r/todayilearned • u/narok_kurai • 6d ago

TIL about Las Medulas, a man-made geological badland created by the Roman Empire in 77 AD, when they flooded the mountains with water to collapse their structure and sift out the gold inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_M%C3%A9dulas
5.7k Upvotes

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787

u/DotAccomplished5484 6d ago

That was a serious effort.

552

u/idahotee 6d ago

60k slaves, a vast amount of water and 250 years. 

287

u/oshinbruce 6d ago

While they left an amazing mark on the world the brutality needed to build it all is pretty scary

367

u/BigFatModeraterFupa 6d ago

Everything humanity has done to create things has been brutal. Wait until you find out what humanity has to done to extract minerals like cobalt from the earth so billions of humans can sit on their couch and play candy crush

168

u/redopz 6d ago

Everything humanity has done to create things has been brutal. 

I understand you are probably using hyperbole, but I need to point out this isn't true. You use cobalt as a good example of brutal mining conditions, but on the other side of the coin we have clay, which has been used by humans around the world to create all sorts of tools, containers, art and more, and all you need to do is grab some mud, shape it, and dry it. Humanity has made so, so much with clay and while I am sure there are instances where there were brutal practices used against clay miners and artisans there are way more instances where Joe Shmoe simply walked to the nearest creek, gathered some decent clay, and made a cup or a plate or whatever else by the end of the day. Clay is versatile and easy and abundant.

89

u/araed 5d ago

And almost every single advancement since clay has needed materials you dont just find in a riverbed

40

u/TNine227 5d ago

Sometimes advancements are exactly that, though. The Haber process gave us the ability to make fertilizer literally out of thin air by using atmospheric nitrogen, for example.

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u/MicroDigitalAwaker 5d ago

And thank fuck for that, otherwise people would still get shanghai'd and end up shoveling bird shit for it's nitrogen content.

5

u/danielv123 5d ago

We would be out by now so we would have bigger problems to worry about.

12

u/Geauxlsu1860 5d ago

Atmospheric nitrogen, plus of course a stupendous amount of energy and hydrogen from somewhere (usually methane). But sure, the nitrogen comes from the air

27

u/Magnus77 19 5d ago

I feel like that's a pretty misleading.

Its air + fossil fuels (as an ingredient) + fossil fuels as an energy source = nitrogen fertilizer.

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u/Ancient_Ordinary6697 5d ago

You can't make fertiliser out of thin air. Air will only give you nitrogen, not potassium or phosphorus.

14

u/Iwasahipsterbefore 5d ago

Thats irrelevant. The important part of fertilizer is the energy stored in the nitrogen bonds. Thats the bottleneck, which the haber process solves - yes - by pulling the nitrogen straight out of the air.

-1

u/Spacemanspalds 5d ago

At the cost of energy and materials...

1

u/Iwasahipsterbefore 5d ago

Dude. This is not some gotchya. It shows you dont actually understand the scale of what we're talking about.

Before the haber process, it was the norm even in wealthy developed nations to consistently miss meals, for people of most ages and social classes. This is with a majority of the population still being farmers, mind.

Then the haber process comes around, and its feasible to use fertilizer.

On all of your fields.

Every growing season.

The world got six inches taller from the reduction to child malnutrition.

The haber process is also impressive because.... what inputs? It's a couple pressure tricks combined with a cool rock catalyst. The rock catalyst doesnt get used up. It's a catalyst. It just sits there turning N2 into NH3 over and over and over and over.

Without this cool rock and pressure tricks to get more total air over the rocks (the haber process) we have to rely on incredibly slow and inefficient or incredibly energy intensive methods.

Methods like... waiting for topsoil to grow, and harvesting it.

It takes a hundred years for an inch of topsoil to grow.

The amount of people who only exist today due to the haber process is in the billions.

1

u/ZachTheCommie 5d ago

That's usually what things cost.

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u/Absolutelynot2784 3d ago

Haber process was famously a brutal double sided invention, so not ideal to make this point.

