Han Vs gupta Vs roman, soldiery and tactics.

[Amorphos]

Han Vs gupta? Vs roman, soldiery and tactics.

I am making a mod of ancient empires, and I need to know what kinds of solders and tactics the han dynasty would have had around year 0?

Same with Indian Kanva dynasty[?] or gupta dynasty if possible, I am not sure who was ruling India at this time.

Just for fun, I may as well ask who you think would win between these three, who apparently held 4/5th of the ancient world populations within them. I wouldn’t underestimate the Indians, Alexander soon found reason to turn tail and get the hell out of there.

My personal view is that either empire would win on their own soil. However I don’t know much about the Chinese or Indians.

thanks in advance

[asianboy]

Simply put, the Chinese have a substantial advantage . There are many sources, but if you want to find them all condensed into one thread, go look at China History Forum (CHF). Now, in case you want to claim that it's a biased site, let me tell you something: if you even show an ounce of extreme sinocentrism in that thread, you will get "smacked down".


Here's the short version of the the advantages:

1. The Chinese had better goverment. By better, I meant stability, competitiveness, and efficiency.

2. The Chinese had better economy. Let's just look at the most important aspect of the economy for the ancient times: agriculture. The Chinese by then had already planted their crops by rows. This prevent the plants from "fighting each other" (root uptake). The Chinese had also pushed the seeds deeper into the ground, which prevented the birds from eating the seeds. All of these factors increased the output of farming greatly. Row by row planting did not appear in Europe until Great Britain. Until then, the Europeans farmed by scattering seeds onto the ground, exposing them to the birds. I'm not sure about India though.

3. Now, I'm pretty sure that you were looking only for the military aspect, so let me talk about that. Right off the bat, the Chinese had better archers and cavalry - in both quality and quantity. As for infantry, siege weaponry, and artillery? The Chinese were not beaten in these fields as well.
The Chinese were already familiar with infantry warfare in Southern China. The weapons that were given to these infantry were not of cheap quality either, since the use of the blast furnace had already become standard in China during this time. This, in turn, leads to better quality in swords, spears, armors, shields, etc.
As for artillery and siege weaponry, look at this informative thread:
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ind..._fromsearch__1


The Chinese army was also very well organized. Evidence of this includes the Qin burial sites and the known use of flags during battle.

Finally, the Chinese had more soldiers. Sure, quantity does not really help all the time. But, if we are speaking of equal or better quality - as in this case - it sure does give you a nice advantage.

[Amorphos]

Thanks Asianboy, I will study the link. I would actually go with the Chinese too, due to tech like crossbows, I think they even had repeating crossbows ~ not sure if they had them at that time though.

What I am looking for is a list of infantry types and weapons, armour etc. from what I know already it seams [and correct me if I am wrong] they had painted scale armour right through up until medieval times. Bows were composite [?] and they had apparently also found a defence for them, so I presume their armour was very effective. Equally the design allowed a lot of movement.

Remember that around year zero romans had plate armour so maybe their legions would be slightly more effective in melee, but probably outdone in other ways. This is why I would like to know the basics of their tactics ~ their ‘art of war’.

Any help would be great!

[cottontail]

3. Now, I'm pretty sure that you were looking only for the military aspect, so let me talk about that. Right off the bat, the Chinese had better archers and cavalry - in both quality and quantity. As for infantry, siege weaponry, and artillery? The Chinese were not beaten in these fields as well.

The Romans were not all infantry you know. They had fine archer auxiliaries that were as well trained as their legion armed with powerful composite bows ( like the Chinese). Their cavalry was also of fine quality, especially after they fought the Parthian and later Sassanid armies, when they adopted chatapracts and clibinarii. Infantry? The Romans could field vast armies of well equipped, well trained legions as well as their equally well trained and equipped brothers, the auxiliaries. Artillary? Romans had excellent technology in that field, with some great ballistas and catapults. And there were artillery branches attached to each legion, so they would not be lacking. Don't write off the Romans so easily. They had that large empire for a reason you know.

edit: sorry, in the first sentence, it is a bit confusing. I did not mean the legions were equipped with bows. Just the auxilia. I just added them to show they were as well TRAINED as the legionaries.

[asianboy]

That is just about the most silly and one dimensional analysis of agriculture I have read - sorry...

Broadcast seeding can be very nearly as effective as drilling especially when broadcast into the crop residual of a diffrent crop (usually at least in the modern studies I've seen). The trick is timing you broadcast so as to get say leaf fall from beans to cover the seed and in close proximity to rainfall.

'Fighting' is a potential issue but rows are an open invitation for weeds that need to be weeded a successful broadcast may crowd itself but it also crowds weeds.

More generally since the Babylonians demonstrably developed a seed drill like device that died out I'm not sure you can instantly claim that the Han era seed drill is profoundly superior to broadcast agriculture all the time and everywhere.

Besides the Romes had a mechanical harvester so big deal that din't show up for another 1500 years or so...

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Careful with this attitude of yours. I wasn't trying to bash any sides. I apologize if I came out too rude. Actually, I'll take that back. No need to be civlized with those who are rude to me.

