If we are discussing volcanic eruptions causing damage to human life and property no discussion would be complete without mentioning Mount Vesuvius and what it did to Pompeii.
Barb and I were there less that a month ago on October 28th. It is a rather solemn place.
We were surprised at how large it was (about 170 acres).
Here is one of the entrances with Mount Vesuvius in the background about five miles away.
Here are just a few of the remaining walls of the buildings (I’m fairly certain the crane is a recent addition).
Paintings on some of the walls still exist.
This is an oven of a bakery.
This is a mill stone for grinding grain.
This was one of the most interesting things to me. The streets were below the level of the sidewalks, which were slightly below the level of the floors. This, obviously, provided drainage. But there are stepping stone bridges across the streets. The gaps in the stones are all the same and provide a means for the chariots to travel through streets unimpeded by the stepping stones.
It had a rather nice theater.
Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD and yet they had locks.
And of course with locks there were keys.
There was also stunning blown glass and other manmade objects that I did not realize were within the technological capability of that era.
Glassware was one of the things Rome and the west traded east to China on the silk road for silk and spices, along with dye, wine, and slaves. The world that was lost with the collapse of Rome was far more than most realize.
Look around us now. How much can be maintained with a highly diverse and un-cohesive replacement population who compete to loot the resources rather than cooperate to create resources?
And just imagine what the world would be like if the Romes had learned to actually use that steam engine.
And the Chinese that formula for gunpowder?
We would all be a race of big nosed, slant-eyed bastards.
One of the surprising findings in Pompeii was the fairly commonplace flush toilet! They were often found in second floor worksites. I’m not sure if that system was unique to Pompeii, but it seems to have disappeared for more than a millennium.