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In armies throughout the ages, the marching boot has been a prized possession. Weapons will only be needed in times of war, but the boot is needed every single day. Command sends the soldier into awful terrain on a regular basis, for long periods of time, often to cover very large distances.

And as has been stated in other answers, earlier legionaries wore the caligae, open sandal-like boots that had thick soles held together with hobnails. From the late 1st century onwards the army began to equip itself with calcei, an enclosed boot more often used by civilian workers. This transition may reflect the fact that more recruits were coming from the northern frontiers, where enclosed boots are of great benefit, or it might reflect changes in the supply system, with legions turning to civilian sources for their footwear. Whatever the reason, calcei were ubiquitous in the British provinces. At Vindolanda a Roman fort on Hadrian’s wall, the wet conditions have preserved many examples of Roman footwear, civilian and military, adult and child. A great proportion (of all types) have hobnails hammered into the soles, a technique which binds the thick soles strongly together, which reduces wear and tear, and which gives an excellent grip akin to wearing modern football boots!

These are a pair of reproductions worn by a reenactment legionnary, who had them for three years.

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 Dr. Balasubramaniam from Indian Institute of Technology did a material sciences analysis of the iron, and here’s what he found (in easy words):

If you melt pig iron and add phosphorous in it, it will start breaking up. The iron would never come together and make bond with each other. So, what the manufacturers do is that they take out phosphorous out of the molten iron. (Just like you filter out tea leaves out from your tea, where tea leaves are your phosphorous molecules in an analogy.)

What ancient Indians did was they never took out the phosphorous out of the pillar. They welded the cylindrical pieces of wrought iron. To remove the phosphorous from it, they started hitting it from all sides with a hammer. Phosphorous got pushed towards the surface of the cylinder from inside. So inside had no more phosphorous while outer surface had a protective layer of phosphorous. It was a win-win.

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Firstly Hinduism is not a religion, it is way of life

Hinduism-oldest religion in world

The Vedas were written in 1700–1100 BC and Upanishads were written in 700 to 500 BC

Concept of cyclical time

Hindus believe in cyclical time

There is no beginning and endings

There are 4 yugas-1) kritayuga 2) Treta yuga 3)Dvapara yuga 4)kaliyuga

4 yugas are about 4.32 million years

At end of 4 yugas decline in human morality lead to total destruction of world

We are in 4th and final yuga kali

In kaliyuga shiva will perform a dance which will destroy the world.

Concept of Trimurti

Brahma-creator of world

Vishnu-preserver of world which means he protects the universe from being destroyed and keeps it going, according to this religion.

Shiva is known as “The Destroyer”. At end of every yuga shiva destroys world by opening 3rd eye.

108 have long been considered a sacred number in Hinduism. This number also connects the Sun, Moon, and Earth: The average distance of the Sun and the Moon to Earth is 108 times their respective diameters.

Classification of Hindus

We all know Muslims are classified into Sunni and Shiva. Christians into catholic and Protestants.

Similarly Hindus are classified into

1) shaivism

2) vaishnavism

3) shaktism

4) smartism

Worship of five shrines with five deities, all treated as equal – Shiva, Vishnu, Surya, Ganesha, and Shakti

Science behind Hindu traditions

1. Tulasi

Tulasi is sacred in hinduism.we regard it as earthly manifestation of godess tulsi(avatar of laxmi)

Science-According to Ayurveda Tulasi enhances your immunity

2. Upavas/fasting

Science-fasting diet showed health benefits including weight loss, lower blood pressure and a drop in levels of the hormone IGF-1, which primarily stimulates growth but also plays a role in regulating blood glucose levels.

3. Throwing coins into river

Hindus believe throwing coins into river can make them lucky

Science-Ancient Indian Science was very superior and there are many mentions in Ayurvedic texts about use of copper for water purification, or using copper or silver pots to store water. Silver, Copper and their alloys have many antimicrobial properties. And in ancient times the currency was forged with copper and silver.

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But the Romans, lacking machine tools and industrialized manufacturing, produced surprisingly standardized and precise in line valves to finely control the water supply to public baths, fountains and quite often, individual homes.

The design was simple, a bronze or bronze alloy junction piece with a tightly fitting plug cylinder sleeved within it. This had holes in. Turn the spindle at the top and the holes align with the pipe allowing water to pass through and vice versa.

Some modern valves you get from the hardware shop work the same way and look surprisingly similar.

Simple, but to make it work it must be robust and precisely measured. The plug insert has to be a precise fit or it will leak or Caesar up. Ahem sorry, seize up.

You see, a valve isn’t just a valve.

If you work back through the reverse butterfly effect of what is required to make a simple device standard across a whole empire that everyone uses, you see it takes a huge amount of collective effort.

We have the benefit of fine machine tools, synthetic polymers, stainless steel, a literate population that can read and count, standardized factories. Decades of craftsmen and engineers talking with each other, comparing designs, sharing best practice.

You need people to travel to demonstrate to craftsmen what is required. To travel you need efficient transport, or at least roads, and therefor a robust government administration to put that in place.

You have to have literacy and numeracy to a degree, otherwise you will have simply a hundred differing artistic interpretations of “valve”, not an empirical design.

You need enough of the workforce producing enough of a food surplus that a segment of the population can specialize in making stuff that isn’t food. Like valves.

All this has to be in place first.

Rome, at its heart, was a slave owning economy based on simple agriculture. Human and animal muscle power drove it, and the wind helped blow its ships. In that respect it was little different from the Minoans, Egyptians, Assyrians or any other nameless, ancient culture.

And yet the pre-industrial Romans managed to coordinate themselves to such a degree that small groups of craftsmen, as far apart as northern England and Egypt, with hand tools in simple workshops, could produce a standard device that could, literally, plug into a standard plumbing system in different corners of the empire.

We picture the great aqueducts sweeping into the cities dumping water into troughs while the eager plebs gather around with their buckets.

In actual fact it was a lot more elegant, and indeed modern, than that.

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