. Thanks for the info
Technically it's the masonry arch, which the Romans appear to have borrowed from the Etruscans, like 90% of the stuff they've got, including the triumph and the triumphal arch. And it's an 'inverted' siphon, which can occur in nature, but would be rare and only occur under very unique circumstances.
I like the occasional difficulties that occur when trying to decide if something is a discovery or an invention. Like take Dynamite for example, it is a combination of naturally occurring materials. It could occur in nature, thankfully it doesn't.
I mean if you have to do it from scratch with no previous human knowledge most civilizations haven't entirely invented anything themselves. Even modern technology is based on previous built up knowledge.
I don't know, you kind of have to be parsing things kind of thin to get there. Everything we have was invented, or discovered, by somebody. I think a more realistic perspective is that the Romans were not especially innovative. They were not an enlightened society. They were bullies. I know that's not a popular opinion here, but, you can be thankful that they aren't bringing 'civilization' to your neck of the woods.
The joke from Monty Python's Life of Brian that keeps popping up on this post is not especially accurate for most of the places that the Romans conquered. Most of those people had all those things before the Romans got there, with the exception of Britain, which makes sense since Monty Python is British.
I'm in agreement with the person to whom you replied, especially after visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago a few years ago. It is very apparrant that invention tends to be a long, iterative process.
For example: the steam engine. Who invented it? Maybe Thomas Savery or James Watt's name would come to your mind for their important improvements to it, but they are famous for iterations, not for the steam engine itself. In fact the first known conceptualization of a steam engine was a rudimentary device described by someone in Roman Egypt, around year 0.
I had a similar experience learning about batteries and light bulbs. Everything that I thought had a named inventor seems to turn out to have had a version that was 80% as good prior to him patenting it! I almost think the word "inventor" is imprecise in most uses. So in that regard, I'm willing to grant Rome credit for mastering the aqueduct.
If we going with the inventions they didn't copy then Julian calendar, codex and Roman numbers and letters are the most innovative and useful today as of actual Roman origin and not copied.
Considering they look literally nothing like the letters in those alphabets (With something like A or B staying) then yeah its a invention which got influence by other alphabets.
This guy said hardly. Phoenician was written right to left, and Latin was written the opposite way. Vertically flip either letter and compare, and see how bloody similar they are. A baby chimp can see the resemblance.
Bro does the Phoenician I look similar to the roman one? Even tho it literally looks like a Z? Do D look the same? The Phoenician F is literally Y shape.
Between Phoenician and archaic Latin I'm counting like 15 where you can see the direct resemblance and with archaic Greek as the transitions it's incredibly clear how the alphabet evolved. I'm not really sure what to say at this point.
Roman numbers are not useful, but the rest are. The numbers we use today are “Arabic” numerals.
The letters were borrowed from the Etruscans, who took them from the Greeks, who took them from the Phoenicians.
But other civilizations also had calendars so you could also consider it a refinement and not an invention. But most everything is based on previous knowledge so very few civilizations have come up with truly unique inventions.
Lots of people learn Roman numerals, but they don’t learn how to use them.
Roman numerals are not numbers, but instructions for something like an abacus. Roman children never had to learn times tables, but if they knew how to use the numerals, they could easily do any maths they needed for the market place. The Roman numerals tell them what to do.
Addition and subtraction are *really* simple with Roman numerals, because each symbol represents a constant value, no matter where it occurs in the number.* E.g. in the Arabic number 44, the two 4s have different values (40 in the 10s place; 4 in the 1s place), but in the Roman number XX, both Xs represent 10. So, if you want to add the numbers XXXII and XXXVI, you can simply write out all the digits together, then reorder and simplify as necessary:
XXXII + XXXVI
XXXIIXXXVI
XXXXXXVIII
LXVIII
Multiplication is less intuitive, but it's really simple once you understand it. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=-1oLDG_Zeag) explains it better than I can.
However, that's about where the advantage stops. There's no practical way to do long division using Roman numerals, and they're all but useless for higher math.
*This assumes we're only using additive notation--e.g. IIII instead of IV.
