Was China really that far ahead of everyone else in the past?

[Gromovnik]

Tell me all about your pain, big boy. Let's hear it.

[conon394]

I'm also still waiting to see the proof of the claim: "it [China] was not the superior to all others as is so often claimed"

Let me reiterate that not my fight so don't look for it from me

How did you get five yards spacing? What is the spacing for Medieval ploughed furrows? Here are Han ploughs showing that they utilize more than one animal:

Note mistype I should have said 5.5 yards


You failed to read my previous posts? What I stated was you had to account for how many times the oxen walked back and forth across whatever area we are asserting they could plough in a day. As such I lined up whatever the X amount of acres were in a line. That provided the length of one trip, but how many to fill in the area. Since a furlong is nominally supposed based on the distance an ox could plough before a rest I decided to use a the rod as a measure across [origins of the measure are related but I have no ideal if they bear any relation to agriculture]. 5.5 yards to a rod, 40 across the acre. I stated directly I though this would be an under count. Certainly so for a plough and seed operation.


On the second part I was unclear I agree, what I meant to get at in the seed drill was singular as far as I can see. An ox was not puling a broadcast seeder or a large bar drilling multiple furrows. Thus I guess if you have access to the furrow width that was typical for various grains we can settle on how many passes the oxen is being asked to do. But otherwise we are guess and so can't sure in reality how far the ox was asked to pull.

It appears that during the wealthier times of the Han dynasty, horses were used for ploughing:
Before the expeditions against the Barbarians of the North and South,…. farmers employed horses for ploughing or packing, and everyone among the people could ride in saddle or chariot. In fact they considered at the time the advisability of restricting the use of horses to the fields [as opposed to battle].”-Discourse on Salt and Iron

To paraphrase “A horse is a horse of course of course … That is of course unless the horse is a northern European cold blood with realistically the horse tack that China would not have until the 5^th century AD or so (nor Europe for a couple more). But realistically the latter is less important than the Former. The Collar has been elevated in the past too much and certainly the dead hand of Lefebvre des Noëttes weights to heavily on the classical world [nice synergy between Needham and Lynn White there]. But in any case unless you can show China had similar large cold blood draft type horse you probably are not going to beat the ox.


“ and everyone among the people could ride in saddle or chariot” Does seem a bit of an exaggeration.


I don't know if you have ever had a horse but I'm pretty sure Chao Cuo's peasants from #34 don't look to have income to buy feed, and I doubt they had an extra 10-20 acres or so for grazing and haying.

How did you interpret the following quote to be ONLY about seeding? When in fact it's about ploughing AND seeding:

Emperor Wu appointed Chao Kuo the chief commandant for grain; he taught the people farming. According to his method, three plows are pulled together by one ox. One person leads the ox, handles the plows, and hauls the seeder-all taken care of by himself. In one day he plants 100 mu. Down to today the three metropolitan districts still rely upon the benefits of his method]. Now the cultivating plow in the commandery of Liao-tung has a beam four ch-ih long that hinders it in turning about. Two oxen are used; two persons lead the oxen, and one handles the plow. One sows the seed, and two haul the seeder. In all, they use two oxen and six persons; in one day they can only plant 25 mu. Such is the disparity. [CHHW46:11a-b]

Because it strikes me as nonsensical. Look the first ploughing is breaking up the field that has been compacting all winter and growing over or longer in fallow. More importantly you are killing weeds. Not all will die and you need to let the green weeds wither anyway. Than of course you will want to if you can work in manure, and if nothing else work in the dead weeds as manure – more than one ploughing. In this Pliny is far more credible than a citation which by you own admission contains a flight of fancy. Pliny covers a range of practical scenarios. Ones were you might plough up to nine times, or seven or only two. Or situations with stuff like vetch where you might not need to plough [Vetch and related crops in many cases germinate early – cold tolerant, and might beat out grasses as 'weeds' in any case they might only be planted as pasture anyway].

You said one acre a day was well within the capability of one ox. So 1.19 acres for a yoke of oxen and three people is believable.

We are down 1.19 acres?


Again the quote strikes me as the operations of a second ploughing with seeding. Thus the more applicable comparison in Pliny's second number at .94 acres. So potentially marginally better performance but with circumstances unknown. And if we are going to toss in labor saving devices what of the whole season when the Roman might be using a harvesting machine? Its also worth noting Pliny is describing a fairly geographically limited area. Not say Egypt.

On the frontiers a Han garrison soldier would receive 3.3-3.33 shih[60-66.6 liters] of grain per month plus some salt, and if he had family members he would receive additional grain according to age and family size:
1) Each additional adult received 2.16 shih of grain per month
2) Each additional children received 1.66 shih of grain per month
3) Each additional infant received 1.16 shih of grain per month
Because the author considered that the wage of 500 cash per shih (equivalent to 5 shih of grain per month) was used to support an entire family of five, he is underestimating the Han soldier's wage by a long shot. A Han soldier who's paid 5 shih would be around the pay of those soldiers who only needs to support one child (no wife or other dependants)

OK but we now going through a double set of hoops. The soldier has to convert his allowance to cash to buy stuff or find people to barter with and I still have no ideal what the basis for converting either the cash or the grain (either one) to silver. Silver of what quality. Based on what conversion data?
As it stands they seem to imply 1 once of fine silver costs only 8 cash in 100 BC Han China. The Bronze to Silver ration was certainly rather different than the West (expensive bronze). But that is ridiculous. As far as I can tell from the limited sources I have 500 cash would be maybe 31 at the lowest and more likely 45-49 cash per once (and that seems weak and windy). That would be 10-16 ounces of silver. If you have some primary evidence I'd like to see it, as I said Han China is hardly an area where I would claim any expertise or deep familiarity with current scholarship or good access to sources,

I don't know where you got a day's work being 1-10 cash from the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Art, but the grain price in the book is only about a dozen cash per hu, compared to the 100 cash per hu that Vas Leeuwen used based on the Chu-yen slips.

So if they indeed get paid only 150 cash per month, 30% of the paper's estimated wage, their grain cost is only 12% of the paper's estimated cost, so they in fact have even more buying power at least in terms of grain.

Grain prices are not static in time or region. To take Classical example. The same amount of silver will not buy you in the 4^th gentry BC in general the same amount of wheat in Athens as it will in Egypt. Less in the former than the latter.

Btw, same book says an empty cart can travel 70 li per day and a full cart travels 50 li per day.

With what load? I know I brought up using wagon distances. But in reality its a poor marker since I cant generally say what amount of work an ox is doing pulling a load on a road vs pulling a plough through dirt. A fair number of parameters are missing. But I willing to role with it if you can find me an ideal of furrow distance in China for an average, recommend, etc for any grain at the time.

Now a labourer is hired to carry 2 hu of salt. For 100 li he gets 40 coins. Assume he carries 1 hu 7 dou 3 1/3 sheng of salt for 80 li. Tell: How much will be paid?
Answer: 27 11/15 coins.

Interesting. But how many loads can he do in a day – that would be the point.


A few other thoughts since I spent much of my weekend trying to put together a bare bones (for a start) basket for Athens in the 4^th century. And I have to say the luster on the concept is wearing thin. First Both Scheidel and Vas Leeuwen et al, are being lazy and following in being lazy. For the baskets to really work their really do need to tailored to the time and place of their use or as close as possible. Thus as you pointed out I may have found a low wage for a day labor but if in that time and place grain was cheap the basket should be normalized for that place. Similarity a modern example. In the US they just adjusted the senior government medical insurance plan for inflation. Problem is they used the standard CPI basket which very much does not reflect the basket of an average senior citizen (notably a lot less medical expenses) so it underestimates the inflation they face in particular. I realize that is not possible in true sense as if we had complete data series. But caution is needed at least when making conclusions with out more baskets for Rome or Han China for example it is difficult to make comparisons.


But on to lazy. Allen would appear in his original short article on Rome to have back fit his data ideal for bare bones based off his models for Medieval and later Europe. Thus for example we get zombie candles and soap. Allen has than and others dutifully follow (even though as Scheidel notes there is not useable data for candelas). But for my basket they make no sense at all. Olive oil was cheap in Athens almost certainly less than tallow which with the lack some vast Texas like herds of cattle is not exactly going to be cheap. Same with soap – in Greece its going to free abrasives and olive oil.


Since both Scheidel, Vas Leeuwen et al and Allen mention the potential of other household member working, the cloth entry creates a problem for me. If you are using only cloth than somebody has got you know make something out of it. Scheidel, at least substitutes pre fab clothing. Vas Leeuwen et al annoying fail to provide sufficient data to know what square measure of cloth they are considering. None of the three actually provide any justification that the cloth volume is sufficient to cloth their household.


For Vas Leeuwen et al. I still not convinced a soldier is a unskilled labor. A professional soldier is not. If the wage in question is a conscript call-up's compensation perhaps otherwise they seem to be deliberately choosing the highest possible number.


I would reiterate another thing I am surprised taxes and transfers have not been appended to these studies. They certainly affect the relative welfare ratios.


You avoided my other question. On how to weigh the relative impact of one technology in the era in question, when its clear a place with no particular technological advantage created a better welfare outcome for it lowest labor than either Rome or Han? I don't think the study is useful in a pissing match about inventions.

[HackneyedScribe]

Let me reiterate that not my fight so don't look for it from me

I didn't ask you

Note mistype I should have said 5.5 yards

You failed to read my previous posts? What I stated was you had to account for how many times the oxen walked back and forth across whatever area we are asserting they could plough in a day. As such I lined up whatever the X amount of acres were in a line. That provided the length of one trip, but how many to fill in the area. Since a furlong is nominally supposed based on the distance an ox could plough before a rest I decided to use a the rod as a measure across [origins of the measure are related but I have no ideal if they bear any relation to agriculture]. 5.5 yards to a rod, 40 across the acre. I stated directly I though this would be an under count. Certainly so for a plough and seed operation.


On the second part I was unclear I agree, what I meant to get at in the seed drill was singular as far as I can see. An ox was not puling a broadcast seeder or a large bar drilling multiple furrows. Thus I guess if you have access to the furrow width that was typical for various grains we can settle on how many passes the oxen is being asked to do. But otherwise we are guess and so can't sure in reality how far the ox was asked to pull.

This is still unclear on how you got the spacing between the furrows. Why don't you share the numbers you used in each step, with each step being in a different line? Similar to what I did when calculating the area of a mou.

To paraphrase “A horse is a horse of course of course … That is of course unless the horse is a northern European cold blood with realistically the horse tack that China would not have until the 5^th century AD or so (nor Europe for a couple more). But realistically the latter is less important than the Former. The Collar has been elevated in the past too much and certainly the dead hand of Lefebvre des Noëttes weights to heavily on the classical world [nice synergy between Needham and Lynn White there]. But in any case unless you can show China had similar large cold blood draft type horse you probably are not going to beat the ox.