Look, even when I'm not very knowledgeable in farming, the flaws in your argument are apparently large enough for me to see it. I mean, can you seriously not see the obvious? First thing first: using your very argument, then I can infer that the only root problems would be the weeds. The solution to this problem is thus very easy: destroy the single enemy; destroy the weeds.

The Romans, on the other hand, have an entirely different problem. If you do not want to interfere with with the crop-growth, then some of the crops would have to die from the root problems. If you want to save the plants, then you have to do one of these things: plant the crops in rows or dig up the crops and plant them somewhere else.
BTW, if you choose the second option, then do realize that you would need a larger land area and that this is more additional work.

Let me put this in a simple way. You have 4 things that you don't want to destroy. These 4 things do not fight each other because of the way you set things up. However, there is 1 outsider who would like to destroy these 4 things. The solution to this problem is very simple: destroy the outsider (weeds), for killing it would not affect you.
In the end, one died from the usual defect
The Result: 3 of 4 survived

Now, suppose you just don't like to set things up. Because of that, the outsider don't like to get in, but the 4 things that you want ended up fighting each other. And this is where things differ from the first problem. If you leave them alone, then 1 will die; if you interfere and kill 1 of them, then the the result would obviously be the same.
In the end, 1 died of the usual defect, while the other one died from "sibling rivalry".
The Result: 2 of 4 survived


Finally, it's not a big deal because no Europeans invented these tools until 1500 years later; it's because only the Europeans with these technologies have significant population boost. The boost was significant enough to be called something in history: the British Agricultural Revolution. Population boosts had been observed before, but the countries before the Agricultural Revolution could not continuously sustain this level of population. On the other hand, the British could continue to support this amount of people.



As for the disappearance of seed-drills from Babylonians, there are many explanations.
The more unlikely one is the fact that even advantageous things can disappear through the lack of proper transfer of knowledge. This is quite true in the ancient times, but I'll admit that it is still unlikely.
The better explanation would be the low quality of Babylonian metallurgy. Due to the inefficiency created by bad metal, this technology would have been reasonably dropped from usage. The Chinese counterpart, due to better metal, would have ended up with more advantage than disadvantage. Thus this could explain why the Chinese had kept it ( I will try to look for sources).

However, even without the second explanation, the advantage of the seed drill is undisputed. The example of this would again be the British. The English people had prior knowledge scattering seeds. Yet, the use of the new technology and method is prevalent until the arrival of the 20th century technologies.

Umm the Romans had the ability to produce crossbows and reaping catapults etc hardly a advantage for China, I be careful of the link nobody who cites the passage from chronicles without immediately noting it is universally recognized as a translation error is a questinable source.

Marsden said all that needs to be said about the issue decades ago - E. W. Marsden's "Greek and Roman Artillery"

I might have mis-read you, but are you seriously suggesting that artillery beats personal projectile weaponry? Even in the age of rockets/ long range artillery/ tanks, the main armed forces of each countries are comprised of people with sniping rifles, semi-automatic rifles, pistols, bolt-action rifles, AK-47s and M-16s. 1 unit vs 1 unit, personal projectile weaponry beats artillery, at least in ancient times. And don't put words into my mouth, for I am not claiming that artillery is useless. It's just that one has slightly more priority than the other one.

Also, the Chinese had levered principle traction catapults. The performance would be crappy if the people were exceptionallycrappy that day. However, everybody in CHF agreed that traction catapults have greater potential maximum power and range than the Roman ones, since the Roman ones were limited by the strength of the sinew while the Chinese counterparts were limited only by the breaking of the arms themselves. Sinew is good for small things like the bow; it's just that the larger the weapon the more unpractical the use of sinew becomes.

The problem with the sinews also affect other areas as well: increase of maintenance.

Not necessarily - when you stop and total up all the manpower used by the Romans in the last two rounds of the civil wars it far higher than later Imperial use and aggregate population was about equal so seems like a wash.

Were these numbers describing the pure Roman Army, or were they describing the Roman Army + Auxillary Unts + Mercernary Units. And note that you are comparing these with the Chinese Soldiers without Auxillary Units + Mercernary Units.

really tough to say...Han and Rome for example had very different infantry tactics because they faced different enemies. Han had to deploy light infantry, cross bow and lots of cavalry to deal with the Xiongnu troops, Rome had close quarter infantry in the same period.

Actually, not really true. A significant number of Chinese soldiers were also heavy. Ask Borjigin Ayurwarwaba (Warhead) of CHF. He's not a sinocentric person, since he usually bash these types of people.

The Romans were not all infantry you know. They had fine archer auxiliaries that were as well trained as their legion armed with powerful composite bows ( like the Chinese). Their cavalry was also of fine quality, especially after they fought the Parthian and later Sassanid armies, when they adopted chatapracts and clibinarii. Infantry? The Romans could field vast armies of well equipped, well trained legions as well as their equally well trained and equipped brothers, the auxiliaries. Artillary? Romans had excellent technology in that field, with some great ballistas and catapults. And there were artillery branches attached to each legion, so they would not be lacking. Don't write off the Romans so easily. They had that large empire for a reason you know.

edit: sorry, in the first sentence, it is a bit confusing. I did not mean the legions were equipped with bows. Just the auxilia. I just added them to show they were as well TRAINED as the legionaries.