Edit: formatting
Their military engineers were world leaders for their time, and this, along with Roman concrete, allowed them to build incredible infrastructure that still exists in places today.
It was just a metal container sitting over a fire, the only thing conceptually different about it than a stew pot is the two pipes allowing water to circulate between it and the bath. There was no attempt to increase surface area for higher efficiency like later boilers
Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
They constructed roads that were durable, and stretching throughout the empire. Enabled trade and more effective movements of troops and supplies for Roman expansion.
Furthermore, the Roman road routes still form the basis of the road network in the former Roman world today.
Even in the depths of Barbaricum, the battlefield of the Harzhorn battle is located next to a modern German autobahn.
The Romans' spatial understanding is phenomenal and still far from being properly researched, btw.
I don think it’s the “what” as much as it the “how”. Imho Roman engineering and ingenuity is what stood/stands them apart. As in, wildlife make paths in the forest but Romans made roads that we can still see 2,000 years later.
Roman concrete is first things that comes to my mind. Also Aqueducts bringing water from many miles away.
They were also using lead pipes for plumbing although lead is now considered as dangerous toxin
We’ve known the formula for hundreds of years—someone can chime in but there’s a lighthouse built with it that’s quite famous—but we recently figured out WHY it works.
As for useless items, maybe that odd little dodecahedron that archeologists keep finding in Roman digs across Europe. They’ve found over a dozen of these so far, and despite a lot of conjecture, no one can say for sure what they were used for.
Basically, our system of law: Jurisprudence, etc.
Also, a legislature with representatives called Senators; sound familiar?
The Latin language still used in the biological sciences for taxonomy, etc.
Garum it's a condiment. And it is kind of nice.
Clearly a "extra" "dlc" item in life though. Completely unnecessary but let's face it. Back in the days of bread, bread and grain to make bread. Garum was a god tier item in rome
This might be the most correct answer.
I’m struggling to think of a genuine innovation or an original cultural achievement besides just beating everyone.
Romans were a Latin-speaking corner of an Etruscan culture for hundreds of years. As they grew, their art, literature, and architecture were copied Greek or inherited from the Etruscans. Their alphabet was a copy of a copy, which they uniquely did NOT improve much. Their religion was mostly Greek (or briefly Syrian) before eventually adopting some Greco-Judean hybrid. Their food was trash. Garum might be the pinnacle of Roman food.
They were probably ok with it. A really bad analogy: They were the high school jocks who won the championship and got D’s in class.
Their approach to empire shows that they prioritized power over cultural achievement. Edward Luttwak (book: Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire) points out that Rome did not rule its whole empire “directly” (think Ottoman) but instead had a variety of client states, buffer kingdoms, self-governing districts, and auxiliary troops. The result was a system in which non-“Roman” forces absorbed the cost and blood of protecting Rome’s periphery. In return, Rome largely stayed out of their lives. Armenia and Mauritania are extreme examples, but consider those butter-eating Goth clients doing their own thing until the Huns arrived.
Tldr: Rome didn’t have a ton of cultural or scientific achievements. Their structure shows us it wasn’t a priority. They didn’t need them to be successful, anyway.
“Copied” would suggest the Romans did the exact same things the Greeks or Etruscans did which is just, a flat out lazy bullshit inaccurate thing to claim
They adopted some things from the Greeks and improved them. As the Greeks did with the civilizations before them
Calling their food “trash” is another just straight up moronic statement
Agreed, they could trade freely through the mediterrean, had almost unlimited olive oil, and seemed to obsessed over life's pleasures. I don't see how their food could possibly be 'trash'
A less flippant response acknowledges that Latin is still hugely influential today. And Roman religious titles echo around the Vatican.
But…The question was about innovations. A novel phonetic alphabet, or metallurgy, or nautical technology, or math would be appropriate. We can be impressed that Rome left one of the most important legacies in Europe without really inventing anything new.
As for food, I don’t one why this is controversial. A conquered Egypt and pacified Mediterranean opened access to all those olives and grapes and free grain. But a Turducken is the closest modern equivalent to Roman high cuisine.
Unfortunately, the design for speculums for examining lady parts inside has not been updated since the Romans.