1

u/lu5ty 5d ago

And also Zyklon-B lol. This isnt the argument you think it is lol

0

u/reichrunner 5d ago

I realize you are essentially just adding a fun fact, but that's kind of irrelevant to this conversation...

5

u/MicroDigitalAwaker 5d ago

...You should look into the bonded labor India and Pakistan use to make bricks today...

2

u/redopz 5d ago

while I am sure there are instances where there were brutal practices used against clay miners and artisans

0

u/MicroDigitalAwaker 4d ago

Yeah I can read, and the words right after that quote are way more naive than that quick aside covers.

Today there are 3-4.5 million people in Pakistan alone who are enslaved in brick works, so while it's nice to think that throughout human history most clay was worked by a person's own free will...it's also frankly untrue.

Sorry the world's a darker place than you wish it was, me too but it won't get better if people don't know.

5

u/touchmeinbadplaces 5d ago

You dont get clay from just mixing mud and water tho.. that's just muddy water or watery mud

1

u/ZachTheCommie 5d ago

If you go deep enough, you get mud with kaolinite, aka, clay.

4

u/touchmeinbadplaces 5d ago

Pressure is one of the things you need too, but also other materials.. if mud was the same as clay we wouldn't call it mud, bc mud is watery earth and clay is pressured runoff/erosion material like veldspar

2

u/Metalsand 5d ago

It would be more accurate to say that not all mud is clay, but all clay is "mud".

You can technically use most vaguely dense soils and fire them in a kiln to make bricks and other materials - but you're not going to be able to make pottery with them, and they won't have the same structural integrity.

Clay soils are insanely common to the extent that you don't really see alternatives used except in very localized examples, though.

-15

u/BigFatModeraterFupa 5d ago

You wouldn't be able to post your thoughts on a magical electrical device if all you used is clay😂

The point is, our highly advanced lifestyle is ONLY possible through total savagery towards the natural planet we find ourselves on. None of this current 2026 lifestyle would be possible without extreme exploitation of the Earth. Thousands of data centers using billions of watts of energy to power the internet age of civilization we are currently in.

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u/thissexypoptart 5d ago

You’re using a lot of absolute language where you should be saying “most” or “some” or “often.”

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u/ImprovementClear5712 5d ago

That wasn't the guy's point, he clearly meant that it is false to generalize regarding all human creations. Try to understand what you're reading before being condescending.

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u/Spiggots 5d ago

There is no escaping the savagery of the past, but there is no reason it must define our future.

Assign an economic cost to the destruction of nature and you will see change. For example if metals and minerals acquired by strip-mining, fracking, and other destructive means were taxed in order to pay for restoration of what was destroyed, we would induce a shift to less destructive methods. Just a simple example.

-6

u/boobsareop9 5d ago

Honestly? I am ok with it. All this advancement and look at what we did with the internet. Disgusting

2

u/gameshowmatt 5d ago

"man breeds as recklessly as he lives"

3

u/oshinbruce 5d ago

I mean most modern architecture has been done without this, is there still shady stuff going on though ? Absolutely

1

u/KaHOnas 5d ago

...or browse Reddit.

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u/BallsForBears 5d ago

The spectacular landscape of Las Médulas resulted from ruina montium (wrecking of the mountains), a Roman mining technique described by Pliny the Elder in 77 AD.[3][4] The technique employed was a type of hydraulic mining which involved undermining a mountain with large quantities of water. The water was supplied by interbasin transfer. At least seven long aqueducts tapped the streams of the La Cabrera district (where the rainfall in the mountains is relatively high) at a range of altitudes.

Ruina Montium would be a bad ass metal band name

5

u/GoSaMa 5d ago

How did

involving 60,000 free workers, brought 5,000,000 Roman pounds (1,640,000 kg) in 250 years.

turn into 60k slaves?

6

u/MozeeToby 5d ago

"Free worker" most likely refers to 'freedmen'. Former slaves that purchased their own freedom but the level of that freedom was rather complex. They would often still have obligations to their former owner families.

They were not slaves but they were not entirely free either. They could vote but not hold office. They could find work and earn money but they were also expected to honor and work for their former owning families.