Thank you for trying to discuss this in a civilized way. I'll get back to your arguments later.

[diegis]

I dont think Gupta will be at the level of the other two, even if can make them some problems. And betwen Rome and Han, probably Rome, depending on era anyway. More brutal and war oriented society, fighted with more enemies, and more diverse enemies in diverse areas, from desert and open plains to forests and mountains, against "savage barbarians" and organized kingdoms and armies with diverse equipment and battle skills, a lot of civil wars too, so more experience. But a hard choise anyway.

[bushbush]

I dont think Gupta will be at the level of the other two, even if can make them some problems. And betwen Rome and Han, probably Rome, depending on era anyway. More brutal and war oriented society, fighted with more enemies, and more diverse enemies in diverse areas, from desert and open plains to forests and mountains, against "savage barbarians" and organized kingdoms and armies with diverse equipment and battle skills, a lot of civil wars too, so more experience. But a hard choise anyway.

if you know Han history well (i don't blame u if u don't because you are not from this part of the world), you will see Han dynasty fighting just as many enemies who were as powerful if not more so (but i will give you the civil war part, Rome had more of that, but wouldn't that make rome weaker with all the internal struggles?)

[Amorphos]

CanadianBacon

Thanks for the links, the second one was awesome! The gupta’s had steel bows! And steel arrows for shooting elephants! This gives me plenty of ideas for specialist troops.

cottontail
In the mod they will all be well balanced, the romans will have slightly better armoured infantry which will be balanced by e.g. Chinese crossbows and heavy cavalry.

asianboy

Also, the Chinese had levered principle traction catapults.

Awesome but I don’t know how to make new engines for the game, so I will give them existing ones with e.g. 5% more power.

I have registered and posted on CHF ~ looks like an interesting forum. [my username there is ‘sage‘].

[CanadianBacon]

CanadianBacon

Thanks for the links, the second one was awesome! The gupta’s had steel bows! And steel arrows for shooting elephants! This gives me plenty of ideas for specialist troops.

My pleasure!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_India

Check this link out. Under the Gupta Dynasty, it is somewhat the same as before but also talks about the heavy cavalry with maces and lances (like a classical era gothic knight!!).

http://www.mapsofindia.com/who-is-wh...udragupta.html


"Most certainly, Samudragupta is the father of Gupta monetary system. He started minting seven different types of coins. They are known as the Standard Type, the Archer Type, the Battle Axe Type, the Aashvamedha Type, the Tiger Slayer Type, the King and Queen Type and the Lyrist Type. They exhibit a fine quality of technical and sculptural finesse."

imo

Standard = sword infantry,
Archer = archer
Battle Axe = Armour Piercing infantry/heavy infantry
Ashvamedha = Cavalry(not sure which type)
Tiger Slayer= Unique unit? LOL


The reason for posts like "oh the Guptas will be crushed, oh remove them" is due to plain ignorance. They had an empire of area 3.5million sq km, not a tiny territory by any means. And you don't hold this much territory without a strong military.

[AqD]

Here's the short version of the the advantages:

1. The Chinese had better goverment. By better, I meant stability, competitiveness, and efficiency.

=> A centralized bureaucracy with nearly complete control over the industry.

2. The Chinese had better economy. Let's just look at the most important aspect of the economy for the ancient times: agriculture. The Chinese by then had already planted their crops by rows. This prevent the plants from "fighting each other" (root uptake). The Chinese had also pushed the seeds deeper into the ground, which prevented the birds from eating the seeds. All of these factors increased the output of farming greatly. Row by row planting did not appear in Europe until Great Britain. Until then, the Europeans farmed by scattering seeds onto the ground, exposing them to the birds. I'm not sure about India though.

What you call Europeans have nothing to do with ancient Romans. They're what Romans called backward barbarians

3. Now, I'm pretty sure that you were looking only for the military aspect, so let me talk about that. Right off the bat, the Chinese had better archers and cavalry - in both quality and quantity. As for infantry, siege weaponry, and artillery? The Chinese were not beaten in these fields as well.
The Chinese were already familiar with infantry warfare in Southern China. The weapons that were given to these infantry were not of cheap quality either, since the use of the blast furnace had already become standard in China during this time. This, in turn, leads to better quality in swords, spears, armors, shields, etc.
As for artillery and siege weaponry, look at this informative thread:
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ind..._fromsearch__1

Han cavalry was quite inferior in terms of equipments and varieties (as opposed to Three Kingdoms and later). There were only nomadic ponies, ridden by light horse archers with little or no armor.

The Chinese army was also very well organized. Evidence of this includes the Qin burial sites and the known use of flags during battle.

Finally, the Chinese had more soldiers. Sure, quantity does not really help all the time. But, if we are speaking of equal or better quality - as in this case - it sure does give you a nice advantage.

Not sure about Han, but one of ancient chinese books mentioned Qin soldiers being impetuous and often charge wildly with their helmets and armours thrown off. Also Han empire didn't have much more populations than Romans, although the recruitment pool is much larger (conscription for every males + forced labors for everyone?).

