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OwlFancier posted:I would imagine given what Romans do if you put a natural water source and height differential within fifty miles of them, they'd probably put them on water wheels. I mean, given what they're probably able to build and afford with metals and such, a lot of places they might want to use some of the easiest electrical things to build would stand a good chance of being too far from suitable water-flow for that... at least without needing to seriously mess with some existing aqueducts. Which would probably lead to a very interesting increase in aqueduct building.
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Dec 13, 2017 02:17
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How much electricity could you generate from a water-wheel anyways, instead of a dedicated hydroelectic plant?
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Dec 13, 2017 02:20
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nothing to seehere posted:How much electricity could you generate from a water-wheel anyways, instead of a dedicated hydroelectic plant? If you can manage to have about a meter of drop from the wheel in-flow to the bottom, and 75 liters of flow, you can provide close to 800 watts of continuous power output with a modern generator hooked up to it (which incidentally is around 1 horsepower). Building with more primitive materials should still provide a very decent amount of power. That's the sort of stream someone might have flowing past their property in a hilly area, one could generate a lot more from building larger mills on larger rivers.
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Dec 13, 2017 02:45
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I think that a lot of modern social problems would be erased if one went back in time and smothered Ayn Rand in the cradle.
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Dec 13, 2017 03:39
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skasion posted:On that note has anyone read this novel that came out recently Kingdom of the Wicked, about Jesus getting tried in industrially revolutionized Rome? I usually stay away from alt-hist stuff but my dad recommended it to me, so it might be decent, I guess. Having a hard time getting into it since everything I see about the book is from the libertarian community, of which the author is apparently an enthusiastic member.
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Dec 13, 2017 03:47
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a kitten posted:Steal their bread recipe. The British Museum hired a modern baker to recreate this loaf for their youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYTuNXq1eBk Their youtube channel is fantastic by the way and everyone here should subscribe
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Dec 13, 2017 03:59
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Also, the Romans could have built old-fashioned arc lamps with the technology they had, so long as they'd had a source of constant electric current. The basic material you need is simply sticks of carbon, which will gradually burn away as the current flows through them and vaporizes the tips - that burning is what produces the light. Once you have that, you did need to move the sticks back closer together every so often to maintain the arc effect, but you could train people to do that. It would be practical to have such a lamp stay on all night long before the carbon electrodes were too far worn away to be functional. Later inventions for arc lamps could extend the life of the electrodes all the way to 100 hours of course, but that could be developed on their own time.
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Dec 13, 2017 04:06
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Arc lamps need a shitload of juice though.
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Dec 13, 2017 05:14
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The Lone Badger posted:Arc lamps need a shitload of juice though. Not particularly. You'd only need to supply 200-450 watts for the simple and smaller earlier designs, the really high power arc lamps of modern times are at a whole other level. And while that does sound high, those are putting out a shitload of light too - fairly good efficiency at the cost of low longevity. Again, water-wheel driven generators could supply that sort of power at a fairly reliable rate, even small time ones. Edit: and an interesting side effect of early arc lamps, is that they're quite powerful sources of UV radiation, oops! Thus the early designs were maintained for a quite a while to attempt to use the UV light for sunlight exposure simulation in dark climes, and early attempts at UV based disinfection. You could use that UV sterilization effect, perhaps, to clean certain things up in Rome. fishmech fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Dec 13, 2017 |
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Dec 13, 2017 05:52
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What kind of transmission lines would the Romans have made?
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Dec 13, 2017 07:09
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FAUXTON posted:What kind of transmission lines would the Romans have made? They'd electrify the aquaducts Try stealing water now, bitches.
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Dec 13, 2017 07:14
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That still seems like a lot more electricity than they would be capable of producing at a whim with no industrialism beforehand. Not sure if Romans could handle producing wiring either. I'm also not entirely sure how much of a game-changer arc lighting would've been at that point. Mining is definitely improved, and theoretically craftsmen benefit from having their hours extended if all the numbers work out and it's cheaper than keeping candles or fires going, but most important labor is still going to be in the fields, farming, rather than indoors. I guess maybe if they get enough power to do streetlights it'd help commerce. Doesn't seem like it would've solved the whole flammability problem either.
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Dec 13, 2017 07:17
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E: completely non-germane post deleted.
FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Dec 13, 2017 |
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Dec 13, 2017 07:22
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FAUXTON posted:Hahaha this guy on MSNBC is pointing out that Moore being a pedo was desirable to Trump because he expected Moore to win and then he'd be able to talk poo poo about the fact that he pushed an unrepentant child predator to victory like some fat orange messiah. As much as I wish the trump presidency was ancient history I think you're in the wrong thread
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Dec 13, 2017 07:29
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FAUXTON posted:Hahaha this guy on MSNBC is pointing out that Moore being a pedo was desirable to Trump because he expected Moore to win and then he'd be able to talk poo poo about the fact that he pushed an unrepentant child predator to victory like some fat orange messiah. Those Gracchi brothers are at it again!
