YSK the foundation for the city of Venice is millions of wooden piles, most of which are still intact alder tree trunks shoved down into mud 500-1600 years ago
because that's fucking crazy.
they were like "hey, instead of using this land for our new city, let's take the trees from this land, strip their branches, transport them and shove them down into this lagoon in the next state, cut them so they're all level and then build a city on millions of log butts. it'll be fine in 1600 years."
and they were pretty much right.
The alder trees the wooden piles were made from are apparently still composed of sound alder wood, fiber cellulose, and their composition and placing are a big reason why Venice is still afloat.
fascinating article.
this is the other article by the team that inspected one section of the piles themselves about 10 years ago:
7 replies
Here are the direct links instead of google tracker links:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250324-the-ancient-forest-that-supports-venice
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1296207418303868
thank you
millions of them
This feels like an article that precedes a dwarf fortress code change that impacts less than 1% of players who see wooden mechanisms break down after hundreds of years
Heading to venice with a pocket full of termites 👀
From the article, those logs were placed there in 1588 when the bridge was rebuilt. Still remarkable that most of them are undeteriorated.