Our cities are falling apart. Once-lovely concrete bridges now show rusted rebar. Sidewalks buckle and crack underfoot—even though they’re not that old. In just a short few decades, our concrete cities are already crumbling.
Ancient Roman concrete, meanwhile, continues to endure after thousands of years of weather, waves, and wear. Structures like the Pantheon in Rome are still going strong; despite centuries of crashing waves, maritime Roman concrete piers grow more robust with each passing day. What genius lies behind Roman concrete!
What could be the secret behind this ancient aggregate?
In short, we don’t know. Their recipes have been lost. All we have is the concretes themselves, and a few lines that have survived from antiquity. These include the words of Roman encyclopedist Pliny, who described how their underwater structures become “a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves and every day stronger.”…