Pozzo ping.
“It is the first time that stratlingite is recognized in ancient mortars,” Lucrezia Ungaro, the Trajan Forum archaeological chief”
??????
My Roman history professor told me years ago that one of the secrets to the durability of the roads the Romans built was the inclusion of volcanic ash in the mortar used to hold the stones in the fossa in place.
Maybe it was still just a theory then (instead of a proven fact), though.
I bet the Romans would have built the “Big Dig” in two weeks, and none of it would have fallen off and crushed people.
Truth be told, today’s “portland cement” is inferior in several ways to many ancient cements, some used by the romans, others by the Egyptians.
Some of the ways portland cement is inferior: shorter life, excessive heat of hydration leading to cracking and the need to control the same, slow development of ultimate strength, low resistance to deterioration under high heat (like in fires), energy intensive mnufacturing, and inferior dimensional stability.
Yet, most folks assume that today’s technology is automatically superior. In the case of portland cement, the reason it is used almost exclusively in lieu of other, much better cements is simple: building codes.
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Gods |
Thanks decimon. |
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Are these guys behind or what? Roman cement has been known for decades to be superior to all other forms of cement in that time period and for centuries after. It took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for the EU civilizations to duplicate the Roman type of cement. It was the only cement of its time and, as I said, for centuries after, to be able to dry while under water, it was in most ways similar to modern cement. They may have been murderous jerks but the Romans were great engineers.