“ and everyone among the people could ride in saddle or chariot” Does seem a bit of an exaggeration.

I don't know if you have ever had a horse but I'm pretty sure Chao Cuo's peasants from #34 don't look to have income to buy feed, and I doubt they had an extra 10-20 acres or so for grazing and haying.

Why do you assume all their horses have to graze on their own arable land? Since your talking about 1300 England, what type of horse were used in 1300 England?

Because it strikes me as nonsensical. Look the first ploughing is breaking up the field that has been compacting all winter and growing over or longer in fallow. More importantly you are killing weeds. Not all will die and you need to let the green weeds wither anyway. Than of course you will want to if you can work in manure, and if nothing else work in the dead weeds as manure – more than one ploughing.

HanShu said a certain plough can go 1.19 acres per day. How does your statement make it nonsensical?
You are assuming that repeat ploughing isn't optional, but it is. Ploughing kills weeds but also kills soil fertility over time, so you want to limit the amount of ploughing if you can get away with it. Planting in rows allows weeding to be easier, which decreases the incentive for repeat ploughing.

In this Pliny is far more credible than a citation which by you own admission contains a flight of fancy.

My admission was that the passage had an incentive to underestimate. Ergo any flight of fancy for the Lianchi plough would be underestimating it's capability.

Pliny covers a range of practical scenarios. Ones were you might plough up to nine times, or seven or only two. Or situations with stuff like vetch where you might not need to plough [Vetch and related crops in many cases germinate early – cold tolerant, and might beat out grasses as 'weeds' in any case they might only be planted as pasture anyway].

Pliny mentioned that the first ploughing is limited to .625 acres per day. I'm not talking about second or third ploughing a which would be easier and hence not the prime limiting factor to how much ploughed land a peasant could sustain.

We are down 1.19 acres?

I already mentioned that twice.

Again the quote strikes me as the operations of a second ploughing with seeding. Thus the more applicable comparison in Pliny's second number at .94 acres. So potentially marginally better performance but with circumstances unknown.

I read .625 acres. .94 acres is more the speed of the second ploughing on light soil.

[/Quote] And if we are going to toss in labor saving devices what of the whole season when the Roman might be using a harvesting machine? Its also worth noting Pliny is describing a fairly geographically limited area. Not say Egypt.[/quote]

Didn't you want to compare Roman Italy? Harvesting takes less effort than ploughing, if we want to go there the Han had a threshing machine.

OK but we now going through a double set of hoops. The soldier has to convert his allowance to cash to buy stuff or find people to barter with and I still have no ideal what the basis for converting either the cash or the grain (either one) to silver. Silver of what quality. Based on what conversion data?

Why do you care about converting grain to silver as it won't affect the result anyways? Silver isn't part of the consumption basket, it's a superfluous calculation that don't affect the result.

Grain prices are not static in time or region. To take Classical example. The same amount of silver will not buy you in the 4^th gentry BC in general the same amount of wheat in Athens as it will in Egypt. Less in the former than the latter.

The Nine Chapters of Mathematical Arts you quoted from have the cost of grain and wage per li in the same problem.

With what load? I know I brought up using wagon distances. But in reality its a poor marker since I cant generally say what amount of work an ox is doing pulling a load on a road vs pulling a plough through dirt. [A fair number of parameters are missing. But I willing to role with it if you can find me an ideal of furrow distance in China for an average, recommend, etc for any grain at the time.

The load is 25 hu of grain, I never said it was carried by ox. The Han had the wheelbarrow whereas Rome probably did not.

Interesting. But how many loads can he do in a day – that would be the point.

With a wheelbarrow two hu should've be easy. By hand two hu of salt (around 88 lbs) is hard, but not impossible as modern soldiers and firefighters could carry heavier loads.

For Vas Leeuwen et al. I still not convinced a soldier is a unskilled labor. A professional soldier is not. If the wage in question is a conscript call-up's compensation perhaps otherwise they seem to be deliberately choosing the highest possible number.

Most Han Garrison soldiers were conscripts. How did you conclude that they are choosing the highest possible number?
A Han soldier just by himself would get 333 cash equivalent per month
Each additional dependent(wife or kids) gets him over 100 cash per month.
Leeuwen is calculating that the soldier has 3 dependents. He's using a lower wage if anything.

You avoided my other question. On how to weigh the relative impact of one technology in the era in question, when its clear a place no particular technological advantage created a better welfare outcome for it lowest labored than either Rome or Han? I don't think the study is usful in a piss match about inventions.

On what basis do you conclude that in the first place?
Why dont you list all the Roman innovations to farming, their likelihood of being adopted by everyday peasants, and cross compare that with the Han?

[conon394]

HanShu said a certain plough can go 1.19 acres per day. How does your statement make it nonsensical?

After a first till, fine. But say on a first till of fallow I really don't see that working.

Why do you assume all their horses have to graze on their own arable land? Why do your logic for peasants not being able to own a horse only apply to Han peasants but not European ones?

Mainly because without the kind of horses that emerged out of northern Europe you would be better off with oxen. What was the build and stature of horses in Han china? Any data I got none. Did han peasents typically have access to commons?

Pliny mentioned that the first ploughing is limited to .625 acres per day. I'm not talking about second or third ploughing a which would be easier and hence not the prime limiting factor to how much ploughed land a peasant could sustain.

But so far you quotes on china do not distiquish number of ploghing. San perhaps some modern reconstruction work I'm hard pressed to see how a single ploghing from fallow could possibly work.

I already mentioned that twice.

Might have missed it, I though you were still on the over 2 number.

I read .625 acres, where did it say .94 acres?

Second ploughing its a couple line down.

Didn't you want to compare Roman Italy? Harvesting takes less effort than ploughing, if we want to go there the Han had a threshing machine.

I honestly don't care because my point was just you have to sources with a fairly abstract discussion as if all soils and conditions are equal.

Why do you care about converting grain to silver as it won't affect the result anyways?

Depends on the relative variability of prices and grain is perishable unless the soldier coverts it right away a to cash - he will see loss.

The Nine Chapters of Mathematical Arts you quoted from have the cost of grain and wage per li in the same problem.

So prices were always absoultly stable everywhere all the time?

The load is 25 hu of grain, I never said it was carried by ox. The Han had the wheelbarrow whereas Rome probably did not.

Than I am lost since I was looking to a limit on the work of an ox not somebody pushing wheelbarrow

With a wheelbarrow two hu should've be easy. By hand two hu of salt (around 88 lbs) is hard, but not impossible as soldiers and firefighters could carry heavier loads.

Still I see no metric for a days work.

Most Han Garrison soldiers were conscripts. How did you conclude that they are choosing the highest possible number?

Fair enough. But I still see only two option the Soldier or the Nurse. Is the nurse getting stipends for her whole family or the shoving salt around? How many conscript works vs the the population of other unskilled labor?

A Han soldier just by himself would get 333 cash equivalent per month
Each additional dependent(wife or kids) gets him over 100 cash per month.
Leeuwen is calculating that the soldier has 3 dependents. He's using a lower wage if anything.

And yet I'm still not sure why once that is converted to cash, said cash buys so much silver.

On what basis do you conclude that in the first place?

I already posted such that at Athens without a an empire or long list of niffy techno gadgets the welfare ration exceed the ones present for the HAN or Rome my a significant margin, before taxes and probably more so after.

Why dont you list all the Roman innovations to farming and cross compare that with the Han?

Because as I said I see no purposes. Most are resonantly marginal given the overall technological base. I think as I said social organization has more to do with who will do better on the welfare index.

[HackneyedScribe]

After a first till, fine. But say on a first till of fallow I really don't see that working.

The Han probably had little to no fallow lands due to the practice of alternating fields. Not requiring fallow lands also increases the land available for other things, such as cash crops or raising livestock.

Mainly because without the kind of horses that emerged out of northern Europe you would be better off with oxen. What was the build and stature of horses in Han china? Any data I got none. Did han peasents typically have access to commons?

What was the build and stature of horses in 1300 Britain? You claimed they were the ones with the advantage in draught animals, so shouldn't it be your responsibility to cross compare draught animals? From my understanding draft horses as we know them today mostly started in the 17th-early 20th centuries. So not 1300 AD.

But so far you quotes on china do not distiquish number of ploghing. San perhaps some modern reconstruction work I'm hard pressed to see how a single ploghing from fallow could possibly work.

In all likelihood the Han after Chao Cuo practiced little to no fallowing because the practice of precision seeding and alternating fields means they didn't have to. So how much a Han plough could do in fallowed lands is an inconsequential question.

I honestly don't care because my point was just you have to sources with a fairly abstract discussion as if all soils and conditions are equal.

Which was why I used Pliny's number for light soils just in case Chao Cuo's numbers were for light soils. Nevertheless it's still 1.19 acres per day for the inferior Han plough compared to .625 acres for Roman ones mentioned by Pliny.

Depends on the relative variability of prices and grain is perishable unless the soldier coverts it right away a to cash - he will see loss.

We're talking about grain, not fruits. You can store grain for years.

So prices were always absoultly stable everywhere all the time?

He used the average price of grain in the Chu-yen slips.

Still I see no metric for a days work.

The transport laborer is being paid 1 cash per li. An unloaded cart travels 70 li per day and a loaded one 50 li per day. That gives a hint.

Fair enough. But I still see only two option the Soldier or the Nurse. Is the nurse getting stipends for her whole family or the shoving salt around? How many conscript works vs the the population of other unskilled labor?

If conscripts were paid significantly above unskilled laborers, the country probably wouldn't need conscripts because people will want to choose to be conscripts, and conscripts by definition are forced into service.

And yet I'm still not sure why once that is converted to cash, said cash buys so much silver.

Silver price don't affect the result, it's not an important part of the calculation.

I already posted such that at Athens without a an empire or long list of niffy techno gadgets the welfare ration exceed the ones present for the HAN or Rome my a significant margin, before taxes and probably more so after.

Only if you look at construction workers for temples as representative. Given military trainers were paid less I find this doubtful. Also, Athenians were not a farm based economy like the Han and Rome, Athens get their grain through trade whereas Rome incorporated those farming areas into their empire. So farming technology wouldn't have mattered as much for Athenians, and more for Romans. Furthermore, Athens were leeching resources from their colonies/allies, so to be fair just looking at the wages for the city of Athens would result in a high estimate for the average wages of the Athenian empire. So Athens kind of did have an empire, albeit in the form of an alliance.