I see, so this era offers something similar to hunnic warfare, I was hoping for a more infantry based way of fighting. Maybe for that I would have to go back to the qin.

thanks for the info

Not really. The Hunnic invasion is NOT a typical nomadic invasion like what happened in ancient china or central asia (ex: Saka invasion into Parthia). A large numbers of the invaders are tribal warriors on foot, of non-nomadic origin (ex: germanic), brought or forced to fight by the Huns.

The majority of Han soldiers are still infantry, but they're practically useless during the campaigns against Xiongnu. It's therefore difficult to tell about their quality.

[RollingWave]

=> A centralized bureaucracy with nearly complete control over the industry.



Han cavalry was quite inferior in terms of equipments and varieties (as opposed to Three Kingdoms and later). There were only nomadic ponies, ridden by light horse archers with little or no armor.

and this is based on what exactly? the Han also stretched nearly 400 years. this is like saying that the early Kingdom Legions got their ass handed to them by the Gauls thus they must suck in every period of Rome.

The reason they were light horse archers had almost everything to do with the fact that because when fighting the Xiong Nu, the only way to really beat them in the field is to out Horse archer them. Thus horse archers remained the premier unit of the Han pretty much from the time of Wudi all the way till... um... like the Opium war.

They were pretty lightly armored, but that means they're probably the best armored horse archers in the world at that time by the fact that they're wearing any serious armor at all.

Not sure about Han, but one of ancient chinese books mentioned Qin soldiers being impetuous and often charge wildly with their helmets and armours thrown off. Also Han empire didn't have much more populations than Romans, although the recruitment pool is much larger (conscription for every males + forced labors for everyone?).

which book? when making bold clams you need a much more reliable source than say "a book" espically given the fact that the Qin terra cotta cavalries that we found (and some of the early Han dynasty figurines as well) suggest that they only wore thick head scarfs instead of helmets. so i'm having a hard time seeing what helmets they'd be throwing.

Your right that by peak Rome the Han population was probably smaller than the Roman's, though it is more concentrated.

The majority of Han soldiers are still infantry, but they're practically useless during the campaigns against Xiongnu. It's therefore difficult to tell about their quality.

But your forgetting that the majority of engagement units are horse archers. the infantries role in the war against the Xiong Nu was defensive. i.e they defend the supply train and form circle forts to fend off cavalry with crossbows. the Xiong Nu almost never give melee against seriously armed forces anyway.

Also, your statement seriously underestimate the Han's cavalry capacity. even in the very early stages of Han Wudi's war against the Xiong Nu he already send a cavalry force of 30,000 . in the largest engagement, they send at least "140,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry" your right that it's "mostly" infantry, but it had a incrediablly high ratio of cavalry for a completely settled civilization.


source
http://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/%E6...8/%E5%8D%B7055 Han-Su (the offical history of the Han, compiled right after it's fall from the documents of the Han court itself.)

大將軍衛青將四將軍出定襄，將軍去病出代，各將五萬騎。步兵踵軍後數十萬人。

"4 generals , with Grand general Wei Qin as head embark from Din Xian, the General Ho Chu Bin embark from the Dai province, EACH GENERAL LEADS 50,000 cavalry with several 100s of thousands of infantry to follow."



and

http://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/%E5...8/%E5%8D%B7111 (Shi-Ji, written by the contemporty of Han Wudi Shi-Ma Qian)

元狩四年春，上令大將軍青、驃騎將軍去病將各五萬騎，步兵轉者踵軍數十萬，而敢力戰深入之士皆屬驃騎。

In the 4th year of Yuan Sho (the era name of Wudi at that time), Order grand general Wei Qin, Cavalry general Ho Chu Bin each lead 50,000 cavalry, with several 100s of thousands of infantry to follow. those that followed where all skilled and veteran cavalries.

Also, if you want some insight into the Han's infantry tactics against the Xiong Nu.

From the biography of Li-Ling in the History of Han (the grandson of one of the most famous general Li Guang, he ended up surrendering to the Xiong Nu after an epic struggle where his 5000 infantry rumored to have killed over 10,000 Xiong Nu before running out of arrows and food)

陵至浚稽山，與單于相直，騎可三萬圍陵軍。軍居兩山間，以大車為營。陵引士出營外為陳，前行持戟盾，後行持弓弩，令曰：「聞鼓聲而縱，聞金聲而止。」虜見漢軍少，直前就營。陵搏戰攻之，千弩俱發，應弦而倒。

Li-Ling arrived at Jun Ling mountain, the Xiong Nu Khan surronded him with 30,000 man, Li Ling's army is placed between the two mountains, and used it's wagon as fortifaction. Li-Ling leads his man out of his wagon fort to approach the enemy, the front line carried halberd and shield, the back line held bows and crossbows he ordered them to "attack on the sound of the drum, and stop at the sound of the horn." The Xiong nu see that the Han army is small, and thus directly charged at the Han forces. Li-Ling fought them in melee, and simultaneously fired with thousands of crossbows, the enemy fell at the sound of the crossbow strings"

[Banana Jelly]

Gupta sucks. Kick him out of the image. The only epic battle would be just the Romans and the Hans

[Amorphos]

Gupta sucks. Kick him out of the image. The only epic battle would be just the Romans and the Hans

they will probably be crushed in between them both unless they go around via a more northern route. They will actually be as strong as the others probably, after all they had elephants and longbows etc.

