This is a good link and the Practical Engineering guy doesn’t appear to reference a “myth.” Which is a good thing, because there’s nothing mythological about the high performance of Roman concrete.
This is a good link and the Practical Engineering guy doesn’t appear to reference a “myth.” Which is a good thing, because there’s nothing mythological about the high performance of Roman concrete.
The myth is that Roman concrete was 'better' and that we don't know how to recreate it. The facts are that it was not better in any way than what we can do now and we have always known how to replicate it. Grady addresses both of those aspects of the myth in the video, and the first part is literally the title of the video: "Was Roman Concrete Better?"
The answer is no. What is true is that some Roman concrete structures (but far from all of them) are extremely durable because they were optimized for a different set of requirements than modern buildings usually have, notably "needs to last forever as a symbol of the emperor's power". From the 19th century on that has very rarely been a design constraint, so we optimize for other things instead.