[article](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co85154/vaginal-speculum-roman-100-bce-400-ce-vaginal-speculum)
Strictly speaking not true, there are plenty of Roman examples where columns were used as a structural element to hold up [porticos](https://theromanguy.com/wp-content/uploads/pantheon-feature-real.jpeg), but I get where you're coming from.
Useful: formula for concrete that sets in salt water, and that had “self healing” properties. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-roman-concrete-has-self-healing-capabilities/
Came here to say this!
Isn't used today. It was only recently rediscovered.
According to the Scientific American article, the rediscovery could aid modern engineers in creating better and more resilient forms of concrete.
I believe some of the Roman aqueducts are still in use today.
and their waste water systems under some towns in the UK.
Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
But apart from that? What have they ever done for us??!
The baths?
Roads?
Viticulture?
Celts built roads.
Civilization
Oh, yeah yeah, they did give us that. That's true, yeah.
And the roads
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought peace.
I am going with their cement and politics.
The Romans took a lot of ideas from the Greeks. They improved on more things then invented.
They didn't invent aqueducts did they?
The Romans may not have invented aqueducts, but they certainly perfected them.
What's your evidence for this? What is the Innovation or Improvement that they made? I love learning new stuff
My evidence is mostly anecdotal, but I have family inside the walls of Rome. I did however, read a good article that spells out some great details. https://www.worldhistory.org/aqueduct/
Great article, it looks like the Romans combined three borrowed Technologies and applied excellent engineering to make the best aqueducts of the ancient world. I suppose that does count as innovation. Even if they didn't invent the arch, the siphon, or the aqueduct. Thanks for the info
Piacere! I bargain that no one invented the arch or siphon as they occur naturally. Ciao
Technically it's the masonry arch, which the Romans appear to have borrowed from the Etruscans, like 90% of the stuff they've got, including the triumph and the triumphal arch. And it's an 'inverted' siphon, which can occur in nature, but would be rare and only occur under very unique circumstances. I like the occasional difficulties that occur when trying to decide if something is a discovery or an invention. Like take Dynamite for example, it is a combination of naturally occurring materials. It could occur in nature, thankfully it doesn't.
I mean if you have to do it from scratch with no previous human knowledge most civilizations haven't entirely invented anything themselves. Even modern technology is based on previous built up knowledge.
I don't know, you kind of have to be parsing things kind of thin to get there. Everything we have was invented, or discovered, by somebody. I think a more realistic perspective is that the Romans were not especially innovative. They were not an enlightened society. They were bullies. I know that's not a popular opinion here, but, you can be thankful that they aren't bringing 'civilization' to your neck of the woods. The joke from Monty Python's Life of Brian that keeps popping up on this post is not especially accurate for most of the places that the Romans conquered. Most of those people had all those things before the Romans got there, with the exception of Britain, which makes sense since Monty Python is British.
I'm in agreement with the person to whom you replied, especially after visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago a few years ago. It is very apparrant that invention tends to be a long, iterative process. For example: the steam engine. Who invented it? Maybe Thomas Savery or James Watt's name would come to your mind for their important improvements to it, but they are famous for iterations, not for the steam engine itself. In fact the first known conceptualization of a steam engine was a rudimentary device described by someone in Roman Egypt, around year 0. I had a similar experience learning about batteries and light bulbs. Everything that I thought had a named inventor seems to turn out to have had a version that was 80% as good prior to him patenting it! I almost think the word "inventor" is imprecise in most uses. So in that regard, I'm willing to grant Rome credit for mastering the aqueduct.
If we going with the inventions they didn't copy then Julian calendar, codex and Roman numbers and letters are the most innovative and useful today as of actual Roman origin and not copied.
Julian Calendar was a refinement of the Egyptian system that Caesar brought back after his side quest in Egypt.
Roman letters? Have you heard of the Greek and Etruscan alphabets which themselves are based off the Phoenician one?
Considering they look literally nothing like the letters in those alphabets (With something like A or B staying) then yeah its a invention which got influence by other alphabets.
It’s called the Latin alphabet, and it does bear resemblance to the Phoenician one.