We cannot very well leave them out or the map would look rather odd. But we will leave out many minor factions, so there will be 6 main factions with rebs dotted around.

[conon394]

2. The Chinese had better economy. Let's just look at the most important aspect of the economy for the ancient times: agriculture. The Chinese by then had already planted their crops by rows. This prevent the plants from "fighting each other" (root uptake). The Chinese had also pushed the seeds deeper into the ground, which prevented the birds from eating the seeds. All of these factor increases the output of farming greatly. Row by row planting did not appear in Europe until Great Britain. Until then, the Europeans farmed by scattering seeds onto the ground, exposing them to the birds. I'm not sure about India though.

That is just about the most silly and one dimensional analysis of agriculture I have read - sorry...

Broadcast seeding can be very nearly as effective as drilling especially when broadcast into the crop residual of a diffrent crop (usually at least in the modern studies I've seen). The trick is timing you broadcast so as to get say leaf fall from beans to cover the seed and in close proximity to rainfall.

'Fighting' is a potential issue but rows are an open invitation for weeds that need to be weeded a successful broadcast may crowd itself but it also crowds weeds.

More generally since the Babylonians demonstrably developed a seed drill like device that died out I'm not sure you can instantly claim that the Han era seed drill is profoundly superior to broadcast agriculture all the time and everywhere.

Besides the Romes had a mechanical harvester so big deal that din't show up for another 1500 years or so...

I will study the link. I would actually go with the Chinese too, due to tech like crossbows

Umm the Romans had the ability to produce crossbows and reaping catapults etc hardly a advantage for China, I be careful of the link nobody who cites the passage from chronicles without immediately noting it is universally recognized as a translation error is a questinable source.

Marsden said all that needs to be said about the issue decades ago - E. W. Marsden's "Greek and Roman Artillery"

Finally, the Chinese had more soldiers. Sure, quantity does not really help all the time. But, if we are speaking of equal or better quality - as in this case - it sure does give you a nice advantage.

Not necessarily - when you stop and total up all the manpower used by the Romans in the last two rounds of the civil wars it far higher than later Imperial use and aggregate population was about equal so seems like a wash.

[Amorphos]

Interesting but lets keep it to military info please. Let us presume that either way they could feed their troops.

[bushbush]

really tough to say...Han and Rome for example had very different infantry tactics because they faced different enemies. Han had to deploy light infantry, cross bow and lots of cavalry to deal with the Xiongnu troops, Rome had close quarter infantry in the same period.

[Amorphos]

Thanks, the most noticeable difference I have seen for the han’s is a lack of helms for the lighter and maybe even medium infantry. The armour and weaponry was very good though, and we have to remember that the romans didn’t fare to well against the huns and cav armies generally.

I am loving the artillery they had though.

i mainly need name of infantry types, any ideas?

[CanadianBacon]

Hi, here is some info about the Guptas

http://india.mrdonn.org/gupta.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_e...y_organization

[conon394]

Careful with this attitude of yours. I wasn't trying to bash any sides. I apologize if I came out too rude. Actually, I'll take that back. No need to be civlized with those who are rude to me.

No need to apologize [or not - I don't care since I stand by my statement that the argument that the seed drill by itself represents a profound agricultural advantage that can translated directly into a population advantage and that any of this can be demonstrated is bunk]and sorry I seemed rude it still remains a singularly lopsided argument - one single tool does not in general make agriculture better as profoundly as you were suggesting.

Finally, it's not a big deal because no Europeans invented these tools until 1500 years later; it's because only the Europeans with these technologies have significant population boost. The boost was significant enough to be called something in history: the British Agricultural Revolution. Population boosts had been observed before, but the countries before the Agricultural Revolution could not continuously sustain this level of population. On the other hand, the British could continue to support this amount of people.

Seeing as even the wiki page note about a dozen factors leading to the BAR (and one could then add dozens more for the longer arc western development of modern mechanized Ag.) I don't see the seed drill by itself in a fairly early form as profound. As a key part of a whole matrix of ideals that coalesced in one place and time sure - but the trick is plugging it into other times and places.

In case if I remember Needham’s discussion well enough the Han use of the seed drill was not ubiquitous, Southern China retained broadcast seeding. Nor was the seed drill universally appropriate for all seeds even where it was in wide use in Northern China.

Again I imagined this kind of argument that’s why I mentioned the Roman harvester – in isolation it had only a limited use and costs of its own (loss of straw) but does not by itself make a mechanical revolution if agriculture.

Let me put this in a simple way. You have 4 things that you don't want to destroy. These 4 things do not fight each other because of the way you set things up. However, there is 1 outsider who would like to destroy these 4 things. The solution to this problem is very simple: destroy the outsider (weeds), for killing it would not affect you.
In the end, one died from the usual defect
The Result: 3 of 4 survived

Now, suppose you just don't like to set things up. Because of that, the outsider don't like to get in, but the 4 things that you want ended up fighting each other. And this is where things differ from the first problem. If you leave them alone, then 1 will die; if you interfere and kill 1 of them, then the the result would obviously be the same.
In the end, 1 died of the usual defect, while the other one died from "sibling rivalry".
The Result: 2 of 4 survived

And let me put it another way a completely artificial example or two is unconvincing.

