# Even today, we can't duplicate their techniques **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2007, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702 "2007-12-30T16:24:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/61 "2008-01-02T02:15:00Z")
[QUOTE=coffeecat] **Aruvqan** , where are the the primitive goodies archives? The link is dead; not the one you gave, but the link from that page to the archives. [/QUOTE] darn … i gave it up a few years ago as I had a seriously busy job and no time to follow several busy lists. Let me scrounge around and see if there is still anythiong going on. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/62 "2008-01-02T02:19:33Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] What? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to be near the fish drying racks? [/QUOTE] LOL, all the mentioned professions are seriously smelly. Actually, bog of unendurable stench quality. Woad is a plant, that is rotted in stale urine. Linen is the strings [sort of like from a stalk of celery] that you plunk the stalks of flax into water to rot [rhet] and then it is pounded to separate out the fibers [isnt it in the more recent vanity fair that there is a rhetting scene in the workhouse? all the people pounding plants on the pillars] murex dye is made by soaking the little shellfish in salt water. Tanning was done with various yucky liquids, including stale urine. Glue could be made from rendered animal hides and hoves or fish skin and bones, An abbatoire is a slaughter house. Piss, shit and blood. Yummy. Frequently these professions were restricted to outside town limits to keep the stench away from the place. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/63 "2008-01-02T02:43:01Z")
[QUOTE=aruvqan] LOL, all the mentioned professions are seriously smelly. Actually, bog of unendurable stench quality. [/QUOTE] 😃 I was thinking more that, often such places are all on the outskirts of urban areas - but often segregated by how the various raw materials got to the city. While flax, and other dry goods could be shipped by water, esp. riverine transport, often they would come overland, from the agricultural areas - economically, it was often cheaper to purchase processed fibers and transport those, than to actually ship the raw goods. And anything involving livestock byproducts, like tanning, or glue works, it’s always easier to get the livestock to bring themselves to the slaughtering/processing facility - again, land transport often. So, you’d have the tanning type works on one side of the city. Usually convenient for land transit, esp. livestock. And not necessarily near the port areas of the city. Then the stinky fish-related stuff in it’s own separate little bog of eternal stench. And while the fish drying racks aren’t too bad - to process fish for that, you have to gut them… which was just as stinky as the abbatoir. I am sure that there were many historical cities with the tanning works, flax processing, and fish processing facilities all in one hellish smelling area - but I suspect that there would actually be, for many places, two such bogs of eternal stench. So, since the murex and chilazon dye production are also water-related, I’d have guessed they’d be nearer to the fishy bog, than the landward bog. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/64 "2008-01-02T04:24:53Z")
[QUOTE=Morgyn] Four years ago, I took a month’s vacation in England. Part of my trip was a visit to Hadrian’s Wall, … [/QUOTE] Another example of Ancient Roman Engineering Kicking Modern Ass is the construction of the Pantheon. The dome is built with unreinforced concrete – there’s no metal frame to the concrete, it’s _all_ concrete. No modern concrete mixture would keep that shape for 19 years, much less nearly 1900 years. As the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon%2C_Rome#Structure) puts it, _The exact composition of the Roman concrete used in the dome remains a mystery. An unreinforced dome in these proportions made of modern concrete would hardly stand the load of its own weight, since concrete has very low tensile strength, yet the Pantheon has stood for centuries._ ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/65 "2008-01-02T04:36:25Z")
The Clovis Point has been replicated by Archaeologists, and it pretty much represents the peak of the art, flintknapping wise. Tris ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/66 "2008-01-02T05:11:23Z")
[QUOTE=robardin] Another example of Ancient Roman Engineering Kicking Modern Ass is the construction of the Pantheon. The dome is built with unreinforced concrete – there’s no metal frame to the concrete, it’s _all_ concrete. No modern concrete mixture would keep that shape for 19 years, much less nearly 1900 years. As the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon%2C_Rome#Structure) puts it, _The exact composition of the Roman concrete used in the dome remains a mystery. An unreinforced dome in these proportions made of modern concrete would hardly stand the load of its own weight, since concrete has very low tensile strength, yet the Pantheon has stood for centuries._ [/QUOTE] Not so much. Here’s the definitive site: > **[The Riddle of Ancient Roman Concrete, David Moore, PE](http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/spillway/spillway.htm)** _“Explaining the placement of ancient concrete solved the second part of the riddle. Unwittingly, research by the Bureau of Reclamation played a key role here. Chemistry alone will not make good concrete. People make good concrete, and the Bureau of Reclamation has claimed the fame of this expertise. Although a new concrete product called roller compacted concrete had been crudely developed, Reclamation’s refinements made it an economical candidate for dam construction. In 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation’s astute engineering force built the large Upper Stillwater Dam made of roller compacted concrete in eastern Utah. This concrete consisted of a mixture of 40 percent Portland cement and 60 percent fly ash, a byproduct of electric power plants. By coincidence, the fly ash contained the same amorphous silica compounds as the ash from explosive volcanoes. And the hydrated Portland cement released the calcium component recognized in the lime part of the ancient concrete formula.”_ The WWW is wonderful. There’s a nut for every bolt, and there are Roman Concrete nuts. > **[Roman Concrete Research by David Moore - Modern Concrete](http://www.romanconcrete.com/romanconcrete.htm)** In other words, it’s not such a mystery, it was likely a lucky happenstance, and we can duplicate it. But still, the study was worthwhile, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/67 "2008-01-02T11:09:00Z")
