{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "GUYS THEY FIGURED OUT THE ROMAN CONCRETE RECIPE THAT MAKES IT IMMUNE TO SEAWATER\n...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/164128096078/", "html": "

teamstopfightingassholes:

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feitanswife:

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systlin:

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ella-raene:

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systlin:

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beautifultoastdream:

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systlin:

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GUYS THEY FIGURED OUT THE ROMAN CONCRETE RECIPE THAT MAKES IT IMMUNE TO SEAWATER

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/mystery-of-2000-year-old-roman-concrete-solved-by-scientists/ar-BBDO5VC

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EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

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I KNOW RIGHT?!???

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I can\u2019t help but feel this is one of those things where we had actual documents saying \u201cit was done with this and this\u201d, and some old rich white guys looked at it and went \u201coh mirth, the ancients were so silly. They probably wrote this basic stuff down and the actual builders had Secret Techniques we need to Discover\u201d

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For a long time, archeologists didn\u2019t know how greek women did their high-piled braids and hair. There was a word that translated to \u201cneedle\u201d in the descriptions. They went, \u201cseems like we\u2019ll never know.\u201d Then a hairdresser took a fucking needle (big needle) and did the fucking thing you do with needles, which is sew - and by sewing the braids into place, she replicated ancient styles.

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The Egyptians had diagrams of construction steps for their pyramids. Archeologists went \u201coooh, ancient primitive people, how they do this?\u201d LITERALLY MYTHBUSTERS OR THE OLD DISCOVERY CHANNEL or someone went \u201cwhat if we did the thing the pictures said they did\u201d AND GUESS FUCKING WHAT. GUESS FUCKING WHAT.

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Also that thing with native Americans saying squirrels taught them how to get sap for maple syrup, and colonizers going \u201cthat\u2019s a myth sweaty\u201d

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Sincerely, if the scientists had to do actual analysis like spectroscopy or whatever, kudos, and no flame. But swear to god, if all these years, we\u2019ve had the recipes and there was just this fuckin institutional bias against just TRYING THE THING THEY SAID WOULD WORK, HELLFIRE AND DEMENTIA.

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In this case, it was more they had roman writings saying what went into it but figured there was some secret because when they followed roman recipes it never turned out quite right.\u00a0

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Because the sources left by Romans always just said to mix with water. Because, if you were a Roman??? Obviously you knew that you used seawater for cement. Duh. That\u2019s so obvious that they never really bothered specifying that you use seawater to mix it, because it wasn\u2019t necessary, everyone knew that.\u00a0

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But then the empire fell, other empires rose and fell, time passed, and by the time we were trying to reconstruct the formula the\u00a0\u2018mix the dry ingredients with seawater\u2019 trick had been forgotten, until chemical analysis finally figured it out again.\u00a0

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It\u2019s sort of like the land of Punt, a ally of Egypt that\u2019s mentioned all the time, but we don\u2019t actually know where it was located. Because it isn\u2019t written down anywhere. Why would they write it down? It\u2019s Punt. Everyone knew where Punt was back then. It\u2019d be ridiculous to waste the ink and space to specify where it was, every child knows about Punt.\u00a0

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3000 years later and we have no damned clue where it was, simply because at the time it was so blindingly obvious that it was never written down.\u00a0

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So moral of story is be specific

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I was thinking it was stupid that they didn\u2019t specify seawater but then I had the thought that we don\u2019t specify to use chicken eggs in baking because DUH so we just write eggs

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