A better way of thinking might be to imagine a final agricultural productivity A as the product of any number of factors A= X+Y+Z +T etc.

In this case using a seed drill requires another period of oxen/draft animal use. It also implies a larger labor input in weeding in return for proposed loss of crowding, and potentially better seed placement (although presumably bad handling of your dill negates that). Broadcasting allows labor minimization – i.e. faster application, less draft animal uses and if successful a dense field that minimizes weeding. The day a farmer spends seed drilling might also have been used to say rent his oxen out and raise cash to buy manure etc and thus improve yield in that manor. The time his family spent weeding rows might conceivably be spent weeding a much smaller plot of vegetables or Vines or tending animals, or doing something else that is a net positive on yield.

Note also harrowing would minimize your bird eating difficulty…and appears in classical agricultural texts.

The Romans, on the other hand, have an entirely different problem. If you do not want to interfere with with the crop-growth, then some of the crops would have to die from the root problems. If you want to save the plants, then you have to do one of these things: plant the crops in rows or dig up the crops and plant them somewhere else.

I am lost it here can you restate this point.

Again even in a modern setting the difference in broadcast and drilling is not staggering. Note the study referenced here (bottom table):

http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0105.html

Again I would note you allow (seemingly in your examples) a 75% germination rate not much worse than an expected 80%+ rate for a modern seed and certainly likely to high for even last years reserved seed. More so still for second and third years saved seed which would have much lower germination rates.

Overall my point is that while it is true a seed drill certainly has the potential to improve one particular aspect total agricultural productivity, it also has a cost in animal and manpower labor and is still just one factor. To say its effect is so large as to obviously overshadow all other aspects of production, let alone storage, transport, the nutrition of the nominal grain mix consumed, of other health factors (medicine, sanitation, etc), pests, climate, economic structure of agriculture, property laws, transport costs etc when considering the final sustainable population of either Han or Rome is silly.

The better explanation would be the low quality of Babylonian metallurgy. Due to the inefficiency created by bad metal, this technology would have been reasonably dropped from usage. The Chinese counterpart, due to better metal, would have ended up with more advantage than disadvantage. Thus this could explain why the Chinese had kept it ( I will try to look for sources).

Or just as viable for an argument from silence is that it was less efficient, didn’t work that good etc. People often retain less advantageous ideals in the face of better ones as often as they reject bad ones for better. More importantly maybe the impact of the seed drill in a simple form was not sufficient as to out weight other positive technologies or techniques such that the its cost were prohibitive.

The key point is the comparison is limited in time so one needs to be careful about retro-asserting the eventual development of the seed drill into what at the time was a limited application device of the Han in both crops and geography – similarly the Roman harvester was a exceptional item and not a argument for profoundly better agriculture.

In aggregate seeing as Rome and Han had more or less the same population on the same land mass I don’t see the macro evidence to sustain your argument.

edit: also in passing seeing as one of the effects of the BAR is noted as women (and presumably children as well) being pushed out of agriculture do to the need to be strong enough to manhandle oxen and equipment one might even suggest a negative manpower (for military usage) effect in Han if more male man hours were required to make the seed drill system work...

I might have mis-read you, but are you seriously suggesting that artillery beats personal projectile weaponry?

I am simply pointing out the Romans had personal crossbows, it did not significantly change they way they fought war. You say crossbow and people immediately start thinking about the end product of that development in Europe or China well after 1100 AD when both weapons benefited from many advances that were not used by the Han.


edit:

Were these numbers describing the pure Roman Army, or were they describing the Roman Army + Auxillary Unts + Mercernary Units. And note that you are comparing these with the Chinese Soldiers without Auxillary Units + Mercernary Units.

No what I am saying is that all too often the minimal army and tiny navy Octavian chose to retain after more of less eschewing conquest and facing no enemy that could threaten him is held to be the manpower pool of the Empire. The Civil Wars I think give a much better indication of maximum potential, when one adds up the armies and navies of the contenders it dwarfs the army Octavian chose to maintain.

[asianboy]

The one thing that I hate about being gone from a thread for a long time is that there is an accumulation of misconceptions from different users that needed to be refuted. This is gonna be a long day

No need to apologize [or not - I don't care since I stand by my statement that the argument that the seed drill by itself represents a profound agricultural advantage that can translated directly into a population advantage and that any of this can be demonstrated is bunk]and sorry I seemed rude it still remains a singularly lopsided argument - one single tool does not in general make agriculture better as profoundly as you were suggesting.

Firstly, then let's just forget about us being rude to each other.
Secondly, I too don't like to give lopsided argument. I hate it when Pro-Romans stated their supposed advantage and not state anything that would have countered their arguments, despite that it is quite obvious that they would have known about them. If I gave the impression that I am giving a lopsided argument, then I would like to say that I am not. I will show you the evidence of this disclaimer.