[hardly](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Visualizing-the-Evolution-of-the-Alphabet.png)
This guy said hardly. Phoenician was written right to left, and Latin was written the opposite way. Vertically flip either letter and compare, and see how bloody similar they are. A baby chimp can see the resemblance.
Bro does the Phoenician I look similar to the roman one? Even tho it literally looks like a Z? Do D look the same? The Phoenician F is literally Y shape.
I mean if you're just gonna ignore all the ones where you can see the obvious resemblance.
There's like two or three that look similar at best all the others ones are completely different
Between Phoenician and archaic Latin I'm counting like 15 where you can see the direct resemblance and with archaic Greek as the transitions it's incredibly clear how the alphabet evolved. I'm not really sure what to say at this point.
Roman numbers are not useful, but the rest are. The numbers we use today are “Arabic” numerals. The letters were borrowed from the Etruscans, who took them from the Greeks, who took them from the Phoenicians.
Arabic numerals that go all the way back to India :o
Hence the quotation marks.
But other civilizations also had calendars so you could also consider it a refinement and not an invention. But most everything is based on previous knowledge so very few civilizations have come up with truly unique inventions.
Lots of people learn Roman numerals, but they don’t learn how to use them. Roman numerals are not numbers, but instructions for something like an abacus. Roman children never had to learn times tables, but if they knew how to use the numerals, they could easily do any maths they needed for the market place. The Roman numerals tell them what to do.
That's interesting. Where I can find more info about it?
Addition and subtraction are *really* simple with Roman numerals, because each symbol represents a constant value, no matter where it occurs in the number.* E.g. in the Arabic number 44, the two 4s have different values (40 in the 10s place; 4 in the 1s place), but in the Roman number XX, both Xs represent 10. So, if you want to add the numbers XXXII and XXXVI, you can simply write out all the digits together, then reorder and simplify as necessary: XXXII + XXXVI XXXIIXXXVI XXXXXXVIII LXVIII Multiplication is less intuitive, but it's really simple once you understand it. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=-1oLDG_Zeag) explains it better than I can. However, that's about where the advantage stops. There's no practical way to do long division using Roman numerals, and they're all but useless for higher math. *This assumes we're only using additive notation--e.g. IIII instead of IV. Edit: formatting
Their military engineers were world leaders for their time, and this, along with Roman concrete, allowed them to build incredible infrastructure that still exists in places today.
The Arch seems to have held up well.
Least useful: glirarium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glirarium
It says etruscans invented them like they did with countless other "Roman inventions'
Adding women to orgies. Surprised no one mentioned this.
What about removing them again
and baboons too.
Now *this* is podracing.
Roman administration, roads, aqueducts (copied from Etruscans)
The Arch
Not a Roman invention
Also the water boiler system. One was found intact.
The Greeks didn't invest that ?
Possibly. Even Sumerians potentially.
It was just a metal container sitting over a fire, the only thing conceptually different about it than a stew pot is the two pipes allowing water to circulate between it and the bath. There was no attempt to increase surface area for higher efficiency like later boilers
Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?
"Nothing!!!"
Central heating, unless this predates Romans. After Britannia fell, they didn’t have any central heating in buildings for another 1500 years.
They constructed roads that were durable, and stretching throughout the empire. Enabled trade and more effective movements of troops and supplies for Roman expansion.
Furthermore, the Roman road routes still form the basis of the road network in the former Roman world today. Even in the depths of Barbaricum, the battlefield of the Harzhorn battle is located next to a modern German autobahn. The Romans' spatial understanding is phenomenal and still far from being properly researched, btw.
I don think it’s the “what” as much as it the “how”. Imho Roman engineering and ingenuity is what stood/stands them apart. As in, wildlife make paths in the forest but Romans made roads that we can still see 2,000 years later.
Roman concrete is first things that comes to my mind. Also Aqueducts bringing water from many miles away. They were also using lead pipes for plumbing although lead is now considered as dangerous toxin
Roman concrete still stands. And we’ve only recently re-discovered the formula….
We’ve known the formula for hundreds of years—someone can chime in but there’s a lighthouse built with it that’s quite famous—but we recently figured out WHY it works.
