Keep pulling the thread on Samo Burja.
Analysis of Greenland ice cores reveals that Roman mining operations, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, produced enough lead pollution to cause atmospheric levels not matched again until the 19th century.
Samo Burja asserts that the Roman Empire experienced its own form of industrial revolution, which is often overlooked.
The Roman silver mine at Las Medulas in modern Spain is a UNESCO World Heritage site where the landscape was reshaped using hydraulic mining techniques.
Monte Sacchio in Rome is an artificial hill made entirely from the fragments of an estimated 53 million discarded Roman amphorae.
Roman statues were mass-produced with standardized, interchangeable parts, allowing for components made in different locations to be assembled together.
The Antikythera mechanism was a portable, hand-operated mechanical device from the Hellenistic/Roman era capable of calculating the positions of celestial bodies.
The Lycurgus Cup, a 4th-century AD Roman artifact, is a dichroic glass cup that changes color due to a precise mixture of nanometer-scale gold and silver particles embedded in the glass.
Samo Burja argues that large-scale water-based shipping is a more critical prerequisite for an industrial revolution than the steam engine.
Industrial revolutions may halt when a civilization stops growing demographically or geographically, causing production to saturate existing demand and stopping the incentive for further innovation.
A laborer in ancient Sumeria could receive greater wages in grain for a day of unskilled labor than they could in ancient Athens or 11th-century England.
The common theory that abundant slave labor prevented Roman industrialization is incorrect, as slaves became expensive in the later empire, creating an incentive for mechanical innovation.
The Romans used water power extensively for industrial applications, including in ironworks, for sawing wood, and for cutting marble.