eli5 why ancient historical buildings haven’t been kept up? Why are buildings like the Parthenon and the Colosseum in such disrepair? Greece and Rome/Italy have existed the entire time?
In: 508
One of the larger issues is it is difficult to repair something made with ancient techniques in a way that does not make it blatantly obvious it has been modified.
For example it was only recently discovered that what was thought to be a case of poor quality control in Roman mortar was actually intentional and allowed structures to effectively “heal” when their concrete cracked.
As a result, you almost have to go back to ancient techniques to make a repair or improvement that looks the same, and its as simple as the fact that a hand-sawn board looks considerably different than a machine sawed piece of wood…which means in the end…its going to be really expensive.
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