Posted on 09/17/2010 7:54:05 AM PDT by wildbill
The long-sought source of the aqueduct that brought clean fresh water to ancient Rome lies beneath a pig pasture and a ruined chapel, according to a pair of British filmmakers who claim to have discovered the headwaters of Aqua Traiana, a 1,900-year-old aqueduct built by the Emperor Trajan in 109 A.D.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Also most people don't know that much of the Aqueduct system was in underground tunnels, smoothed by concrete (the secret of which was lost for hundreds of years)and with a precisely set 'drop' that was calculated to exactly the right degree to provide a controlled flow.
Read "Pompeii, A Novel" by Robert Harris for a well-researched bit of history about the Roman system of aqueduct construction.
They knew how to make water run uphill without any mechanical aids..............
Viaduct, vy not a chicken?
Intresting.
Does it not amaze anyone else that Rome had “city water” some 2K years ago, and yet there are HUGE swaths of the world today that don’t - major metropolitan areas that don’t have any mechanism to deliver fresh water to its citizens?
LOL
Just got back from a Med cruise that included a visit to Pompeii. You can still see the lead pipes in the streets that brought running water to all the households.
Cool, thanks for posting. It is amazing that so many of the things that the Romans constructed have lasted for thousands of years, many can only now be duplicated.
Oy vey!
Chico Marx: "Dat's what I want to know - why a duck?"
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
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Depends on the Drop 125 feet would give you about 52# not to shabby.
Not exactly. They (the Romans) simply used the same kind of “siphon” that are used today in routing irrigation canals and even toilet bowls. The pipe making up the siphon does need to be water-tight though, and most Dark Age Europe didn't have the technical skills to maintain the aqueducts the Romans left. Also, the attacks from the Vandals, Goths, Franks, etc destroyed many city water supplies as a way to force the city to surrender during a siege.
When I climbed around the Roman aqueduct ar Merida, Spain, this spring for several hours - tracing its source canal back across the sides of the hills above Merida and into the brush, and, at the “town end” above and through the town into the plaza fountain, I was surprised at how small the actual water-bearing pipes were.
I expected an open canal-type ditch, maybe lines when it got into the dirt and off the aqueduct itself, but that wasn't the case.
In the stone and brick and tile aqueduct - the “bridge” always seen in the photos - the water flowed in three tile pipes near the top. Each was 6 - 10 inches in dia, (No, the Romans didn't use the metric system.) There were siphons going under the roads, a few caves cutting under hills, but most of the in-ground aqueduct was stone-lined, covered with a larger flat rock. Not sure why it was covered - dust and dirt falling in wouldn't seem to be a problem since the sides were built of stone, and I don't figure that animals drinking from the flowing water would be that much of a bother. The Romans themselves used urine as a clothes cleaner and as soap, so hygiene certainly wasn't an issue.
Flow was by gravity from the source. At Merida, that was a hillside lake and dam about 15 miles (I think) from the town. )
It’s only a matter of law and order, and the will to have a content population. If Africa got quality government it could do a turnaround to being a world powerhouse in less than half a century. Just look at North America. America and Canada doing are doing rather well, but Mexico is a basket case of poverty despite massive natural resources and a population willing to work (which is mostly why they come here).
They did not use raw urine but rather ammonia that was derived from urine, i.e. they had dry cleaning.
REG: They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES: The aqueduct?
REG: What?
XERXES: The aqueduct.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads—
COMMANDO: Irrigation.
XERXES: Medicine.
Interesting. And my vacant thought when I read the title of the thread was I didn’t know it was lost. No, I’m not blonde because highlights don’t count.
Archaeology ping...
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