Because as I said I see no purposes. Most are resonantly marginal given the overall technological base. I think as I said social organization has more to do with who will do better on the welfare index.

Need to make more of an effort to show how the technology was resonantly marginal.

[Common Soldier]

Your concluding statement in your OP said, and I quote: "it [China] was not the superior to all others as is so often claimed"
I asked you to show quotes to prove it. You gave a guy using Needham to say that China was ahead of the West. The West is not "All others". There are Koreans, Japanese, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Persians, and various African states.
As I said, I asked you first. Once you can provide the quotes + sourcing of what I asked, I will start providing sourcing.



Even if the picture showed a siege mounted crossbow rather than a handheld crossbow, it's still a crossbow using mechanical advantage because a windlass combines the mechanical advantage of a lever with a pulley.
Why can't the crossbow be drawn on a 45 degree angle?

^That crossbow is a "siege" crossbow, but you can certainly replace said siege crossbow with a handheld crossbow while still applying the windlass machinery to draw said handheld crossbow.

This is the picture in which you claim the windlass crossbow is a "siege mounted crossbow":


The context of the entire pictorial:

You argue the above picture does not show a handheld windlass crossbow, but a siege mounted crossbow, the critical components aren't shown because you argue the artist may have decided there's not enough space to add the siege cart. That sounds like a very big "may".



Most of the world thinks of the Zhugenu as a crossbow. It employs a lever that pushes downwards to draw the string back much like a goat's foot lever. Its mechanical assist makes it easier to draw the string so that it can fire faster, it still have the mechanical advantage of using less power to draw the string back. It could use the same lever to operate at a much higher draw weight if it wanted to. The lever allows the user to draw the string back without requiring the effort that would have been applied if drawn by hand. That's mechanical advantage. That the goat's foot lever is curved for changing mechanical advantage ratios is not enough to disprove that the two mechanical assists operated similarly. For example, there are wooden goat's foot levers with little to no curved hook ergo little to no changing mechanical advantage ratios. They're still called the goat's foot lever.



Giant Korean ZhugeNu of the Imjin War, don't tell me an average man could draw that by hand:




So whereas Rome built massive pleasure ships for their higher ups, expended resources to put up giant obelisks, and built monumental buildings for political prestige, the Han managed the following:

http://www.basvanleeuwen.net/bestand...1March2013.pdf

One doesn't have to put all the weight on Rome's ability to entertain, rather than the Han dynasty's ability to provide.

https://historum.com/threads/can-any...1#post-3104735

For example ship of the Netherlands tended to outcompete British competition despite their ships being much smaller.

From book: England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era, pg 145

Average ship size for those docking in the port of 1601-1602 London was 46.29 tons. What's notable is that the Dutch (Netherlands) outnumbered English ships in London, and despite the Dutch being the wealthiest region in Europe, its ships were noticeably smaller on average, being only a third the size of British ones for those docking in 1601-1602 London. The same source says:

"Violet Barbour's researches have revealed in what respects Dutch transport was superior to English. The Dutch built ships much more cheaply, they purchased timber more cheaply, and their freight charges were lower. Moreover, their vessels were much better adapted to Baltic navigation than English vessels, and they carried smaller crews. All these factors enabled them to put up a competition which the English could not meet..... The Dutch flyboat (fluitschip) proved an especially useful vessel in the Baltic trade. It was a fast, light boat with a single deck and of considerable length, splendidly adapted to the transport of the bulky, heavy Baltic goods. It was also constructed that it needed a comparatively small crew to handle it. This vessel was introduced into service towards the end of the sixteenth century; and in 1620 John Keymer attributed England's failure to compete with Holland in the Baltic to this very type of ship. It needed only one third of the crew of an English ship of the same tonnage, and this reduced freight charges by about 100 sterling on a single Baltic voyage. -pg 144-145

Size in itself doesn't mean superiority.

But more space to put military equipment certainly helps. Here is the military armory buildings of Han Chang'an laid across a Roman city in North Africa:



Han DongHai inventory slip:

Bows&Crossbow:
--------Crossbow: 537,707 (imperial owned: 11,181)
--------Bows: 77,521
--------Subtotal: 615,228
Projectiles:
--------Crossbow bolts: 11,458,424 (imperial owned: 34,265)
--------Imperial owned arrows: 1,199,316 (imperial owned: 511)
--------Subtotal: 12,657,740
Armor:
--------Jia Armor: 142,701 (imperial owned: 34,265)
--------Iron thigh clothing: 255, 1 pair of unique ones
--------Kai armor: 63,324
--------Armored thigh clothing: Â…ten thousand 563
--------Iron lamellar armor: 587,299,
--------Leather armor is 14 jin [7.5 lbs]
Helmets:
--------Helmets: 98,226
--------Horse helmet: 5,330
Shields:
--------Shields: 102,551
Polearms:
--------Bronze Ge: 632 (imperial owned: 563)
--------Spear: 52,555 (imperial owned: 2377)
--------Imperial owned sheng: 943
--------Pi sword-staff: 451,222 (imperial owned: 1421)
--------Ji halberd: 6,634
--------YoFang: 78,393
--------Duan: 24,167
--------Subtotal: 614,546
Blades:
--------Sword: 99,905 (imperial owned: 4)
--------JingLu Dagger: 24,804
--------SawÂ…sabre: 30,098
--------Sabre: 156,135
--------Great Sabre: 127 (232)
--------Subtotal: 311,069
Axes:
--------Iron axe: 1132 (136)
Battle Carts:
--------ChengYuZheng chariots, drum chariots,
--------WuGang chariots:18
--------SoldierÂ’s ChengYu chariots: 24
--------Interconnected Crossbow Carriage: 564
--------Charging chariot: 37
--------Drum Chariot: 4
--------Battle Chariot: 1
--------Â…chariot: 564
--------Â…chariot: 1
--------WuGang strong crossbow chariot: 10
--------ZuiBi chariot: 1
--------Battle chariot: 502
--------3 wheeled soldierÂ’s chariot: 1 (168)
--------Tracking: 9
--------HighÂ…chariot: 11
--------Â….chariot: 7
--------Â….chariotÂ…chariot: 2133
--------SuÂ…heavy chariot: 1993
--------SoldierÂ’sÂ…chariot: 677
--------He chariot: 2
--------FeiLow temporary chariot: 2
--------Subtotal: 7174 (imperial owned 42 + 7132)

Also maintained canals still useful today:

Dujiangyan canal:


Lingqu canal:


Also wells seem extremely abundant from what I've seen of Han dynasty villages.

Higher food production per acre means more arable land could be set aside for producing non-food items, which probably contributed to the development of weaving machines such as the foot powered drawloom and the spindle wheel, the most advanced ones being:



Whereas the Roman loom is more like:




Your link looks like it was an assignment sheet compiled by an elementary or middle school teacher, maybe high school if she has a bubbly personality. Link address shows it's only put into the university forum.

In reply:

1. The picture of the reconstructed windlass crossbow has a a prop holding end up at 45 degrees. No such prop holding the end up of the crossbow innrhd Han dynasty picture. If rhr picture is missing a peop to hold upnthr crossbow, could be missing more things as well. (Note, rhd reconstruction has an European crossbow, youncsn see the nut is in the middle.of thr crossbow if you look close.)

2. Given the fact that we have only a single possible example of this windlass crossbow in 2000 years of Chinese crossbow usage, it must have been a failure if it actually existed, since we have dozens of archeological and pictural evidence for medieval European mechanical assists, which we know did work quite well.

3. The wooden "goats foot lever" is a simple, and it does have a changing mechanical advantage. As you push down on the lever, the block that pushes the string back makes a different angle with the lever, changing the advantage. Goat.foot lever works by pulling the string back when pulling the lever back , the sipped pushes the string back when pushing down on lever. The Zhugenu works by pulling string back while pushing lever down - it acts like neither of the 2 mechanical assist other than it has a lever. Zhugenu's were weak, and had to use poison to make them effective.

4. The lengthy discussion on the Dutch vs English ships was pointless and irrelevant to the discussion. What you fail mention was that the Dutch could build ships of similar size to British ships when they chose, and they did use much bigger ships when going on long voyages. Also, ships have long term trend of becoming bigger over time, and the 18th century ships and 19th century, which the British dominated rhd Dutch, were bigger on the average than the 17th century ships.

In any cases ir is irrelevant to the discussion of China, since not only did the Romans have bigger sea going ships, they had a lot more of them as well. Far more remains of Roman ships have been found than Chinese, and there are far more depictions of Roman sea going ships than Han dynasty sea going ships. The remains od 53 million olive oil Roman amphorae at Mount Testaccio testifies to a scale of shipping that dwarfs anything we have evidence for from Han Dynasty China.

Roman infrastructure was greater to support shipping, Romans built lighthouses and artificial harbor, who the Chinese did not. Chinese first lighthouse was not until the Tang dynasty.

5. The Roman also some their money on building giant grain ships to made it possible for Rome to support far larger cities than the Chinese. The money was not able all on trivial entertainment as you claim.

6. The Romans also built aquaducts to support their large cities. Byzantium despite it's strategic location was limited in size due to lack of natural water supply, until the Romans built the aquaducts which allowed Constsntinod to become one of the largest cities in the world.

7. An empty space where an armory used to stand is less impressive than a still standing Roman fort. And the size of an armory is not that relevant , a big armory only means that the Chinese chose to store their weapons more centrally rather than more scattered at the locations they were needed. And a comparison of the empty space where the armory stood to a Roman North African city was ridiculous, and nonsensical. Why don't you compare the armoeey to a city lime Roman Alexandria, thd comparison is as fair.

8. The canals, which could have been enlarged and modified overtime, are still not any more impressive that the Roman bridges still in use. Or Roman dams still in used or Roman roads still in use, Or Roman lighthouse still in use. So I don't understand you point, no one wasn't saying that the Chinese were not comparable to the Romans . If you were trying tonshow backhanded the Chinese were more advance you failed.

7. Same for the other Chinese inventions you show, like the Chinese loom. No one has disputed the Chinese were more advanced in some area, but the Greeks and Romans were in other area. I could show a picture of a Roman water powered sawmill and a Han dynasty man sawing a log by hand too, it I wanted, to show how more advance the Romans were. The Romans, just like thr Chinese, were able to develop non-food producing technologies as well, and their tended to be on a bigger scale. I have never seen a single example of Han dynasty water mill, but we have a dozen or so Roman water mills we have found. And they are much larger than your loom, took more money to build.

8. It may have been a school students who did the list of top 20 Chinese inventions, but it shows the nonsense the students are being taught with regard ro China. I could pick a half dozen different similar exsmples, and the university did post it. They could have taken it off if they disagreed with what the list said.