Seeing as even the wiki page note about a dozen factors leading to the BAR (and one could then add dozens more for the longer arc western development of modern mechanized Ag.) I don't see the seed drill by itself in a fairly early form as profound. As a key part of a whole matrix of ideals that coalesced in one place and time sure - but the trick is plugging it into other times and places.

In case if I remember Needham’s discussion well enough the Han use of the seed drill was not ubiquitous, Southern China retained broadcast seeding. Nor was the seed drill universally appropriate for all seeds even where it was in wide use in Northern China.

Again I imagined this kind of argument that’s why I mentioned the Roman harvester – in isolation it had only a limited use and costs of its own (loss of straw) but does not by itself make a mechanical revolution if agriculture.

And let me put it another way a completely artificial example or two is unconvincing.

A better way of thinking might be to imagine a final agricultural productivity A as the product of any number of factors A= X+Y+Z +T etc.

In this case using a seed drill requires another period of oxen/draft animal use. It also implies a larger labor input in weeding in return for proposed loss of crowding, and potentially better seed placement (although presumably bad handling of your dill negates that). Broadcasting allows labor minimization – i.e. faster application, less draft animal uses and if successful a dense field that minimizes weeding. The day a farmer spends seed drilling might also have been used to say rent his oxen out and raise cash to buy manure etc and thus improve yield in that manor. The time his family spent weeding rows might conceivably be spent weeding a much smaller plot of vegetables or Vines or tending animals, or doing something else that is a net positive on yield.

Note also harrowing would minimize your bird eating difficulty…and appears in classical agricultural texts.

I am lost it here can you restate this point.

Again even in a modern setting the difference in broadcast and drilling is not staggering. Note the study referenced here (bottom table):

http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0105.html

Again I would note you allow (seemingly in your examples) a 75% germination rate not much worse than an expected 80%+ rate for a modern seed and certainly likely to high for even last years reserved seed. More so still for second and third years saved seed which would have much lower germination rates.

Overall my point is that while it is true a seed drill certainly has the potential to improve one particular aspect total agricultural productivity, it also has a cost in animal and manpower labor and is still just one factor. To say its effect is so large as to obviously overshadow all other aspects of production, let alone storage, transport, the nutrition of the nominal grain mix consumed, of other health factors (medicine, sanitation, etc), pests, climate, economic structure of agriculture, property laws, transport costs etc when considering the final sustainable population of either Han or Rome is silly.

The key point is the comparison is limited in time so one needs to be careful about retro-asserting the eventual development of the seed drill into what at the time was a limited application device of the Han in both crops and geography – similarly the Roman harvester was a exceptional item and not a argument for profoundly better agriculture.

In aggregate seeing as Rome and Han had more or less the same population on the same land mass I don’t see the macro evidence to sustain your argument.

edit: also in passing seeing as one of the effects of the BAR is noted as women (and presumably children as well) being pushed out of agriculture do to the need to be strong enough to manhandle oxen and equipment one might even suggest a negative manpower (for military usage) effect in Han if more male man hours were required to make the seed drill system work...

But Connan, I am not just giving you "one" example of how the Han Chinese would be better than farming. It's the combination of seed drill and row-by-row planting that would have given the Chinese an advantage. But you were right: I need to show more than a few examples. Like the British, the Chinese used the iron plow, which was lacking in Rome. Some would also argue that China had better hydraulic technologies for farming than Rome (yes, I will look for sources).

The Chinese definitely did not have the nice technologies that the British had during the BAR. Thus, the Chinese did not industrialized. But here's the interesting thing: the Chinese were quite near Pre-Industrialization. There are some examples of this: I believe that someone has stated that Chinese weapons of the same type had only 2 cm of difference; while the Romans were using bloomery furnace, the use of the blast furnace was already standard in China; the free peasant economy of Han China. The Chinese partly followed the British, and thus they were partly Industrialized. I do not believe that this is mere coincidence.

Finally, llet me be certain of one thing. You are claiming that the Chinese needed more labor for farming than the Romans, right? I might be wrong, but it seems like the evidence is waaaaaay to the contrary. Someone in CHF stated this quite nicely:

"Roman economy is extremely fragile. One of the constant problems that the Roman government had to face was land. The growing professionalization of the army, meant that in large parts of Italy, small private farms were being abandoned by small freeholders, and were gobbled up by large estates. Furthermore, the victories Rome had over its neighbors saw the importation of a large amount of slaves to work on the large estate farms. In times of peace, however, that meant that retiring veterans had little prospect of establishing themselves as farmers again since the slaves working under large estates were cheaper. This caused considerable amount of unemployment and resentment on the part of the poorer people towards the rich. Growing social inequality was now causing serious unrest. Even worse, Romans never successfully harnessed the use of physical energy; slaves were used as farm animals until they are replaced when they can work no more. They are literally treated as animals. When slaves makes up something like a third of your country’s population, this is extremely dangerous, and dangerous it was, for slave rebellions flared up constantly in different parts of Rome throughout the late Republic and the Imperial period. The Roman economy has to be just well balanced for it to survive. For the slaves were worked like farm animals to their full efficiency to create surplus for public services. Too small of a population meant the army and state projects could not be sustained, yet too much population meant that the primitive slave economy cannot support the large population, especially when Rome failed to draw new supplies of slave labor in its later days due to the lack of new conquests, hence the decline of the empire.


