Water Transpiortation Podcast

The podcast discusses the evolution of water transportation in ancient Rome. Initially, terracotta pipes were used because they were cheap and easy to repair. However, Romans later switched to lead pipes, which were installed by higher-ranking individuals. These pipes were costly and made the water taste strange, leading to health issues. Eventually, the Romans abandoned lead pipes due to the risk of lead poisoning. The transition from terracotta to lead pipes was an attempt to improve water transportation, but it had unintended consequences. Hi, and welcome to the podcast Today, I want to talk about the evolution of how the Romans went from using terracotta pipes to lead pipes to transport their water So there are several different ways obviously that they transported water in Rome, you know, there's generally buckets pipes But they would have to use pipes to fill up wells, right? So they can use buckets to really get it around everywhere else So I'm going off of resource JSTOR They have several examples of pipes used in Rome around those times I'd like to start with lead pipes first Right. So lead pipes were generally used around 1 to 300 CE The pipes I found from JSTOR have inscriptions on the side, right, which would indicate that they were like installed or put into place by an imperial freeman, so typically someone of a higher stature They weren't used often due to their cost and I think some of the Romans realized that it made the water taste weird You know, little did they know the reason for that It would seem like the weird taste and I'm sure some people started to fall ill Is what really led them away from using lead and moving on to different metals for the pipes you know, obviously we know that it would lead to poison like lead poisoning and Just erosion of the pipes and all that stuff Luckily these pipes weren't used often after around 300 CE-ish around that time But before the lead pipes The Romans used terracotta pipes to transport water. And now these pipes were tapered at one end So they weren't very long pipes, but they were They were wide at one end tapered out the other so then you could just slot them in together and together It would make one long pipe way now these pipes Have quite a like a few upsides compared to the lead ones that they would go on to use So the cheap cost of these pipes made them really easy to repair Right because I can only imagine how hard it is to forge Can't really weld right and there's no welding back then so you can't really fix those lead pipes You'd have to replace the whole part But you could you know, just get another terracotta Pipe piece take out the broken one or break it slot in the new one. And since they're tapered they would just slot in together to kind of like Legos is how I see it and Obviously There's no poisonous reactions happening with the water in terracotta Sure, it would weather away due to the nature of terracotta, but that wouldn't be the end of the world Like I said, they're pretty cheap to make It's not like any kind of metal right? It's just kind of like mud and I think clay Yeah, I wanted to talk about this subject specifically I find it interesting how the Romans in an attempt to Evolve or elevate their way of transporting water Led to them using pipe which or not pipe lead, which is like one Potentially poisonous over time to even like more expensive to make and Three just harder to repair in general Because you know you'd have to get to like break the metal off. You gotta replace that piece somehow and like You know, honestly, I don't even understand how they would make that work with the Make that work with the resources they had back then. But yeah, I think I Think the evolution of Finding a better pipe than terracotta is very important, but very unfortunate that they chose lead first Without you know Can't really test it back then you kind of just did it especially when you're just told to do it. So yeah Thank you for coming by and listening to me Talk about the Romans going from terracotta pipes to lead pipes and how it kind of Set them back a little bit, but then you know Like it had to be an error to be made to try to evolve civilization