this is whats called a ‘coffer dam’, you basically build some walls, drop them in the water, tie them together, and then pump out the water from your new hole in the water so you can build while staying dry
its oddly not that hard- the flippin ROMANS were able to do it with logs and mud
occasionally particularly devious people would use this to hide treasure or tombs underneath the river so its not only impossible to find but impossible to get to without an engineer division
that last part gives me ideas for campaigns
“Not that hard - the ROMANS were able to do it” - people seriously underestimate how advanced some ancient cultures were and the organized effort it takes to come up with something like this and actually implement it. The Romans had heated floors, glass windows and ceilings that could be rotated to reflect what you were eating (forests for game, sea landscapes for fish). Hell, the Greeks built cameras and moving robots. The Minoans, who lived four thousands years ago and were wiped out by a tsunami three times as powerful as the one which devasted Japan in 2011, had running water and modern toilets. And let’s not get into how China basically invented everything centuries before anyone else.
Bottom line: just because someone was already doing it thousands of years ago, doesn’t mean it’s not very difficult and an extraordinary feat of engineering.
someone: you build how many bridges on a single military campaign…?
1933 postcard advertising the Atlantic City Auditorium and Convention Hall. Opened in 1929, the Hall has been designated an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
1931 photo of the Liaodi Pagoda of Kaiyuan Monastery, Dingzhou, Hebei Province, China. Constructed in 1055, the pagoda stands at 276 feet tall and is the tallest brick pagoda in the world.
De architectura by Vitruvius Pollio and Sextus Julius Frontinus, Florence, 1522.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC), commonly known as Vitruvius was a Roman author, architect, civil engineer and military engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled De architectura. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Question about that last image: Censorship or coincidence?