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Dec 13, 2017 07:29
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look in fairness I want to post about this literally everywhere too
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Dec 13, 2017 07:30
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FAUXTON posted:Hahaha this guy on MSNBC is pointing out that Moore being a pedo was desirable to Trump because he expected Moore to win and then he'd be able to talk poo poo about the fact that he pushed an unrepentant child predator to victory like some fat orange messiah. What would the Romans' take on this have been? Read this recently, Central European women from the Neolithic until Medieval times had powerful gorilla arms from doing hard physical labor every day. After that, technology lessened their burden somewhat. Pretty interesting. https://thelily.com/prehistoric-women-had-extremely-strong-arms-from-a-life-of-manual-labor-db977987a195
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Dec 13, 2017 07:30
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Grevling posted:What would the Romans' take on this have been? "Did he ask their fathers for permission?"
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Dec 13, 2017 07:33
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cheetah7071 posted:"Did he ask their fathers for permission?" ah, that's where he went wrong quote:Moore also added that he doesn’t “remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother.”
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Dec 13, 2017 07:46
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ulmont posted:Having a hard time getting into it since everything I see about the book is from the libertarian community, of which the author is apparently an enthusiastic member. I have read libertarian sci-fi that was good because it actually addressed the issues honestly and their libertarian utopia sucked rear end. Some day I will get around to my novel of an industrialized Rome (or thinly-veiled fantasy Rome) having a communist uprising.
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Dec 13, 2017 15:25
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Grevling posted:What would the Romans' take on this have been?
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Dec 13, 2017 15:51
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Grevling posted:Read this recently, Central European women from the Neolithic until Medieval times had powerful gorilla arms from doing hard physical labor every day. After that, technology lessened their burden somewhat. Pretty interesting. There's a great Ben Franklin quote from one of his almanacs where he's giving advice on how a farmer should get a wife. The short version is "Don't get one of those society ladies from Philadelphia. They might be pretty but they're worthless for the life you lead. Your ideal wife should be able to carry a young hog under each arm."
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Dec 13, 2017 16:01
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Grand Fromage posted:Some day I will get around to my novel of an industrialized Rome (or thinly-veiled fantasy Rome) having a communist uprising. The author goes into a fair bit of how she tried to develop the book here, but the kindle sample still didn't grab me. https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/authors-note-kingdom-wicked
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Dec 13, 2017 16:56
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Oh, I just remembered what I could easily bring to Song China to help with the Mongol invasion. Tsetse flies! Can't use horse archers with no horses! Or without people not dying of sleeping sickness too, I guess.  This I assert is a brilliant idea with no repercussions that could possibly be predicted!
Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 13, 2017 18:57
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You could give them a better gunpowder recipe and the design plans for a musket.
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Dec 13, 2017 23:28
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That would probably backfire and result in Mongolians armed with siege cannons manned by Chinese slaves within about ten years of you doing it.
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Dec 13, 2017 23:47
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In my opinion the most effective thing you could do to change history would be by promoting health and medicine on one hand, and political economy on the other. You wouldn't even need to know that much about either: the broad concepts of public hygiene, germ theory, and physiology would be pretty sufficient at causing a medical revolution in their own right, as would macroeconomics, institutionalism, and representative government as a stabilizing force. The big trick would be getting anyone to listen to you, and not getting accused of heresy for rocking the boat too much.
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Dec 14, 2017 05:55
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I said this a bit upthread but medicine alone won't really reduce the death count that much (though it might reduce suffering). The malthusian trap will spring and all the people who would have died in plague will die in famine instead, unless you also do something to increase farm yields. Someone else said that apparently a ton of early modern farming science could be implemented with Roman technology though.
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Dec 14, 2017 06:07
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cheetah7071 posted:I said this a bit upthread but medicine alone won't really reduce the death count that much (though it might reduce suffering). The malthusian trap will spring and all the people who would have died in plague will die in famine instead, unless you also do something to increase farm yields. Someone else said that apparently a ton of early modern farming science could be implemented with Roman technology though. Modern medicine tends to reduce birthrates, which would counteract that to a significant extent.
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Dec 14, 2017 10:36
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Urbanization and education reduces birthrates, as children suddenly become expensive investments, as opposed to assets that can contribute labor to your farmstead.
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Dec 14, 2017 10:41
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Phobophilia posted:Urbanization and education reduces birthrates, as children suddenly become expensive investments, as opposed to assets that can contribute labor to your farmstead. More medicine still, I think. Pre-welfare state, your children are who support you in your old age. You need enough of them for that to be viable, which when half of them die as infants, means having more kids. I'm not aware of e.g. ancient Rome having a lower birthrate compared to the countryside despite being heavily urbanised and by comparison well educated.
