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Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past (npr.org)
All roads may lead to Rome, but once you get there, good luck taking the subway. The sprawling metropolis is expanding its mass transit system -- a sluggish process made even slower as workers keep running into buried ancient ruins. From a report: "I found some gold rings. I found glasswork laminated in gold depicting a Roman god, some amphoras," says Gilberto Pagani, a bulldozer operator at the Amba Aradam metro stop, currently under construction not far from the Colosseum. Pagani is part of an archaeological team at the site, a certified archaeological construction worker trained to excavate, preserve and build in cities like Rome, with thousands of years of civilization buried beneath the surface. The presence of ancient artifacts underground is a daunting challenge for urban developers. For archaeologists, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. "I think it's the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me, professionally speaking," says Simona Morretta, the state archaeologist in charge of the Amba Aradam site. "Because you never get the chance in a regular excavation to dig so deep. That's how we've found architectural complexes as important as this."
And now we have the proof.
I don't think everyone's treating this as a problem to be solved. Maybe not even most people. I'm sure a lot of people take it as a matter of national pride that they have so much advanced civilization buried beneath their feet and love that it is being preserved.
I'd bet that in Rome you cannot dig anywhere without stumbling on some archaeological finding.
I don't think everyone's treating this as a problem to be solved. Maybe not even most people. I'm sure a lot of people take it as a matter of national pride that they have so much advanced civilization buried beneath their feet and love that it is being preserved.
It's an opportunity more than a problem.
Most time when you build a tunnel for a subway all you get out of it is a big hole.
Rome is getting a bunch of ancient artifacts out of the deal, and all it costs them is a longer schedule and the associated costs.
I stole this Sig
Very, very cool.
#DeleteChrome
You could destroy anything you find in the name of the future.
You could save anything you find in the name of the past.
Or you could find some balance in between in the name of the present.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Clearly, Rome should never have built a subway in the first place. If they had built an above-ground monorail, this problem would not be happening. Plus, Rome would finally be put on the map just like Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook. Just think of the tourism dollars.
I live in Rome.
It may be an opportunity.... but we have literally hundreds of thousands of similar opportunities all over the place. and while I agree that these are precious artefacts that ought to be studied and made available to the public to be seen, the truth is that there's no funding for that, and so they mostly get buried back to preserve them. This while the infrastructure works are delayed for decades, to nobody's advantage. I mean, it's Rome. There's bound to be Roman artefacts, since Romans have lived here for the past few thousands of years.
I live in Rome.
It may be an opportunity.... but we have literally hundreds of thousands of similar opportunities all over the place. and while I agree that these are precious artefacts that ought to be studied and made available to the public to be seen, the truth is that there's no funding for that, and so they mostly get buried back to preserve them. This while the infrastructure works are delayed for decades, to nobody's advantage. I mean, it's Rome. There's bound to be Roman artefacts, since Romans have lived here for the past few thousands of years.
Yeah, ideally the archaeologists would get some additional funding so they could help compensate for the increased construction costs though that doesn't really work politically.
Which reminds me, I was originally gonna write "priceless artifacts" in my original post but then I thought better of it, turns out with good reason.
I stole this Sig
I'll try to translate: The construction of the Rome's subway is halted because of archaeology research. Tools from the era when the subway construction started are found in the borehole.
Yeah, I used to live in Rome too. I worked in a crumbling laboratory. When we finally did get money to build a new one, we did and it was great, then at the end of construction the road was built... and hit a Roman villa and cisterns. It delayed the opening of the new lab by 5 years, while the old one crumbled completely. When we finally moved into the new one, everything had been stolen inside: toilets, doors, windows, ceiling tiles, even entire floors... Back to square one.
Non-Linux Penguins ?