[Common Soldier]

I think the Warring States and Qin period Chinese were very much comparable to their Classical and Hellenistic Greek peers, same with the Han, Three Kingdoms, and Jin dynasty Chinese with the ancient Romans. I don't think they were significantly more advanced, though, and there are arguably way too many variables to consider when making a judgment on who was more superior. It wasn't just about mechanical and physical technology, either, seeing how the Chinese 100 Schools of Thought during the Warring States could be compared to the early Greek philosophers before the Roman era.

I think it is clear enough that the Sui and Tang dynasty Chinese were significantly more advanced than contemporary Europeans during virtually the whole of the Early Middle Ages

True. But thd Early Middle Ages were a of regression in Europe, and it was still recovering from the collapse of rhe Roman empire.

And there was Indian and Islamic Civilizations that were flourishing at the time, and I question whether the Ship and Tang was much more advance than those civilizations, I don't know enough to say for certain one way ornrhr other.

. You could argue the Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties were also more advanced than Europe during the High Middle Ages, considering the invention of not only gunpowder but even banknote paper currency woodblock printed on an almost industrial scale! Gutenberg might have invented the screw-driven printing press, but the Chinese practice of woodblock printing was established seven centuries before this.

And you could equally argue rhe other way.. The Europeans had invented reading glasses, the all.mechanical clocks , and horizontal axis windmills, the modern university, the corporation, and double entry book keeping. Those inventions are comparable in importance as the Chinese ones , and Chinese paper money was largely a failure. (Paper money didn't really succeed permanently until you printed it off engraved plates using intanglio printing, which allowed for more.printing of anti-theft details, and watermarks). China may have still have been ahead in some areas, but not others. I would say thr rhe Chinese might have been slightly ahead but not by much..

That being said, despite a few impressive inventions made during the early Ming dynasty, it is quite clear that late medieval and Renaissance Europe outpaced the Chinese considerably. Forget the whole thing about China losing its edge three centuries ago, that should be pushed back five centuries, around the mid 16th century at least. The late Ming emperors and early Qing emperors were keen to invite Jesuits into their royal courts, after all, due to their mathematical and astronomical knowledge, bringing telescopes to China for the first time in the early 17th century.

Frustratingly, these types of conversations also tend to ignore ancient Egypt before Alexander's conquests if not ancient Persia and India. The Indian invention of "Hindu-Arabic" numerals alone is something that cannot be ignored seeing how they have entirely replaced Roman numerals in the Western world for practical purposes, outside of numbering the superbowls for American football.

True. It is the claims.of Needham and others for China was significantly more advanced than the West I oppose, not that others were not equally as advance. My view, is that until the early modern era, no one cilivization was significantly more advance than all the others - ancient Greeks, Indians, were all comparable from classical times on.

It really is the Chinese scholars like Needham who are responsible for this. They are always making the comparison with the West on this, boasting how China was always so many centuries ahead on that item or this many centuries on another item.. They never do that when the roles are reversed, they never mention how many centuries China was behind in an area, and most ornrhr time.rhey don't mention any field.at all where China lagged if they could help it.. Nor do they ever make the comparison with things like the Indian Civilization, Needham's comparison was always with the West.
..

EDIT: by the way, it hasn't just been Joseph Needham making these comparisons of China to other civilization, seeing how scholars like Nathan Sivin published a book entitled The Way and the Word. Science and Medicine in Early Greece and China (2002).

Thanks. I know there were other scholars, just couldn't name them off the top of my head.

[Roma_Victrix]

7. Same for the other Chinese inventions you show, like the Chinese loom. No one has disputed the Chinese were more advanced in some area, but the Greeks and Romans were in other area. I could show a picture of a Roman water powered sawmill and a Han dynasty man sawing a log by hand too, it I wanted, to show how more advance the Romans were. The Romans, just like thr Chinese, were able to develop non-food producing technologies as well, and their tended to be on a bigger scale. I have never seen a single example of Han dynasty water mill, but we have a dozen or so Roman water mills we have found. And they are much larger than your loom, took more money to build.

Not sure if you're doing this intentionally or not, since you seem to know a lot about the subject and it's weird that you would miss this (especially since you keep citing Needham who talks about it at length in Volume 4 of Science and Civilization in China), but no, the Chinese during the Han period actually did have watermills. They also had a lot more uses for the waterwheel than milling. There's no evidence the Chinese waterwheel predated the late Hellenistic and Roman ones since Vitruvius speaks of them, but just a few decades later Huan Tan (circa 20 AD) wrote about the use of waterwheels powering mechanical trip hammers. Around 31 AD the Book of Later Han says Du Shi, a governor of Nanyang, applied waterwheels to mechanically operated bellows of the blast furnace in order to produce cast iron. At the beginning of the 2nd century AD the prolific inventor and scientist Zhang Heng used waterwheels to power a rotating armillary sphere representing the Earth, planets and cosmos. During the 3rd century AD the engineer Ma Jun entertained the royal court of Emperor Ming of Wei with a mechanical puppet theater powered entirely by a hidden waterwheel.

Your other points seem okay, the lighthouse one especially, although your curious statement here about watermills has me kinda suspicious about your other claims. If anything this was one of the major areas where the ancient Chinese were actually on par with the Greco-Roman world.

[HackneyedScribe]

In reply:

1. The picture of the reconstructed windlass crossbow has a a prop holding end up at 45 degrees. No such prop holding the end up of the crossbow innrhd Han dynasty picture. If rhr picture is missing a peop to hold upnthr crossbow, could be missing more things as well.

There's a world of difference between not drawing the prop and not drawing an entire 'mounting bed' (which is basically not drawing FOUR props and a giant plank on top). Besides, if you could make yourself believe the crossbow had an undrawn "mounting bed" then surely you could believe that the crossbow had an undrawn prop. Mostly because enlarging the picture do show that the prop is actually drawn:



I increased the contrast of the picture, then highlighted the string and prop in blue:

Granted that it's hard to see, but if you can see the bottom string then you can probably see the prop near where the bottom and upper string connects.

(Note, rhd reconstruction has an European crossbow, youncsn see the nut is in the middle.of thr crossbow if you look close.)

If you're talking about the Han pictorial, the nut is definitely not in the middle of the stock because the string is already drawn to the back of the stock. No point doing that unless if the nut is at the back of the stock too. It's probably just an indentation in the stock which you confused as the nut.

2. Given the fact that we have only a single possible example of this windlass crossbow in 2000 years of Chinese crossbow usage, it must have been a failure if it actually existed, since we have dozens of archeological and pictural evidence for medieval European mechanical assists, which we know did work quite well.

Considering typical Han long powerstroke crossbows could already shoot more powerfully than Medieval steel crossbows using a windlass, I'm not surprised if the Han windlass crossbows were discarded. Likewise the Roman harvesting machine eventually fell out of favor too, hence a "failure", though I don't know what the excuse for that would be.

3. The wooden "goats foot lever" is a simple, and it does have a changing mechanical advantage. As you push down on the lever, the block that pushes the string back makes a different angle with the lever, changing the advantage. Goat.foot lever works by pulling the string back when pulling the lever back , the sipped pushes the string back when pushing down on lever. The Zhugenu works by pulling string back while pushing lever down - it acts like neither of the 2 mechanical assist other than it has a lever. Zhugenu's were weak, and had to use poison to make them effective.

As you push the lever of the Zhugenu back, the block that pulls the string back also makes a different angle with the lever. The point is, it provides a mechanical advantage similar to the goats foot lever and they could have used it for large draw weights if they wanted to, but they chose not to. It's very misleading to say that the goats foot lever pushes the lever back whereas the Zhugenu pushes the lever down. The truth is both pushes the lever both back and downward.





To make it more obvious I got rid of the ammo box, painted the "hook" of the Zhugenu in blue, and the lever in green:



And as said before (but was ignored), all you have to do to make the lever support a much higher draw weight is to replace the crossbow with a stronger prod, which the Koreans did. It's not rocket science:

4. The lengthy discussion on the Dutch vs English ships was pointless and irrelevant to the discussion. What you fail mention was that the Dutch could build ships of similar size to British ships when they chose, and they did use much bigger ships when going on long voyages. Also, ships have long term trend of becoming bigger over time, and the 18th century ships and 19th century, which the British dominated rhd Dutch, were bigger on the average than the 17th century ships.

What is the biggest 1600 AD Dutch ship then? It was the 25 ton type Dutch ships that allowed them to outcompete English shipping, not their biggest ships. The Roman government gave incentives for merchants to build large ships that they probably otherwise wouldn't have built. There is not such government policy for the ancient Chinese. Building large ships isn't the same as building large efficient ships relative to smaller ships.

In any cases ir is irrelevant to the discussion of China, since not only did the Romans have bigger sea going ships, they had a lot more of them as well. Far more remains of Roman ships have been found than Chinese, and there are far more depictions of Roman sea going ships than Han dynasty sea going ships. The remains od 53 million olive oil Roman amphorae at Mount Testaccio testifies to a scale of shipping that dwarfs anything we have evidence for from Han Dynasty China.

This is irrelevant as it ignores the positivist fallacy in terms of the amount of resources and time dedicated to archaeology and the type of containers that's put on these ships. For example, Roman ships were excavated more often than medieval-reinassance shipping in the Mediterranean because Romans stored their goods in amphorae which is much less perishable than wooden barrels, making their sunken ships easier to find.

Roman infrastructure was greater to support shipping, Romans built lighthouses and artificial harbor, who the Chinese did not. Chinese first lighthouse was not until the Tang dynasty.

Ancient Chinese canals are still being used today, not so sure about Roman harbors and lighthouses. I rate things such as canals/row planting/heavy moldboard plough/muti-tube seed drill as more important because they are relevant to a bigger proportion of the population seeing that the majority of families in Rome and ancient China were farmers, not sailors.

5. The Roman also some their money on building giant grain ships to made it possible for Rome to support far larger cities than the Chinese. The money was not able all on trivial entertainment as you claim.

You were the one who used Roman obelisks as examples, not I. The Romans had the largest cities by extracting grain from other provinces, but ancient China had more large cities.

6. The Romans also built aquaducts to support their large cities. Byzantium despite it's strategic location was limited in size due to lack of natural water supply, until the Romans built the aquaducts which allowed Constsntinod to become one of the largest cities in the world.

The ancient Chinese used borehole drilling, so some excavated villages had wells for every home so they don't require to walk to a far-away fountain for water + lug it back home.