On the contrast, the Han economy is much healthier; it is a system of free peasants. Every single peasant is self sufficient as a unit. They can sell their own lands at will and change fields. The ability for these small farms to survive is extremely high; they are almost immune to devastation of war since the peasants do not rely on a single bureaucratic structure to keep the economy distributed just above subsistence level (as in Rome). Every peasant family can support themselves. This is perhaps one of the most important reason why the Roman infrastructure collapsed, while the Han system survived. China had a much more advanced way of harnessing energy through horsepower because they had the horse collar. Horse is twice as productive as Oxen(used in Rome), but requires a more expensive economy of food. But the result is a far greater amount of production. Most importantly however, China had a greater extensive use of hydraulic power over any civilization, the canal projects taken during the Qin and the Han and their scope was unseen in the west. This coupled with the greater productivity of millet over wheat gives China a lead in at least 4 to 1 over the west for the same area of land. These can support larger populations and create additional surpluses that are well above subsistence level. Han Shu mentions that during the period of Jin Di, there was so much surplus of grain in the imperial granary that they started to rot. People are all well fed and nourished, the political structure of the Han was much more stable. Additional surplus create a more diversity of available jobs and a larger budget for large construction projects and military spending. (Contemporary Roman reports had nothing approaching this, Varro and Columella’s writing on agriculture always the agricultural system well, the fact is Roman economy can’t possibly achieve something even close to general prosperity for all since slavery is essential to its economic well been, people might criticized the wrong doing of slavery, but there isn’t a single proposal to ban slavery in Roman history.)"


How do we know who has better machines? The answer is quite simple: the ones with the better machines require less labor force. By the time that we are talking about, China had already at least technically rid itself of slavery. Meanwhile, the Romans, despite knowing the dangers, continued to use slaves as the workforce. The Romans weren't stupid; it just means that this was the best option for Rome. Why was this the only option for Rome? It was because the Roman Empire had not seen good technologies yet.

BTW, in case anyone wants to put words into my mouth, I am not claiming that the Chinese did not use labor for farming. Quite obviously they did, and a lot of it too. But they probably did not use it as much as the Romans.

Or just as viable for an argument from silence is that it was less efficient, didn’t work that good etc. People often retain less advantageous ideals in the face of better ones as often as they reject bad ones for better. More importantly maybe the impact of the seed drill in a simple form was not sufficient as to out weight other positive technologies or techniques such that the its cost were prohibitive.

I have checked with some sources. It turns out that the Babylonian seed drills were indeed not as efficient. The Babylonians used only a single tube while the Chinese used multiple tubes. Now why hadn't the Babylonians figure out this new innovation? It must be noted that, especially during the ancient times, a very simple idea could simply never had been thought of, even when that idea could have helped out a lot.

Then, it must be realized that the Mesopotamia did not have the Iron Age until 1300 B.C.E, which was after the seed drill had been dropped out (1500 B.C.E.). The Chinese, on the other hand, began using the seed drill after at least 300 years of experiment with iron usage. The difference here is quite large.

Now, you could still be right that the seed drills were inefficient, but the fact is that the Chinese seed drills were at least more effective than that of the Babylonians.

I am simply pointing out the Romans had personal crossbows, it did not significantly change they way they fought war. You say crossbow and people immediately start thinking about the end product of that development in Europe or China well after 1100 AD when both weapons benefited from many advances that were not used by the Han.

You are quite mistaken on this one. Firstly, you must realise that - both in the archeological and textual aspect - the Roman Military history are studied far more than the Chinese Military history. Yet, despite this, we have already found a great amount of crossbows in China. Contrary to this are the Romans: when I first learned about the Roman military, there were only 2 hand held crossbows found in the old Roman Territory; later on, I think the number increased merely to 3. Furthermore, the types of crossbows that the Romans had were much heavier/bulky (the bronze front). They also were more prone to malfunctioning due to exposed parts (torsion mechanism).

As for the, the improvement after 1100 C.E., you are partly correct. It must be noted that even after 1100 C.E. the European crossbows' trigger mechanism were still bulkier than that of Han. Then consider the fact the Han crossbow could have surpassed the 1100 C.E. European crossbow (350 lbs vs 250 lbs draw-weight). Some account suggests that the 1100 C.E. European crossbow can penetrate European metal armors. But perhaps this is still arguable. Still, what would have happened if I use the High Middle Age crossbow against the Roman armors?
As a side statement, I agree that the steel prod/winch loaded European crossbows were superior to the Chinese version. But we are not talking about the Late Middle Ages here.


http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ind...&#entry4979545

No what I am saying is that all too often the minimal army and tiny navy Octavian chose to retain after more of less eschewing conquest and facing no enemy that could threaten him is held to be the manpower pool of the Empire. The Civil Wars I think give a much better indication of maximum potential, when one adds up the armies and navies of the contenders it dwarfs the army Octavian chose to maintain

Need to do something right now. I will respond to this later.
Before I continue, I would like to apologise if I did not sufficiently state the things that could have countered my argument. I really did try to think of them, but, so far, I cannot find any.