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Dec 14, 2017 11:10
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Phobophilia posted:Urbanization and education reduces birthrates, as children suddenly become expensive investments, as opposed to assets that can contribute labor to your farmstead. I think the education is key, as it seems* for a lot of wealthy Romans they didn't have usually... exceptionally large families? like you see among nobility in the middle ages. So many senators and later Emperors seemed to have very few recorded children? Ignoring like Hadrian being pretty clearly gay out of the entire line of the Good Emperors only Marcus Aurelius seemed to really father a giant family with ~14 kids~. Then there were the Julio-Claudians who never seemed to have more than 2-3 kids even the ones who didn't get ganked like Nero or Caligula at a young age. Caesar only had Julia and Caesarion, Augustus only had Julia, Tiberius only had Drusus etc... Maybe that Silphum stuff really just worked that drat good 
Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 12:08
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There was an impetus for the senatorial class not to have too many kids because senatorial status required a minimum property value. If you go dividing up all your poo poo among your sons and they go on dividing it up among their kids like some sort of Carolingians, it’s not long before your descendants are broke and irrelevant. This often went double for imperial types because it’s really hard to divide supreme power fairly between your kids in a way that isn’t going to make one merk the other as soon as they can. It could be managed: none of Augustus’ coterie of heirs killed each other unless you count Postumus (though they still all got killed except Tiberius), and Titus and Domitian managed to coexist albeit lovelessly, but you only need to look at Nero and Britannicus, or Severus’ sons or the rolling bloodbath of Constantine’s relatives to see why having only one son (or better yet, having no kids at all so you can just pick yourself a goddamn son to inherit) would pay off. Also, infant mortality. Even with the best money and doctors in the world, kids (and mothers) did die a good sight more often than today. Augustus and Tiberius both lost at least one child in miscarriage or infancy; Augustus in particular, reading between the lines, seems to have stopped risking Livia’s life at that point in favor of endless affairs and adoptions. skasion fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 12:54
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The more I learn about the Roman social system the more I'm amazed the empire lasted as long as it did and the more I question whether it going away was in fact a bad thing.
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Dec 14, 2017 13:04
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Stringent posted:The more I learn about the Roman social system the more I'm amazed the empire lasted as long as it did and the more I question whether it going away was in fact a bad thing. Yes and yes
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Dec 14, 2017 13:09
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So the between the lines, unlike later noble families in christian Europe recording dead infants likely due to baptisms etc., did Pre-Christian Romans just not really mention the kids who died in childbirth or in infancy?. However the pressures do sound the same as modern day wealthy professionals... kids are expensive and if you want the few kids you do have to be as successful as possible and become senators themselves, instead of a bunch of ones who are all kinda mediocre and never go anywhere in life. The mention of Constantine makes a good point, it almost feels like Constantine was trolling when he pretty much replaced the tetrarchy he murdered with a tetrarchy of his kids and cousins... who then immediately started murdering each other. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 13:25
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skasion posted:There was an impetus for the senatorial class not to have too many kids because senatorial status required a minimum property value. If you go dividing up all your poo poo among your sons and they go on dividing it up among their kids ...
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Dec 14, 2017 13:29
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skasion posted:Yes and yes Yes it was a bad thing?
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Dec 14, 2017 13:30
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Stringent posted:Yes it was a bad thing? Yeah absolutely. Bad in terms of history: the fatal weakness of the Roman state led to turmoil and disorder and general shift in standards of education that had the side effect of preventing us now from knowing a poo poo ton of things about antiquity that we might otherwise know. Bad in terms of common good: the weakness and in the West, collapse of Roman government was clearly not fun for many of the people who had to live through it; it brought about further warring among all the successor states, some of it (Justinian’s Italian war comes to mind) immensely brutal and more devastating than the actual collapse of imperial government. While morally speaking it’s easy (and valid) to complain about how violent and corrupt Roman society was: it made possible constant civil wars, terrible plagues, graft and intrigue on a level that make the USSR look good; and we know these things because people complained about them even at the time. But collapse of Roman government didn’t fix this, it just meant that the same kind of violence and corruption took place on smaller scales for smaller stakes.
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Dec 14, 2017 14:04
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skasion posted:Yeah absolutely. Bad in terms of history: the fatal weakness of the Roman state led to turmoil and disorder and general shift in standards of education that had the side effect of preventing us now from knowing a poo poo ton of things about antiquity that we might otherwise know. Bad in terms of common good: the weakness and in the West, collapse of Roman government was clearly not fun for many of the people who had to live through it; it brought about further warring among all the successor states, some of it (Justinian’s Italian war comes to mind) immensely brutal and more devastating than the actual collapse of imperial government. While morally speaking it’s easy (and valid) to complain about how violent and corrupt Roman society was: it made possible constant civil wars, terrible plagues, graft and intrigue on a level that make the USSR look good; and we know these things because people complained about them even at the time. But collapse of Roman government didn’t fix this, it just meant that the same kind of violence and corruption took place on smaller scales for smaller stakes. I dunno man, I look at China and think maybe that breakdown had to not only happen but continue for something different to take its place, but I might be being naive. Losing the historical records straight up sucks though.
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Dec 14, 2017 14:14
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