7. An empty space where an armory used to stand is less impressive than a still standing Roman fort. And the size of an armory is not that relevant , a big armory only means that the Chinese chose to store their weapons more centrally rather than more scattered at the locations they were needed. And a comparison of the empty space where the armory stood to a Roman North African city was ridiculous, and nonsensical. Why don't you compare the armoeey to a city lime Roman Alexandria, thd comparison is as fair.

How big is the entire granary area of Roman Alexandria then? Also, which Roman fort (non-ruins) are still standing? The Roman forts I've seen are still standing because they've been reconstructed or built over. I would say that it's the size of ships that's not impressive, a big ship (in the Roman case) only means that the Romans choose to transport their grain more centrally than more scattered to the locations they were needed. Evidence for this can be seen in which the Roman government gave incentives for people to build large ships. So the large ships were built not because it's the economically best type of ship to build, but because the Roman government pushed them to build large ships. Left to their own devices, Roman merchants probably would have preferred ships less than 70 tons in size.


From Ports in Perspective: Some Comparative Materials on Roman Merchant Ships:

The first item is a decree of the Emperor Claudius. In the 40s A.C., Claudius granted certain civil rights to men or women who built ships of at least 10,000 modii and used them to transport grain for six years (Gai. Inst. 32c; Suet. Claud. 18-19). Casson argued that the terms of this decree suggest that "a 70-tonner was the smallest-sized carrier the government considered useful." While we may readily agree that the decree indicates that 70-ton ships and larger were considered desirable, two further points need to be made. First, the decree clearly implies that, in Claudius's day, there were many ships in the grain fleet which were not as large as 70 tons; and this is the grain fleet, ships carrying a single product over a long-distance route, rather than the general merchant fleet, which must have included many coasters like those discussed above. Second, the decree contains not one, but two, conditions: not just the size of the ship, but the length of service in the annona (six years are specified) is of concern. This helps clarify the purpose and background of the decree. It is presumably designed at least in part for administrative convenience, for it will be much easier to deal with a small number of ships, each committed to a long period of service, than with many ships each making only one or a few voyages. And this implies that, at least down to the time of Claudius, a significant percentage of Rome's grain was in fact being transported by a large number of presumably smaller vessels, each spending fewer than six years in the service of the annona.
Our second item indicates that, however much the Roman government may have wanted only large ships in the grain fleet, it found it difficult to achieve that goal. Over a century after Claudius, exemptions from liturgies were offered to those who built and placed in the service of the annona either one ship of 50,000 modii (=350 tons) or several (perhaps five) of 10,000 modii (=70 tons each). While the decree clearly shows that large ships of 350 tons were in use, it also implies that there were still many ships of less than 100 tons in the grain fleet, and that despite Claudius' earlier concessions there continued to be a shortage of ships even as large as 70 tons. Left to their own devices, merchants and ship-builders seem to have preferred to construct ships of less than 70 tons burden, and/or to have used their ships to carry freight as opportunity arose rather than commit them to a long-term service.
Finally, we may note three further items which, taken together, imply the existence of large numbers of smaller ships. First, a series of passages in the works of Hero of Alexandria: in his Stereometrica, Hero gives the formulas for calculating the capacity (in amphorae and modii) of merchant vessels of various sizes. The ships he deals with are relatively small. The three he gives as examples have capacities according to his calculations, of 7,680 modii (=about 58 tons), 12,600 modii (=about 95 tons), and 19,200 modii (=about 144 tons). In other passages, he mentions ships with lengths of only 24 and 60 ft, and nowhere does he mention a merchant vessel with a capacity of more than 144 tons.............
Second, the famous lex Claudia of 218 B.C., prohibited senators and sons of senators from owning ships with a capacity of more than 300 amphorae (=15 tons). This law implies that ships in use at that time were often of low tonnage, certainly below 100 tons, for if ships were regularly over 100 tons burden, the same result could have been achieved by setting the limit at(for example) 50 tons. Third and last, a passage in Cicero seems to imply that a ship of 2,000 amphorae (=100 tons) was considered large; vessels of this size are cited by the writer (Lentulus) in a passage where it is in his interest to imphasize the impressive nature of his enemy Dolabella's preparations.............
There is at present very little evidence to suppor tthe view that ships of 500 tons burden or more were anything but extraordinary, and much of both our comparative and ancient material suggests that small ships-ships of, day, 60 tons burden and less, comprised the vast majority of Roman merchant vessels.

Han dynasty fort showing L-shaped gate and outstretched angles which would result in overlapping field of fire:

8. The canals, which could have been enlarged and modified overtime, are still not any more impressive that the Roman bridges still in use. Or Roman dams still in used or Roman roads still in use, Or Roman lighthouse still in use. So I don't understand you point, no one wasn't saying that the Chinese were not comparable to the Romans . If you were trying tonshow backhanded the Chinese were more advance you failed.

Canals cheapen transportation much more than roads, and bridges are basically roads over water. Roads/bridges/dams could also be enlarged/modified over time. In fact much of the Roman roads that's still being in use are just modern roads that's built over the Roman road.Perhaps you should give some examples of Roman dams still being used.

7. Same for the other Chinese inventions you show, like the Chinese loom. No one has disputed the Chinese were more advanced in some area, but the Greeks and Romans were in other area.

Well I can find much more articles claiming that Rome was the most advanced in the world without even specifically looking for it whereas you only quoted one author claiming China was more advanced than Europe. It is often claimed on a more frequent basis that Romans were the most advanced in the world, so I think it more suitable to show those areas where the Romans were not the most advanced.

I could show a picture of a Roman water powered sawmill and a Han dynasty man sawing a log by hand too, it I wanted, to show how more advance the Romans were.

Rome had the technology of the crank and connecting rod by manner of the sawmill, but this technology died out and had to be reinvented by 1200ds AD and the reinvention used an altogether different design. Whereas the Han crank and connecting rod by manner of the 'long' was being used almost to present day, if not present day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkbOv3P707o

The Romans, just like thr Chinese, were able to develop non-food producing technologies as well, and their tended to be on a bigger scale. I have never seen a single example of Han dynasty water mill, but we have a dozen or so Roman water mills we have found. And they are much larger than your loom, took more money to build.

The Han used the water powered recumbent trip hammer to mill their grain as well as the foot powered trip hammer. They also used the long, in which case they don't have to travel to a landlord's mill to get their grain milled. None of which can be proven to exist in the Roman empire. Whether technology is advanced or not is not about just dinosaur to mammal size comparisons.
Plus, you are comparing the size of a watermill to the size of a loom, which doesn't make sense as they are two entirely different things. Might as well compare the size of Chinese canals to Roman water mills in that regard.

8. It may have been a school students who did the list of top 20 Chinese inventions, but it shows the nonsense the students are being taught with regard ro China. I could pick a half dozen different similar exsmples, and the university did post it. They could have taken it off if they disagreed with what the list said.

You want them to censor things on their forum that's wrong? I can also take examples of academic books which is blatantly wrong about Roman inventions. Take Philo's washstand, for example, which was often claimed to have the world's first escapement. Except it don't have an escapement, it doesn't even have a single gear, but having at least one gear is kind of a requirement as per the definition of escapement.

Definition of Escapement:
a device in a timepiece which controls the motion of the train of wheelwork and through which the energy of the power source is delivered to the pendulum or balance by means of impulses that permit a tooth to escape from a pallet at regular intervals

You can find a lot of references to Philo's washstand being labeled as the first escapement, even though it has neither pendulum nor balance, and no tooth to permit escape from a pallet at regular intervals. Likewise it's commonly said that the Heiropolis sawmill of the 3rd century was the first to incorporate the crank and connecting rod. Even though the crank and connecting road was actually invented a couple hundred years earlier in the Western Han:

[Common Soldier]

Not sure if you're doing this intentionally or not, since you seem to know a lot about the subject and it's weird that you would miss this (especially since you keep citing Needham who talks about it at length in Volume 4 of Science and Civilization in China), but no, the Chinese during the Han period actually did have watermills.

My point is that no watermil remains have been found dating As far back as the Han dynasty. The oldest I have seen dates only back to the Song dynasty.

What that means is that the watermills just were not as common as they were formthr Roman world, otherwise we would have more actual evidencd for them.in China. The watermills are not somehow magically preserved better in the West than China, and if we find more of them fdom across the Roman world if was because they were used a lot more commonly in the West than China. The lack of devidrnxr similar to what we find in the West indicates they were less commonly used. .Even if the woodnrots away, the foundations ornrhr watermills would still be left behind. If we can find archeological evidence of.Romsn watermills from Britain to Jordan, the lack ofnsuch evidence in China can't be climate or just geography. That does not mean the watermis didn't exist in China, but if they had been as commonly used as in the West, we would have found more remains from Han China than we do.

They also had a lot more uses for the waterwheel than milling. There's no evidence the Chinese waterwheel predated the late Hellenistic and Roman ones since Vitruvius speaks of them, but just a few decades later Huan Tan (circa 20 AD) wrote about the use of waterwheels powering mechanical trip hammers. Around 31 AD the Book of Later Han says Du Shi, a governor of Nanyang, applied waterwheels to mechanically operated bellows of the blast furnace in order to produce cast iron. At the beginning of the 2nd century AD the prolific inventor and scientist Zhang Heng used waterwheels to power a rotating armillary sphere representing the Earth, planets and cosmos. During the 3rd century AD the engineer Ma Jun entertained the royal court of Emperor Ming of Wei with a mechanical puppet theater powered entirely by a hidden waterwheel.

The Romanss likewise used watermills for a variety of.applicstions, including sawmills. And simply because a written document says something does not necessarily make what was written true...Ming dynasty official records talk about fantastical sizes for Zheng He Treasure Ships, but there is a lot of evidence against ships ever being this big, and the.dimensions look like they came from a fantasy novel. Could it be possible that thr references to the watemills were later interpolations added to the original.text? Do we have actual manuscripts wrrifrn during the Han dynasty, or is this from copies made during the Ming Dynasty? If dimensions of Zheng He ships.coild be made up, then why couldn't references to watermills in works that originally did not contain them?. If the Ming could add ridiculously large dimensions for Zheng He ships, I don't see why they couldn't have reference to watdrmills to ancient text as well. We know on at least one occassion the Ming did just that - Needham pointed out the oldest manuscripts of s Chinese text did not have references to reading glasses but the newer version did have references to reading glasses, that the references had been added to the original text. Perhaps the same thing happened in other cases, but those just haven't been identified yet.

