Consider this: Europe never fully recovered from the collapse of the Roman Empire. There are scientific marvels they had that we have never been able to replicate.
For example, the concrete we use today is inferior to what the Romans used, which is why roads they built are still standing today.
[https://gab.ai/mattforney/posts/8706958 ]
...
Similarly, the early Romans had silphium, a plant that function as natural birth control. The later Romans were such filthy reprobates that they farmed it to extinction.
Sound familiar? Like how we invented antibiotics a century ago and are now overusing them to the point of ineffectiveness?
[https://gab.ai/mattforney/posts/8707002 ]
...
Even at their heights, the British, French, and Germans were inferior to the Romans and ancient Greeks.
Whatever replaces Western civilization will be inferior to it.
Humanity is stuck in a cycle of devolution, each orbit bringing us closer to the dirt.
[https://gab.ai/mattforney/posts/8707047 ]
26 comments
I wouldn't normally describe a road as "standing", but okay. Maybe the reason why Roman roads survived for centuries was because people didn't routinely drive multi-ton trucks on them?
@Thinking Allowed: How would the Roman Empire - which ceased to be an effective entity some time around 400 AD, depending on who you ask - let alone Classical Greece, which was centuries earlier, have been known for their tolerance for a religion that didn't exist until the 600s? (Not to mention that when the Eastern, still technically Roman, Empire fell, it was... conquered by Muslim Turks, after centuries of asking the rest of Europe to help Crusade against them. Not exactly a sterling moment for interfaith relations.)
Their attitude towards homosexuality, while unusual and in some ways better than, say, Fred Phelps, was also not what I'd call particularly enlightened.
Regarding concrete, and ignoring Batt Gorney's crap:
Concrete is a great building material IF used in the proper way. Make a foundation... you'll still have a foundation a thousand years later. Make a wall... you'll still have something approximating a wall two centuries later. Make a splendid road bridge or build the Burj Khalifa... you'll be lucky to have anything remotely useful within one century.
But it's cheaper than other similarly strong building materials so it gets used anyway. Yay capitalism.
(I'm no civil engineer and I am aware there are exceptions to what I've said above. Still, my point stands.)
I'll admit my knowledge isn't complete on the subject, but the strength of Roman concrete is known to be based heavily on its use of volcanic ash. It's not quite the incomprehensible ancient alien tech implied here.
You could get away with claiming perpetual decline if you're working off an eccentric metric or are a full-blown anarcho-primitivist, but long-term technological decline only works with some ancient aliens shit going on.
If you're the best we have, Matt, then by all means let the dirt consume us before something else - perhaps a fiery beast of our own creation - does so instead.
Or, Matt, you could stop pretending you're the pinnacle of human intellect and step out of the way already. Were it not for your kind holding us back, we'd be exploring the stars be now.
Look, the Romans were smart, no doubt, but scientific advancement continued from them. It's the way things go: tech gets better
For example, the concrete we use today is inferior to what the Romans used, which is why roads they built are still standing today.
Not it's not. You see, the ancient Romans actually didn't understand WHY their concrete held together; it was believed to be some sort of magic. OTOH, we actually know WHY the Roman concrete worked when attempts to replicate it did not; it's because of Mount Vesuvius. The secret ingredient to Roman concrete is found in igneous rock, commonly left after volcanic eruptions.
the concrete we use today is inferior to what the Romans used
Somebody's been watching waaaay too much Discovery Channel, believing all of its over-dramatization, and then getting everything mixed up. I love the way their shows "discover" things as if they were big hidden secrets, although they have entire chapters dedicated to them in every tour guide you can buy.
I know a guy like this, a real jerk, who keeps on quoting things from Discovery Channel 'documentaries' as if they were his own special knowledge, never realizing that everyone else in the room saw the show too and knows exactly where he got his oh so privy information.
image
Even at their heights, the British, French, and Germans were inferior to the Romans and ancient Greeks.
Humanity is stuck in a cycle of devolution, each orbit bringing us closer to the dirt
"For example, the concrete we use today is inferior to what the Romans used, which is why roads they built are still standing today. "
You do know that Christianity was a major cause for the collapse of the Roman Empire, right?
There are other plants that function as natural birth control. Btw, what is the botanical name for silphium? Which family did it belong to? You don't know, do you, Mattie?
If you farm something, there will be more of it. If you just pick what grows naturally, then you might push it towards extinction.
So, the current America is inferior to the Native American America?
Printing press
Just a few of the things the Romans could never have imagined, but existed thousand years later. Even worse, the West has dominated the entire rest of the world, for better and for worse, ever since - a fact that Mad Forney's ilk usually masturbates to (especially the "for worse" aspects) -, whereas the Imperium Romanum always stayed confined to the Mediterranean and western Europe.
How can anyone take those ignorami serious?!?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Romans use their concrete for building, you know, buildings and harbour docks? Their streets were cobbled. And I doubt that those Roman streets would take too well to a multiple-ton weighing lorry driving over it, something many of our modern streets are basically doing 24/7.
Not to mention that they didn't have such lorries. Or all the things necessary to build and use such lorries: Combustion engines. Electricity. Rubber tires. Metal working. Plastics. Glas working. Diesel fuel. GPS. Light bulbs/LEDs. Etc. Etc.
Even at their heights, the British, French, and Germans were inferior to the Romans and ancient Greeks.
Whatever replaces Western civilization will be inferior to it.
Humanity is stuck in a cycle of devolution, each orbit bringing us closer to the dirt.
So what was the superior civilization that came before the Romans? Or do you base your "theory" not only on wrong facts but also on only one data point?
@Kuno: Roman roads weren't cobbled per se, that's just the impression given by what's left of them hundreds of years later. From looking it up, it seems like they were originally composed of smoothed and fitted stones - making a smooth bowed shape - over a bed of several different layers of concrete. (They also used gravel and dirt roads, of course, but those are less famous than the stone ones.) Standards and practices varied from place to place and century to century as you might expect, but that seems to have been the ideal.
@Kuno
So what was the superior civilization that came before the Romans?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