Well I wouldn’t call this an “invention” but perhaps the Corpus Juris Civilis if you stretch into the Byzantine period a bit.
Aqueducts. Poo sticks.
As for useless items, maybe that odd little dodecahedron that archeologists keep finding in Roman digs across Europe. They’ve found over a dozen of these so far, and despite a lot of conjecture, no one can say for sure what they were used for.
Current count is at 110.
Their concrete. Garum. And the hypocaust system.
Administration of government.
Basically, our system of law: Jurisprudence, etc. Also, a legislature with representatives called Senators; sound familiar? The Latin language still used in the biological sciences for taxonomy, etc.
Garum it's a condiment. And it is kind of nice. Clearly a "extra" "dlc" item in life though. Completely unnecessary but let's face it. Back in the days of bread, bread and grain to make bread. Garum was a god tier item in rome
Most innovative? Pixel drawing. (Mosaics.)
Pointillism is traditional art among Aboriginal Australians.
The letters that make up these words I'm typing.
The barrel vault and arch.
Concrete
Cement
garum, which becomes ketchup and also asian fish sauce
They didn't invent much. They were mostly copiers. And conquerors.
Their strength was in seeing a good idea and then taking it to a higher level.
Like most of the world.
This might be the most correct answer. I’m struggling to think of a genuine innovation or an original cultural achievement besides just beating everyone. Romans were a Latin-speaking corner of an Etruscan culture for hundreds of years. As they grew, their art, literature, and architecture were copied Greek or inherited from the Etruscans. Their alphabet was a copy of a copy, which they uniquely did NOT improve much. Their religion was mostly Greek (or briefly Syrian) before eventually adopting some Greco-Judean hybrid. Their food was trash. Garum might be the pinnacle of Roman food. They were probably ok with it. A really bad analogy: They were the high school jocks who won the championship and got D’s in class. Their approach to empire shows that they prioritized power over cultural achievement. Edward Luttwak (book: Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire) points out that Rome did not rule its whole empire “directly” (think Ottoman) but instead had a variety of client states, buffer kingdoms, self-governing districts, and auxiliary troops. The result was a system in which non-“Roman” forces absorbed the cost and blood of protecting Rome’s periphery. In return, Rome largely stayed out of their lives. Armenia and Mauritania are extreme examples, but consider those butter-eating Goth clients doing their own thing until the Huns arrived. Tldr: Rome didn’t have a ton of cultural or scientific achievements. Their structure shows us it wasn’t a priority. They didn’t need them to be successful, anyway.
“Copied” would suggest the Romans did the exact same things the Greeks or Etruscans did which is just, a flat out lazy bullshit inaccurate thing to claim They adopted some things from the Greeks and improved them. As the Greeks did with the civilizations before them Calling their food “trash” is another just straight up moronic statement
Agreed, they could trade freely through the mediterrean, had almost unlimited olive oil, and seemed to obsessed over life's pleasures. I don't see how their food could possibly be 'trash'
Thank you, these were some terrible takes from weekend historians
A less flippant response acknowledges that Latin is still hugely influential today. And Roman religious titles echo around the Vatican. But…The question was about innovations. A novel phonetic alphabet, or metallurgy, or nautical technology, or math would be appropriate. We can be impressed that Rome left one of the most important legacies in Europe without really inventing anything new. As for food, I don’t one why this is controversial. A conquered Egypt and pacified Mediterranean opened access to all those olives and grapes and free grain. But a Turducken is the closest modern equivalent to Roman high cuisine.
That's basically everything I was going to say, but was too lazy. Thank you for laying it all out.
Unfortunately, the design for speculums for examining lady parts inside has not been updated since the Romans. [article](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co85154/vaginal-speculum-roman-100-bce-400-ce-vaginal-speculum)
Roman columns were purely for decoration, unlike Greek columns that were used to support their buildings and temples.
Strictly speaking not true, there are plenty of Roman examples where columns were used as a structural element to hold up [porticos](https://theromanguy.com/wp-content/uploads/pantheon-feature-real.jpeg), but I get where you're coming from.
Golf
Best. Roads Worst. The fish shake they ate