Now I am not saying that actually happened in this case. And given the variety of different works that atest to the watermills in ancient China, I find the probability of interpolations of references being added actually being low.. it would depend on the textuL history - if the text where the Han dynasty watermills was from a single Ming dynasty copy, thr probability of it being an interpolation is higher than if it was found in multiple copies, very low, zero if it was from a Song Dynasty manuscript. As to why a later copier would add references to watermills.in text that didn't have them, possibly it was the same reason that references fo eyeglasses were added to earlier text, and the Qing used unrealistically large dimensions for Zhrng He Treasurer Ships (In thd case of Zhrng He ships, anyone with the smallest experience would have been skeptical about the sizes yet the Qing officials never questioned thr numbers.)

Your other points seem okay, the lighthouse one especially, although your curious statement here about watermills has me kinda suspicious about your other claims. If anything this was one of the major areas where the ancient Chinese were actually on par with the Greco-Roman world.

Note having a technology and using it are 2 different things. Some like a watermill is big, it is not small like water clock whose metal components got melted down. If they were being used in China to the amount they where used in the Roman world, we would expect to more evidence than we do, given allnrhr remains of Roman watermills.we have found.

[HackneyedScribe]

Waterwheels existed in the Han dynasty for powering trip hammers, furnaces, and an armillery sphere.

As for your mention about Chinese adding reading glasses to a later text, it was first of all discovered by Needham when he could have just ignored the mistake made by Laufer. Second of all, the Chinese never claimed that the invention was Chinese, they were updating what was equivalent to an encyclopedia about states to the West of China.

From Neeham:
It has sometimes been stated that the invention of spectacles was Chinese. This may, in part, have derived from a paper by Laufer containing many inconsistencies, which were afterwards cleared up by Chhiu Khai-Ming. If Laufer had been justified in accepting as authentic a mention of spectacles in the Tung Thien Chhing Lu of Chao Hsi-Ku, written not long after +1240, then the mention of these aids to better vision in China would have antedated European references by about half a century. The passage runs:

Ai-tai resemble large coins, and their colour is like mica. When old people are dizzy and their sight tiered, so that they cannot read fine print, they put ai-tai over their eyes. Then they are once more able to concentrate, and the strokes of the characters appear doubly clear. Ai-tai come from Malacca in the western regions.​
​
But the bibliographical study showed that it was not in the best and oldest versions of Chao's book, so that it must have been added by someone in the Ming. Besides, the mention of Malacca would have been an anachronism. In fact, the earliest books which refer to spectacles were written in Ming times, the Chhi Hsiu Lei Kao of Lang Ying (+1487 to +1566) and the Fang-Chou Tsa Yen of Chang Ning (+1452).

Ergo the Chinese weren't even taking credit for the invention, nor did the passage claim when it came into China, only what it was and where it came from. So it's misleading to have implications that they purposefully made it sound as if reading glasses came from an earlier date.

Anyways, in terms of Han furnace technology the following are two Han-era furnaces excavated from Henan:




To turn that into a waterwheel you just add paddles to the wheel and plop that wheel in a river, not rocket science by that point.


Roman bloomery furnace, as the Romans used solely human powered furnaces:



And for the Western Han Wafangzhuang foundry site:
Near the remains of several cupola furnaces, is a circular pit, 2.6 m deep and about 6 m in diameter. Whatever mechanism was used here, its purpose was to convert rotary motion to reciprocal motion, and a similar arrangement could have been used for water power. It is fairly easy to imagine a version of the mechanism for a water powered bellows shown in the Nongshu of 1313, with its horizontal wheel, being used here. “ -Donald Wagner

This heavily implies the use of a belt drive, as it's doubtful animal power alone (by means of walking in a circle) could operate a furnace fast enough for it to be operational. Belt drives (which the Han had the technology for, and which was shown in later texts to be used for furnaces) solves this problem. The use of animal and water powered furnaces are also in contemporary records:
In the seventh year of the Chien-Wu reign period (31 AD) Tu Shih was posted to be Prefect of Nanyang. He was a generous man and his policies were peaceful; he destroyed evil-doers and established the dignity (of his office). Good at planning, he loved the common people and wished to save their labor. He invented a water-power reciprocator for the casting of (iron) agricultural implements. Those who smelted and cast already had the push-bellows to blow up their charcoal fires, and now they were instructed to use the rushing of the water to operate it...Thus the people got great benefit for little labor. They found the 'water(-powered) bellows' convenient and adopted it widely - Book of Later Han

Also, are there any pictorials of Romans drawing water from wells as so?:

[conon394]

Also, are there any pictorials of Romans drawing water from wells as so?:

This do?

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6dd...0e8e3a48be.pdf

[HackneyedScribe]

This do?

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6dd...0e8e3a48be.pdf

Thanks, but that's a treadwheel more appropriate for large scale baths, not getting water for your family. I'm looking for the windlass used in wells.

[conon394]

Thanks, but that's a treadwheel more appropriate for large scale baths, not getting water for your family. I'm looking for the windlass used in wells.

Wow you see a lot detail I don't in that picture.

[HackneyedScribe]

If you think that I'm saying the picture is showing a person getting water for his family, no that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying a windlass is a more appropriate tool for getting water from a well for your family. A treadwheel is a more appropriate tool for filling a public bath with water or draining a large pond, for moving large amounts of water similar to the ancient Chinese 'dragon's backbone' device. You don't get in a treadwheel/'dragon's backbone' to get only a bucket of water, like how you don't get into a car to travel to your next door neighbor. I mean, you can, but it's overkill and not an efficient use of your resources.

[Roma_Victrix]

True. It is the claims.of Needham and others for China was significantly more advanced than the West I oppose, not that others were not equally as advance. My view, is that until the early modern era, no one cilivization was significantly more advance than all the others - ancient Greeks, Indians, were all comparable from classical times on.

I don't think Needham ever outright makes that claim; he only points out individual cases where China happened to be ahead of the rest of the world. Also yes, most urbanized and civilized pre-modern societies were at a fairly comparable level of technology, albeit sometimes uneven over time and from region to region due to political, military, or economic disasters and collapse of public order.

It really is the Chinese scholars like Needham who are responsible for this. They are always making the comparison with the West on this, boasting how China was always so many centuries ahead on that item or this many centuries on another item.. They never do that when the roles are reversed, they never mention how many centuries China was behind in an area, and most ornrhr time.rhey don't mention any field.at all where China lagged if they could help it.. Nor do they ever make the comparison with things like the Indian Civilization, Needham's comparison was always with the West.

That's actually just not true, since Needham makes plenty of references to where Chinese technology lagged behind that of Europe when it's relevant to what he's discussing. Even though he highlights Su Song's use of a (obviously hydraulic-powered) waterwheel-driven escapement mechanism for his astronomical clocktower in Kaifeng during the 11th century, he nevertheless points out that purely European style mechanical clockworks with an escapement created by the 14th century did not exist in China until Europeans brought them there in the late Ming dynasty, the early 17th century. And he actually does compare Chinese claims to other civilizations than European ones, such as doubting the Chinese claim of pontoon bridges of the Western Zhou and showing that such texts were usually from the Qin or Han, while pointing out that Persian King Darius I used them to cross the Bosporus in his invasion of Greece.

To me it just sounds like you have some weird grudge against Needham for simply having the audacity of examining or showcasing historical Chinese science and tech. How dare he!

My point is that no watermil remains have been found dating As far back as the Han dynasty. The oldest I have seen dates only back to the Song dynasty.

Okay, and there are also plenty of Chinese paintings from the Song dynasty showing watermills as well, as well as the illustration of one in Su Song's book on his clocktower published 1092, along with illustrations of them in slightly later works like the Nong Shu by Wang Zhen during the Yuan dynasty (showing their use in smelting iron as well). Their use was clearly widespread at least by the Song period. For that matter, Tang dynasty records, backed by the later Book of Song, record that Yi Xing of the 8th century used a waterwheel for his astronomical clock and clepsydra device, similar to that of the Eastern Han model created by Zhang Heng but without the endless power-transmitting chain drive and escapement mechanism in Su Song's clocktower from the Northern Song period. This shows a clear progression of its use from the Han, to the Tang, to the Song dynasties. Whether or not it was used as commonly for milling as the Roman model is another matter.

I can't find any Han dynasty reliefs or tomb models of waterwheels, but they often made models of wells with pulleys and buckets, showing an application of the wheel at the very least in retrieving water:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

What that means is that the watermills just were not as common as they were formthr Roman world, otherwise we would have more actual evidencd for them.in China. The watermills are not somehow magically preserved better in the West than China, and if we find more of them fdom across the Roman world if was because they were used a lot more commonly in the West than China. The lack of devidrnxr similar to what we find in the West indicates they were less commonly used. .Even if the woodnrots away, the foundations ornrhr watermills would still be left behind. If we can find archeological evidence of.Romsn watermills from Britain to Jordan, the lack ofnsuch evidence in China can't be climate or just geography. That does not mean the watermis didn't exist in China, but if they had been as commonly used as in the West, we would have found more remains from Han China than we do.

You might have a point there about the commonality of it in China versus the Greco-Roman and late medieval Western world. Your next point, not so much.

The Romanss likewise used watermills for a variety of.applicstions, including sawmills.

Okay, but I wasn't claiming otherwise and I already knew about this, so...why are we mentioning it again?

And simply because a written document says something does not necessarily make what was written true...Ming dynasty official records talk about fantastical sizes for Zheng He Treasure Ships, but there is a lot of evidence against ships ever being this big, and the.dimensions look like they came from a fantasy novel. Could it be possible that thr references to the watemills were later interpolations added to the original.text? Do we have actual manuscripts wrrifrn during the Han dynasty, or is this from copies made during the Ming Dynasty? If dimensions of Zheng He ships.coild be made up, then why couldn't references to watermills in works that originally did not contain them?. If the Ming could add ridiculously large dimensions for Zheng He ships, I don't see why they couldn't have reference to watdrmills to ancient text as well. We know on at least one occassion the Ming did just that - Needham pointed out the oldest manuscripts of s Chinese text did not have references to reading glasses but the newer version did have references to reading glasses, that the references had been added to the original text. Perhaps the same thing happened in other cases, but those just haven't been identified yet.

Now I am not saying that actually happened in this case. And given the variety of different works that atest to the watermills in ancient China, I find the probability of interpolations of references being added actually being low.. it would depend on the textuL history - if the text where the Han dynasty watermills was from a single Ming dynasty copy, thr probability of it being an interpolation is higher than if it was found in multiple copies, very low, zero if it was from a Song Dynasty manuscript. As to why a later copier would add references to watermills.in text that didn't have them, possibly it was the same reason that references fo eyeglasses were added to earlier text, and the Qing used unrealistically large dimensions for Zhrng He Treasurer Ships (In thd case of Zhrng He ships, anyone with the smallest experience would have been skeptical about the sizes yet the Qing officials never questioned thr numbers.)

