Western Civilization I / Unit 7 WC1 0620 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Concrete, Arches, Aqueducts, Roads
Captions available
The idea
Romans were engineers, not scientists: concrete, arches and domes, gravity-fed water carried dozens of miles, roads still in use. The anchor counts eleven aqueducts in Rome and forty thousand miles of road, and grid cities within a generation of conquest.
In practice
Cities as tax capitals and cultural centers.
Where people slip
The anchor's claim of productivity unmatched until the seventeenth century is its own.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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