Is it known how the largest of the Egyptian obelisks were placed using only resources available in that era? - I’ve seen reconstructions, but they all dealt with very much smaller pieces of rock, and even then, it seemed like they were grazing their design limits. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/68 "2008-01-11T09:57:31Z")
An interesting new discovery related to the OP. [Ancient Russian civilization discovered.](http://stonepages.com/news/#2651) > [@](#): > > Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2500-year-old advanced civilization at the bottom of Lake Issyk Kul in the Kyrgyz mountains in Russia. > [@](#): > > All these discoveries suggest that the ancient city was a metropolis in its time. Some artifacts are in fact so stunning that they point towards an advanced civilization. For example, a 2,500 year-old ritual bronze cauldron was found on the bottom of the lake. The subtlety of its craftsmanship is amazing. **Such excellent quality of joining details together can only be obtained presently by metalwork in an inert gas.** Also of superb workmanship are bronze mirrors, festive horse harnesses and many other objects. _(emphasis mine)_ ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/69 "2008-01-11T14:13:58Z")
[QUOTE=sweeteviljesus] I read an article in Scientific American a few years ago that claimed that they had figured out how to do make Damascus steel. Of course, no one can be sure that they are using the same technique that the blacksmiths of India and the Middle East used, but I gather that it is highly plausible that they duplicated the technique. [/QUOTE] The Journal of Metalurgy seems to have discovered the technique:[It’s all in the trace elements.](http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html) Apparently, you have to have certain trace elements like vanadium and the process is to heat the steel to a certain temperature range to allow the strength-giving molecular structures to form. Too cool and the elements won’t migrate into place. Too hot and it all just dissolves. They speculate that the reason the secret died was that the particular steel needed for the process came from India. The source was cut off by warfare and the secret process didn’t work with steel from other areas. So they stopped using it. As for not duplicating techniques, sometimes people can’t duplicate them because they won’t try to. I saw one show where an archeologist in the Andes decided to go to a known prehistoric quarry and try to make a building block. He grabbed some raw stone and a primitive stone tool and set to work. after a couple hours work ahe was able to make a pretty good flat surface and corner on the block and start a flat surface on another block to fit against it. He discovered certain helpful hints on his own, like leaving the debris of his grinding and chipping on the flat surface would highlight uneven areas when he test fitted it against the other flat surface. And this was one guy with a few hours of untutored help. Imagine how well a couple dozen workers might be after a few years of labor. So whenever I hear someone say, “We can’t duplicate their technique.” I tend to wonder if they’ve even tried to. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/70 "2008-01-11T17:01:01Z")
I think one good example is the proofs of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Supposedly Fermat’s proof would have fit in the margin of a notebook page. The modern proof is dozens (if not hundreds, I forget) pages long. The theorem has been proved but Fermat’s technique has yet to be duplicated. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/71 "2008-01-11T17:49:29Z")
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief] I think one good example is the proofs of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Supposedly Fermat’s proof would have fit in the margin of a notebook page. The modern proof is dozens (if not hundreds, I forget) pages long. The theorem has been proved but Fermat’s technique has yet to be duplicated. [/QUOTE] Nitpick: The reason Fermat gave for not writing it down was because it _wouldn’t_ fit in the margin of the book he was reading. Not so nitpick: No one knows for sure, but most experts believe, for various good reasons, that the “proof” Fermat thought he had wasn’t really valid. It remains true that the modern proof is not something Fermat himself could have come up with, and that mathematicians would **loooove** to get a look at Fermat’s own proof if it were valid. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2008, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/72 "2008-01-11T18:18:53Z")
[QUOTE=robardin] Another example of Ancient Roman Engineering Kicking Modern Ass is the construction of the Pantheon. The dome is built with unreinforced concrete – there’s no metal frame to the concrete, it’s _all_ concrete. No modern concrete mixture would keep that shape for 19 years, much less nearly 1900 years. [/QUOTE] It might if all the details of the structure were duplicated. Concrete has great strength in compression, almost none in tension. Modern practice adds steel reinforcement to take tension loads. The exterior of the Pantheon dome is marked by stepped rings. These are not mere decoration. They serve as ballast weight to maintain all the parts of the dome in compression. Such ballasting also appears on the flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2008, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/73 "2008-01-12T02:15:49Z")
A while back, Isaw a show about an ancient technique of making gold jewelry. It was done by fusing little gold balls together, to form a larger design. Supposedly, the technique is lost-modern goldsmiths cannot duplicate the technique. ---
**Author:** ![Nicest\_of\_the\_Damned](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8baadc/32.png) [@Nicest\_of\_the\_Damned](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nicest_of_the_Damned)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2008, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702/74 "2008-01-12T05:57:44Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] A while back, Isaw a show about an ancient technique of making gold jewelry. It was done by fusing little gold balls together, to form a larger design. Supposedly, the technique is lost-modern goldsmiths cannot duplicate the technique. [/QUOTE] That sounds like granulation: > **[Granulation Method - Ganoksin Jewelry Making Community](https://www.ganoksin.com/article/granulation-method/)** > > This article talks about the granulation method and its uses as well as the best way or process to perform this method. Read on for more information. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/even-today-we-cant-duplicate-their-techniques/431702.md?page=3)