LOL. No. You're taking one or two examples of exaggerations in Chinese texts (actually just one since Hackneyeyed Scribe already corrected you on the glasses thing) and trying to extrapolate that to other areas where it doesn't make any sense. I say that because we're not talking about some obscure Chinese text that a Ming dynasty copier got his hands on and interpolated to hell without anyone noticing. We're talking about the Book of Later Han compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century AD, one of the landmark pieces of Chinese historiography, which has copies from various different eras well before the Ming. For that matter Ma Jun's waterwheel for powering his cute little mechanical puppet theater (as mentioned above) first appears in records no later than Pei Songzhi's Annotations to Records of the Three Kingdoms from the 5th century AD, but was contained in Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms written contemporaneously in the 3rd century AD.

So, oops! On your part. You're welcome to try again, though.

Food for thought: some 19th-20th century scholars doubted the very existence of the Bronze Age Shang dynasty kings recounted by Sima Qian in his Shiji from the 2nd century BC (Western Han), thinking anything before the Zhou dynasty was just legendary and apocryphal. That's most likely true for the seemingly mythological Xia dynasty corresponding to the early Bronze Age Erlitou culture, but lo and behold archaeologists discovered not only Bronze Script inscriptions from the late Shang and early Zhou periods, but also the Oracle Bone script of the mid-Shang dynasty proving that Sima Qian faithfully recorded the names of Shang kings a thousand years later. Song Chinese scholars of the 12th century began questioning whether Sunzi was a real person or not and if his Art of War was really that ancient, since he is only briefly mentioned by Sima Qian, but lo and behold, we've found copies of the Art of War among the Yinqueshan Han Slips dated to about 140 BC, so they are at least as old as Western Han.

With that in mind, instead of being paranoid about Ming era interpolation, perhaps recognize the Chinese, despite various other faults like not inventing eyeglasses like medieval Europeans, were fairly good at copying things faithfully from their original texts. They took that business rather seriously considering their reverence for the Chinese classics from the Warring States Period.

[conon394]

If you think that I'm saying the picture is showing a person getting water for his family...

No I was just saying its a fairly non descriptive drawing.

But Greek and Roman Mechanical Water-Lifting Devices: The History of a Technology by Oleson. The Romans looked to use pumps for similar small wells or cisterns.

[HackneyedScribe]

Han dynasty Mingqi model of water powered trip hammers:



Below the author is talking about another Mingqi pottery, albeit the paper do show the picture of the Mingqi pottery above:
First the three hammers don't have guardrails, which caught the attention of the author. Because as of present time all excavated mingqi pottery trip hammers, there were precious little shown without guardrails. Naturally, because in actual work the hammer is relatively heavy, usually one needs a pair of feet to lift the hammer, and then use the supporting power of a pair of hands to alleviate the force from the hammer and then to let the hammer smash down. Thus is the grain processing operation completed. But these three trip hammers have no guardrails and thus the process cannot be completed, which is somewhat odd.
Also, toward the front and back wall of the trip hammer, there is a half circle gap on each wall. And having a line connecting the two gaps would perfectly fit the terminal upper end of the trip hammers. Even more worthy of attention, is that behind the back wall, there is another half circle support structure, and these three gaps just happens to form one straight line between each other. This shows that these three gaps shared one lateral axis, and this axis is the lateral axis for a waterwheel. The waterwheel would be located in between the two gaps of the outer wall, and there should be boards on the axis or else the trip hammer would not be operable. However when the artifact was being excavated or changed hands, the waterwheel and axis were lost. If we look at the location of the gaps on the front and back wall, one can still see small amounts of adhesives, which provides further evidence that an axis was placed here. Past the back door's guardrail, there is a board that can open/close so that water can stream through. The passage of the water should be from left to right, powering the waterwheel. As the waterwheel turns it drives the axis, moving the boards on the axis to cause the trip hammers to lift and drop.
https://www.academia.edu/11577648/Ar...F%81%E6%8D%AE_

https://historum.com/threads/overrated-events-in-ancient-history.96402/page-23
.
.
Edit: Looks like same author made another paper about it, this time in English: https://www.academia.edu/39332041/Th...na_in_English_

[Common Soldier]

There's a world of difference between not drawing the prop and not drawing an entire 'mounting bed' (which is basically not drawing FOUR props and a giant plank on top).

Again, if the artist left some details out, they could have left others out as well.

Besides, if you could make yourself believe the crossbow had an undrawn "mounting bed" then surely you could believe that the crossbow had an undrawn prop. Mostly because enlarging the picture do show that the prop is actually drawn

The prop holding the rear up is not showing in the drawing, saying something is so does not make it so. You can't even have an arrow pointing to the prop holding up the rear end of the crossbow, because it doesn't exist. :

I increased the contrast of the picture, then highlighted the string and prop in blue:

Granted that it's hard to see, but if you can see the bottom string then you can probably see the prop near where the bottom and upper string connects.

You arrows point to the crossbow itself, enlarging and enhancing the drawing still does not show a prop rod holding up the rear. Maybe the artist left out a simple detail, maybe he left out further details, but given the fact this is the only evidence you could provide makes you argument very, very weak.

If you're talking about the Han pictorial, the nut is definitely not in the middle of the stock because the string is already drawn to the back of the stock. No point doing that unless if the nut is at the back of the stock too. It's probably just an indentation in the stock which you confused as the nut.

I said in the reconstruction picture you showed, not the Han picture. I don't know if this is a honest mistake, or a deliberate one, pretending I was talking about the reconstruction crossbow picture you showed. So you don't make the mistake again, if you look at that RECONSTRUCTION picture below, it is clearly an European crossbow in it.

1. The nut clearly shows in the middle of the stock
2. The stock narrows at the end, as you see some European crossbows do.
3. The string is not drawn all the way back to the nut, but is only drawn part way back, as you can clearly see.

I apologize if I did not make it clear the first time that was the reconstruction crossbow and windlass picture I was talking about.

Considering typical Han long powerstroke crossbows could already shoot more powerfully than Medieval steel crossbows using a windlass, I'm not surprised if the Han windlass crossbows were discarded. Likewise the Roman harvesting machine eventually fell out of favor too, hence a "failure", though I don't know what the excuse for that would be.

Even when the Chinese went to shorter powerstroke lengths, and could have benefited from mechanical assist, they still didn't use mechanical assist for regular crossbows (Zhugenu is a special case, and served a different function from regular crossbows).

Almost all technologies eventually fall out of favor. There is a difference between a technology showing up once in some poorly sketched picture, and one, like the Roman harvesting machine, that shows up in a couple of pictures and references. Although, I would say the harvest machine probably was not very successful, it was not used outside of Gaul, and probably the benefit/cost ratio was not high enough. It wasn't until the 19th century with modern machining technology that mechanical harvesters became really popular.

To make it more obvious I got rid of the ammo box, painted the "hook" of the Zhugenu in blue, and the lever in green:

That does seem to operator as a wippe (gaffe), rather than a goats lever as you said. It lacks the changing geometry of the goats lever, but does appear similar to the wippe. The mechanical advantage of the gaffe seems slightly less, whereas the crossbow maker Tod said that a goats foot lever could go up to 500 lbs, the gaffe (wippe) could only go up to 400 lbs crossbow.

The Zhugenu powerstroke is short, the design doesn't allow for a long powerstroke, and the short block that pulls the string also reduces the potential mechanical advantage as well, less than the gaffe device, which is why the Zhugenu was a weak device, and required poison arrows to be effective. I suppose the Chinese could have scaled up the a Zhugenu device to make it more powerful, but the Chinese didn't, nor did they adapt it to work on regular crossbows.

Even when the crossbow powerstroke was shortened, the Chinese did not use mechanical assist like the cranequin, windlass pulleys, gaffe or goats foot levers to make more powerful crossbows, and these devices helped keep the crossbow a popular instrument well into the 17th century, long after they were abandoned by the Chinese. Although, based on another thread, the Chinese were not into sport of hunting as Europeans were, so after the military market dried up for crossbows, there was nothing to keep powerful crossbows around as in Europe, where they were still appreciated for hunting.

And as said before (but was ignored), all you have to do to make the lever support a much higher draw weight is to replace the crossbow with a stronger prod, which the Koreans did. It's not rocket science:

As I explained and your own pictures show, the Zhugenu has a relatively short powerstroke, and the short length of the block that pulls string reduced fhe mechanical advantage, thus resulting in a weak mechanism that usuez poison arrows to be effective.

While the the size ornrhr Korean would make it powerful enough to use without posion, it would still be a lot less powerful than a siege crossbow its sizes and it would be inaccurate. That maybe why the neighboring Chinese never adopted it, the lack of acfruacy didn't offset it's inaccuracy and relative lack of power. I suspect it would be comparable.in power to the maximum gaffe crossbow.


Over the centuries, ships tended to become larger, a trend that continued on to present times.
short powerstroke, and the short length of the block that pulls on the string, would have produced relative low energy arrows. Given that the Korean devices were much larger, their power was greater, probably more around a handheld gaffe crossbow - the arrows would be lethal, but a similar size normal crossbow would be much more powerful and lethal, but with lower rate of fire. The lack of accuracy would have hindered its effectiveness, and it doesn't seem that Korea's next door neighbor China adopted the weapon, which raises questions on how effective it was. If China was willing to adopt the foreign arquebus, then their failure to adopt the Korean large Zhugenu suggest it wasn't as an effective weapon as you might think.

What is the biggest 1600 AD Dutch ship then? It was the 25 ton type Dutch ships that allowed them to out compete English shipping, not their biggest ships.

For relatively close markets, small ships might prove effective, but for longer voyages you needed bigger ships. The 17th century Dutch ship the Batavia was 650 tons. If you can find any Dutch ship of 25 tons or proved the average size of Dutch ships was only 25 tons that sailed to places like the East Indias, produced that the data.

Evidence indicated that while these Dutch fluyts w

Flat-bottomed ships were also in the tradition of the fluyt, the classic Dutch cargo ship. Such ships could carry large loads and were fine for conditions in the Baltic, but on the high seas they held course less well. Some fluyts were used in the East India trade and Bruijn et al. have shown that they sailed considerably slower than the East Indiamen, especially towards the end of the eighteenth century: after 1750, East Indiamen made the voyage to the Cape in 125–126 days, while fluyts made the trip in 161–197 days. On the return trips, the difference was less spectacular however: 105–120 as against 117–126 days.32 While they were slower, they were relatively cheap and had considerable carrying capacity. https://qz.com/1193455/the-speed-of-...al-revolution/

The faster speed of English ships allowed the English to eventually dominate the ocean trade

Although economic historians have portrayed the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century as “anything but revolutionary” outside sectors such as cotton, iron, and steam, the authors argue ”a growing literature now highlights how widespread progress occurred across the British economy.” Oceanic freight by sail can now take its place alongside the rest of the transformations aided by the Industrial Revolution. https://qz.com/1193455/the-speed-of-...al-revolution/

Speed is important, and in general, larger ships can go faster, and speed is an important factor in shipping, the faster you can go, the better. But it is not the only factor - if you need a much larger crew to go faster, the cost of the additional manpower can offset what is gained by going faster. So in the days of the Clipper ships, even though they were fast, regular ships still predominated, because overall they were cheaper to run. The Dutch small ships were fine for short trips to the Baltic, but on long voyages, they were not as effective. And all things equal, a larger ship can go faster.

