Amphorae – Roman Containerization
Johan and Andre Willers
19 March 2008
Roman ships and stevedoring was standardized to use large amphorae as containers.
When the containers were cheap to manufacture, they were
Amphorae – Roman Containerization
Johan and Andre Willers
19 March 2008
Roman ships and stevedoring was standardized to use large amphorae as containers.
When the containers were cheap to manufacture, they were smashed at the destination and used as reinforcing in Roman concrete constructions (cf Roman houses. ) The rough curvilinear shape of amphorae fragments in a concrete matrix gives a better compression-strength than steel reinforcing.
It was the lack of commercially viable lifts that limited the height of Roman apartments, not the strength of materials. (Cf walk-up flats in New York circa 1800’s)
Literally millions of tones of olive oil, grain, wine, garum, cement, metals (small iron ingots ), charcoal etc was shipped in the late Republican and Empire period. The Globalization period of Rome. Equally, millions of tons of amphorae.
Production specialized in the regions most suitable for a certain product.
Olive oil : Iberia, North Africa.
Grain : Egypt and North Africa.
Wine : Italy and France.
Garum : initially everywhere, but later on the Lowlands of Holland.
Cement from Egypt and Italy.
Metals and charcoal were strategic materials for manufacturing weapons and armour. Initially the smithies and armouries were in Italy, but later in the Empire shifted them to the northern provinces of Gaul. This was closer to the iron deposits in Germany and still available forests for charcoal. But charcoal was still imported on a large scale to the cities of the Roman Empire for fuel.
Amphorae : where the right clay and sufficient fuel (wood) was available. Like aluminium in modern times, or charcoal in any time, ceramics is condensed energy. An amphora transported from North Africa to Rome represented a certain amount of wood burnt.
For instance, Italian hills were deforested to plant vines as the most profitable cash-crop (on the latifundiae). This wine was exported at a huge mark-up. Charcoal was then imported. Hence the deforestation of North Africa, Levant, Turkey and France.
Note the effect on history : with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire circa 500 – 600 AD, wine-trading routes to the West collapsed, mainly due to piracy. Byzantium kept the eastern trade routes relatively pirate-free. Desperate wine-producers in Italy dumped their wine in the Middle East, especially Arabia. This flood of cheap wine caused a wave of drunkenness in the Middle-East, resulting in Mohammed’s stricture against “the fruit of the vine”. Beer and kumiss were not affected, as the low alcohol concentration was essential as sterilization agent of water.
Alcohol Concentrations.
Wine can be made to about 14% alcohol per volume. Strong beer is about 5%. Medieval beer and wine was about 2%-3%. A modern spirit with a mixer (25 ml spirit with 175 ml mixer) is about 6% alcohol.A wine drinker imbibes a drink that is 2 to 3 times as potent as that of a spirit drinker.
Hence the Symposium Master that controlled the mixing of wine and water in a krater in ancient Greece. Only barbarians drank wine neat.
Humans can drink 2% alcohol solutions indefinitely.Indeed, present stress-management techniques recommend some alcohol.
Over 1 500 years of rigorous selection in the West might have made alcohol de-rigeur on a neuronal level.
Forget Prozac! Drink 1% – 2% watered wine.
Very little. 1% of 200 ml (a glass) is 2 ml. At 50% alcohol concentration, this means that about a teaspoonful(5 ml or 10 drops) of vodka per glass will give about 1.25 % alcohol concentration. This will get metabolized almost immediately, but not before tripping some neurochemical switches. Serotonin and dopamine springs to mind. Remember the evolutionary background. Western genetic neuronal systems have evolved to get antsy if there are no alcohol switches being activated. The amount of alcohol does not matter, but the transient concentration does.
Now do you see why so many patent medicines in alcohol solutions have been so effective for anxiety.
In medieval times, western Europeans who did not drink mild beer died of water-borne diseases. Note the uneven distribution of alcohol-tolerance genes between East and West. The East had tea for thousands of years. This required boiling of water, giving a measure of protection against water-borne diseases.
One would expect this from evolutionary grounds, since there is no reason for homonins to develop a tolerance of alcohol ( a systemic poison) in the wild state.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Some commentators have advanced the theory that the caffeine stimulation of coffee and tea led to the advances of the industrial revolution in the west. It seems more likely that reduction in alcohol intake plus the better nutrition from grain previously used for brewing would have a bigger effect. This last effect is not negligible. To produce a 2% alcohol beer, about 15% – 20 % of the grain/barley crop would be needed. This would have had significant effect on child 