Klingan

Ah great to get to see that stone fellow

Maybe this would be a good time to install Rome Total War again.

I'm quite sure that the popes still are titulated Pontifex Maximus. I so wonder where they got that idea from

Thanks for the answer Asclepiades. For the record I feel that I must agree very strongly with PP's feelings about changing name. You English ppl seems to love it. It's somewhat better in Swedish but far from perfect. As we used to influence your language 1000 years ago, you're having heavy influence on ours today. What's even worse is when names get changed all over, the latest example that made me throw up my morning tea, was the Swedish King Karl XII (1682-1718 A.D) who was renamed Charles XII. What in Gods name was that good for? They could at least settle for Carl if they really felt the need to change it.

Very interesting, I've never even heard it mention before. How much people are counted to have lived in the Roman empire at this time? One quarter to one third doesn't' tell me too much in all honesty (Except that we are talking in millions).

I believe Silla is the French spelling of the name. I won't swear on it though. Do you know what language the book was originally written in?

I am of the extreme kinda that truly believe that it's time to get the space programs going on full speed again. In my opinion we should be working on Mars projects with the ultimate goals of putting a man on mars and in a not too far away future start to construct a colony there. Many ask my why I want this when I they hear me argue for it. Well first of all I'm curious, secondly I believe that exploration is a good thing for itself. Many say that it's worthless to go to Mars, we don't need anything it have, and we can't ship it home. I wonder how much Columbus counted on bringing home from the new world in his very small ships. When he came home we had just about no clue what the new continents had to offer. Even then they sent ships, may I say bloody small ships. The potential gain must have been very low. Before we go to Mars big style, we will not know what we can gain from it. Technological development is good and that is for sure one thing a large scale Mars project would bring again as the Apollo project once did.

During the last ice age, Scotland was likely a desolate place covered by glaciers, but new evidence suggests intrepid settlers braved the elements by establishing a community there as early as 13,000 years ago. The determination, published in the latest British Archaeology, further suggests the earliest Scots shared a common ancestor with the first Norwegians, meaning that some people of Scottish descent could be distantly related to modern Norwegians. "So often we hear that conditions in Scotland during the late Paleolithic and early Mesolithic would have prohibited human settlements because the landscape was cold and icy, but now we have to wonder what was actually going on and why people appear to have been living in the area during what is thought to have been a glacial period," Naomi Woodward, who led the project, told Discovery News. Read more here.

Well I just noticed this thread and it's not really what the other post here is about but here is my version of Tony Blair in a classical manner. I made it from a picture of him and Augustus. It was made for a photoshop contest in August. I know it's not the best shopping ever but I thought it might be appreciated here! Edit: I changed the link, I had no idea that tinypic were blocked anyway.

Congratulations high lady!

Salve, K! Me too. Here comes Sextus Julius Frontinus De Aquis at Bill Thayer's website (With plenty of handy links, as usual). I hope this stuff may be useful. Thanks A, I'm already reading that one and cross comparing it with a danish translation (with lots of great comments) translated and commented by J

Haha I second Nephele's name there, take my word for it, if you need to know anythign about roman names she's the one to ask! Anyway to the real point of this post. Welcome as a member to the forum Crispina!

Look in the ancient past!

Great posts everyone! From what I believe now the deposits of the inside of the pipes would grow rapidly in the beginning forming a protective layer, possibly beacuse of the nature of the relationship between sediments of lime and lead, but then take more time to build on a truly thick layer. I will have to confirm that guess with a chemist thou. Obviously they would have to change pipes now and then, probably with long intervals but that wouldn't really mater since a pipe in Rome herself were not inheritable or sell able. Therefor you would most likely have to redraw or remove pipes every 20-30th year anyway considering the low lifespan. Other pipes were probably changed when needed. ASCLEPIADES; Great link, it seems mostly correct but do you know the author or can confirm it's correctness in any way? The way it's referring to classical sources as: Frontinus, 1961, p. 361 really does give me a cold shiver. Nephele; I'll take a look for that book at Monday when I'm back at uni! Thanks for the tip!

Ouch that's daring from an Signifier to an Pater Arcanae!

This is a subsubject to the Aqueducts thread. While working with roman waterdelivery systems in the cities I came by the question about sediments and it's effect. It's known that aqueduct suffered from sediments, wich was cleaned away by slaves, and that lead pipes were protected from their poisonous effects by two reasons: The water was constantly moving, and as long as it does it won't be effected enough to make you notice the difference. The second reason is sediments that after only a few months protected the inside of the pipes from the lead. But then, how did they make sure that the sediments didn't block the water flow? They didn't have any chemical that solved it to my knowlege. From what I understand there's only one explanation and I'm not content with it at all: They took up the pipes every 3-5th (Very approxomatly, considering what I know about sediment build up.) year and remelted them. It have sevral downsides: Impurities in the lead when remelting it. The work needed to remelt the pipes all the time. The work to digg them up and down. Consider that many pipes were put right under the atrium floor, I very much doubt that the lads with mosaics etc wanted their floor removed freqvently, and if this was the case wouldn't we see somekind of hatches? Time consumption. Very very much time when other work could be done would be used to inspect and replace the pipes. Pipes built into walls would make a great deal of trouble. The pipes came in standardized sizes and was between 2.5 and about 55 cm in diameter. Any thoughts are welcome!

