It's amazing what people built 2000 years ago, and sort of depressing too. I went over to a friend's house recently who had gotten a new outdoor hot tub. That thing isn't going to last 3 winters let alone a volcanic eruption.
Well, this bath house was owned by some one ultra wealthy. There were multiple people (possibly slaves), just toiling away to keep the furnace going.
Today a hot tub can be had by millions.
Wealthy Romans had a bit of a culture-boner for leaving a lasting legacy, maintaining the dynasty, and that sort of thing, and conversely often relied on ancestral clout to borrow credibility from. I don't think anyone today would try to base their credibility on being the distant relative of Ben Franklin in the way an upstart roman might invoke their familiar relationship with Scipio Africanus.
Makes sense they built stuff to last in such an environment.
I think also they were very much more in touch with their own mortality than is common today.
It was also impossible to make things out of fiberglass, but hand-carved stone was actually available.
So was non-permanent building materials such as wood, to be fair.
> That thing isn't going to last 3 winters let alone a volcanic eruption.
Could it have been a case of survivorship bias? I.e., perhaps jankier facilities have been built at Pompeii but simply did not make it at all or were not prioritized for excavation?
People are downvoting you because it is simply due to the different materials and building methodologies of the past.
Things took much longer to build and were much more expensive, but they were very durable as an effect.
There were no plastic hot tubs in Pompeii that burned when the pyroclastic flow swept past.
There were no plastic ones but there were very probably some wooden ones, or other luxurious wooden items which were destroyed without a trace and we'd never know
also shows - how on a basic comparison some rich people back then lived way better than some poor folks do today in terms of assets. though in terms of relative access to goods poor folks today are better off.
"The bodies belonged to a woman, aged between 35 and 50, who was clutching jewellery and coins"
Funny to see that some things never change. You're about to get vaporized by a pyroclastic avalanche and your first thought is to grab your bling.
Probably were prayer beads or something. Still 'bling' I guess.
Kind of depressing how some people two millennia ago had bigger homes than most people alive today. Then again, if they were alive today their homes would be 10x the size.
The home in question is thought to have belonged to the wealthiest family around - which, for a society where economics are generational and local, practically means super-rich.
In modern societies such super rich people flock to major cities, but in pre-industrial societies relocating would leave familial assets under-attended. Accordingly a well adjusted wealthy person would arrange for an excellent standard of living adjacently to their possessions