Actually I've had that problem before too, maybe we should expand the rules to previously posted cities? I actually started on a compilation on all the places that have been posted here but I did only come halfway through before I returned to Uni. I might take it up again when I've got time/the semester is over. But then again I reccom we've passed 100 places by then.

I thought that they used towers and cisterns to take care of big drops. They had step constructions at some places and obviously they did use towers and cisterns in the cities to gather the water, but when out in the country they tried to avoid it. I guess it's because of the terrible wear it would have on the aqueduct. Since a cistern was supposed to hold a lot of water at the bottom it was fairly protected. Aqueducts were only filled up 1/3 or so, resulting in that they would create an artificial waterfall if using a tower (Or cistern) mid way. I have seen a sort of junction cisterns midway to connect several aqueducts in Germany thou (K

European Neanderthals, modern man's ill-fated cousins who died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago, migrated much further east than previously thought, according to a study released Sunday. Remains from the slope-browed hominid have previously been found over an area stretching from Spain to Uzbekistan, but the new study extends the eastern boundary of their wanderings another 1,250 miles deep into southern Siberia, just above the western tip of what is today China. The fossils underpinning the study are not new, but the techniques used to analyze them are. Read more here.

Children sacrificed by the Inca appear to have been "fattened up" in a yearlong ritual, new research suggests. Researchers studied hair from the heads and in small bags accompanying four mummies of children sacrificed in Inca rituals. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The children's hair had been cut first a year and then six months before they were killed. By studying the chemicals preserved in the hair researchers can calculate the diet of the children. Read more here.

Yeah the monumental part is clearly important and so are the building of the baths. I guess they were necessary during the late republic/imperial age thou since everything was flowing down into the Tibern. They say that you could smell Rome days from the actual city. Go; Actually we know of places where the romans choose to build their aqueducts turning and twisting to add to their length and therefor allow a lower slope for the water. A too high slope is unacceptable. Normally it's somewhere between 1 meter and 7 millimeter per kilometer in length. I also forgot in my last post to mention leather pipes. By the way does anyone know how the romans cleaned their smaller pipes? They range between 2.5 cm to 5 cm approximately. The sediments should block them real quickly otherwise.

Great post but I have some questions and futher thoughts. Actually the reason why we see aqueducts like this today is just beacuse they are much more visable then the huge main system. about 80-90% are built underground about 0.5-1 meter down. As far as ever possible they tried to keep it like this with service enteries roughly every 75th meter. However they had another rather unknown sanitary effekt: Very muhc of the water were flowing out from fountains and all kind of places. Once you ahve your pipe it's in just about all cases impossible to stop the water. Therefor it must have been effectivly cleaning the cities constantly, or atleast been keeping away the worst dirt in certain areas. Nagelfar, for the first hundred of years they were drinkign from the Tibern, surly not very healty from our perspective but they survived it. The first aquaduct were built (According to Frontinus in the 441st year after the city was founded so before that it was just the Romans and the Tiber river. The pressure is more like a bonus effect. The reasons to build them were proboably to get water to people as they built their houses further away from the river as the city grew. I must have been problematic to carry all the water not to mention how crowded it must have been. For the last section of the watersystem inside the cities they used lead pipes, wooden pipes as Faustus describe or terracotta pipes but those were more popular in the east. Faustus: By some reason were they (To my knowlege) not a common military target but it may be linked to that the main bulk was not visible. They would be expensive to repair too if you were succesfull in your seige. The aquaduct in Pompeii isn't visible before the cictern that's placed in the highest part of the city, they had problems with too high pressure in the other end of the town and had to built repressurizing towers! However they were used as escape tunnels during seiges. All aqueducs were built to make sure that a slave easily could fit inside for maintaince work (Cleaning sediments etc) Does anyone have good information on the inside the city water systems? I'm interested in anything you've got!

Thanks alot that helps me a great deal! If you need any help let me know!

The view through a new window into the climatic changes in northeastern Africa suggests that it was a wetter climate that encouraged humans to migrate out of Africa between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago. The key to the discovery comes from a cutting-edge technique which uses dating of cave formations, called speleothems, to glean information about past wet and dry periods. The speleothems in this study were 11 stalactites, stalagmites and flowstones collected from five caves found along the central and southern Negev Desert. Read more here.

Ah that sounds great I'm defiantly going to look that up!