As a very general rule the maximum speed of any displacement hull--commonly called its hull speed--is governed by a simple formula: hull speed in knots equals 1.34 times the square root of the waterline length in feet (HS = 1.34 x √LWL). Thus, for example, if you have a 35-foot boat with a waterline length of 28 feet, its hull speed works out to a little over 7 knots (1.34 x √28 = 7.09). https://www.boats.com/reviews/crunch...d-boat-length/

The Roman government gave incentives for merchants to build large ships that they probably otherwise wouldn't have built. There is not such government policy for the ancient Chinese. Building large ships isn't the same as building large efficient ships relative to smaller ships.

We don't have sufficient records to say what ancient Chinese did or did not do with regard to ships, so you have no basis to make that claim. We know that Chinese governments were heavily involved in building large ships in later centuries such as the Ming dynasty. We have so little information on the Han dynasty sea going ships that we don't even have a picture of them from the Han dynasty.

And your assertion that large Roman ships would not have been built except for government incentives is again just speculation on your part. That Claudius did offer incentives is true, but that does not mean large ships would not have been built anyways, or that they weren't. Nor have you shown that the incentives were still in place under other emperors, when large ships were still being built.

The Madrague de Giens was built before the time of Cladius, and there were no indications that either Augustus or Julius Caesar gave incentives for building large Roman ships, yet its size show they were being built. Produce the documentation that the Romans were giving incentives under Augustus or Caesar.

Madraguede Giens6000-7000 amphorae, mostlyDressel 1B; Campanian finewares c.350-450 tons 70-50 B.C. http://www.ancientportsantiques.com/...eckCargoes.pdf

This is irrelevant as it ignores the positivist fallacy in terms of the amount of resources and time dedicated to archaeology and the type of containers that's put on these ships. For example, Roman ships were excavated more often than medieval-reinassance shipping in the Mediterranean because Romans stored their goods in amphorae which is much less perishable than wooden barrels, making their sunken ships easier to find.

Once again, you are making stuff and present no facts to support your claims. The famous wreck where the Antikythera mechanism was found by sponge divers, and not because of its amphorae. And Greek ships before Roman times also carried amphorae, so according to your logic we should find just as many ancient Greek ships as Romans, yet we don't. You have made a claim, show even 3 or 4 Roman ship wrecks that were only found due to their amphorae. The simplest and most probable reason more Roman shipwrecks were found was because their was more Roman ships.

The 53 million broken olive oil amphorae found in Mount Testaccio testifies to a large scale shipping that we find no evidence of in ancient China.

Ancient Chinese canals are still being used today, not so sure about Roman harbors and lighthouses. I rate things such as canals/row planting/heavy moldboard plough/muti-tube seed drill as more important because they are relevant to a bigger proportion of the population seeing that the majority of families in Rome and ancient China were farmers, not sailors.

Producing extra food does not do any good if you can't get it to where you need it. If you don't li ve on a canal, and canals didn't run everywhere, you will need roads and bridges to transport food and services. Rome could support larger cities than could contemporary China, the 3 top largest cities in the Roman empire were larger than the largest Chinese city. It would take the Chinese 800 years to build a city as large.


Even with more modern technology and machinery abilities, Jethro Tull multi-tube seeders didn't instantly replace hand sowing, it took a while for his invention to take over. Using less advance manufacturing abilities, such seeding might not have overcome the inertia.

For, despite initial resistance to Tull's revolutionary ideas, they were eventually adopted by large landowners and, in time, formed the basis of modern agriculture. Most subsequent drilling and hoeing implements were either copies, or improvements upon the invention of Tull; http://www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/jtull.html

Alexander Hamilton in 1627 was granted a patent for a seed planting machine in England, yet it was not until a 100 years later with Jethro Tull that the seed planting machine finally caught on, and improvement in manufacturing ability could have been the factor.

You were the one who used Roman obelisks as examples, not I. The Romans had the largest cities by extracting grain from other provinces, but ancient China had more large cities.

I don't recall using Egyptian obelisk as an example in this thread, can you point out where I said it? And can you provide the evidence for Han dynasty China having more large cities? Certainly, we have far more remains from Roman cities than Chinese ones.

The ancient Chinese used borehole drilling, so some excavated villages had wells for every home so they don't require to walk to a far-away fountain for water + lug it back home.

A few villages is not the same thing as providing water to a large urban area. In a few cases, water too was brought directly to Roman houses.

By the 4th century A.D., Rome would have 11 public baths, 1,352 public fountains and cisterns and 856 private baths. In Pompeii, some homes had 30 taps.https://www.plumbingsupply.com/pmroman.html

How big is the entire granary area of Roman Alexandria then?

What does it matter? I don't know, and given that much of ancient Alexandria is now underwater, probably wouldn't be able to find out either.

Also, which Roman fort (non-ruins) are still standing? The Roman forts I've seen are still standing because they've been reconstructed or built over.

I did not say they were not ruins, but the Roman forts were more than just a flat area where a building used to stand. Qasr Bshr for one. But some of the others I was thinking about were reconstructed, as you said. And Castel Sant'Angelo is for another - although it was originally built as the Masoleum of Hadrian, it was converted into a fortress in 401 AD.

I would say that it's the size of ships that's not impressive, a big ship (in the Roman case) only means that the Romans choose to transport their grain more centrally than more scattered to the locations they were needed. Evidence for this can be seen in which the Roman government gave incentives for people to build large ships.

Evidence in certain time periods, do you have evidence for the entire time of the Roman Empire?

So the large ships were built not because it's the economically best type of ship to build, but because the Roman government pushed them to build large ships. Left to their own devices, Roman merchants probably would have preferred ships less than 70 tons in size.

Ships come in all sizes, and the majority of ships in most ages would be smaller than the largest. That is true also for the Song and other Chinese dynasties as well. But it is speculation that it was only due to incentives large ships were built. Large ships require large investments and risk, and so the government might at times encourage them, but that does not mean they were unprofitable, that again is speculation.

From Ports in Perspective: Some Comparative Materials on Roman Merchant Ships:

The first item is a decree of the Emperor Claudius. In the 40s A.C., Claudius granted certain civil rights to men or women who built ships of at least 10,000 modii and used them to transport grain for six years (Gai. Inst. 32c; Suet. Claud. 18-19). Casson argued that the terms of this decree suggest that "a 70-tonner was the smallest-sized carrier the government considered useful." While we may readily agree that the decree indicates that 70-ton ships and larger were considered desirable, two further points need to be made. First, the decree clearly implies that, in Claudius's day, there were many ships in the grain fleet which were not as large as 70 tons;

First off, we know that ships larger than 70 tons were being built, as the Madagrue de Giens wreck showed. The benefits Claudius gave out, was not to build such ships, but to ensure they remained in service to transport grain and not put to some other use for the specified time.

But even the minimal size f 70 tons is still larger than the largest Han dynasty ship we have record of.

Second, the famous lex Claudia of 218 B.C., prohibited senators and sons of senators from owning ships with a capacity of more than 300 amphorae (=15 tons). This law implies that ships in use at that time were often of low tonnage, certainly below 100 tons, for if ships were regularly over 100 tons burden, the same result could have been achieved by setting the limit at(for example) 50 tons. Third and last, a passage in Cicero seems to imply that a ship of 2,000 amphorae (=100 tons) was considered large; vessels of this size are cited by the writer (Lentulus) in a passage where it is in his interest to imphasize the impressive nature of his enemy Dolabella's preparations.............
There is at present very little evidence to suppor tthe view that ships of 500 tons burden or more were anything but extraordinary, and much of both our comparative and ancient material suggests that small ships-ships of, day, 60 tons burden and less, comprised the vast majority of Roman merchant vessels.

Irrelevant, since 218 BC is before Imperial times, and before Pompey cleared the Mediterranean of pirates. The stability brought by the Roman Empire would make larger ships more attractive. And you are comparing the largest Chinese ships with the average size Roman ships, which is dishonest and invalid comparison.

As your own evidence showed, even in the 17th century, when we know for a fact larger ships were being built, the majority of ships were small. The same was true for all the Chinese dynasties, including the Ming and Song, yet Chinese only boast about the largest, and not the average size.

The fact we have found a number of ships of large size, 400 tons or more, indicated they were not as rare as proposed, or we wouldn't have found any.

Canals cheapen transportation much more than roads, and bridges are basically roads over water. Roads/bridges/dams could also be enlarged/modified over time. In fact much of the Roman roads that's still being in use are just modern roads that's built over the Roman road.Perhaps you should give some examples of Roman dams still being used.

Again, if you don't live on a canal, and canals did not run everywhere, in the end you have to use roads. Provide me an example of Chinese shipping similar to that of Mount Testaccio.

Here is an example of Roman dam in use

The Proserpina Dam, located approximately ten kilometres north of Merida in Spain, is the world’s second oldest dam currently in use.The earthen dam was constructed by the Romans between the late 1st century AD and early 2nd century AD. It is covered with concrete and measures 427m long and 22m high.https://www.water-technology.net/fea...-still-in-use/

Well I can find much more articles claiming that Rome was the most advanced in the world without even specifically looking for it whereas you only quoted one author claiming China was more advanced than Europe.

Then produced that evidence. I provided at least one writer, and that one a major one in the field. Provide an example to back up what you claim.

And while you are at it, provide an example where the dimensions of a fantasy novel becomes the basis of boasting of how large Zheng He ships were. Name me a modern western scholar whose accepts fantastically large figures from fantasy novels as fact as Needham did with Zheng He's ships.

Rome had the technology of the crank and connecting rod by manner of the sawmill, but this technology died out and had to be reinvented by 1200ds AD and the reinvention used an altogether different design.

We don't know that the technology died out, absence of evidence is not proof of absence, and we know that things like watermills, and tidemills were still built in the early middle ages. And you have to include Byzantium with Roman achievements, because Byzantium was a European city (barely true, but counts), speaking an European language.

The more we study, the more we find a continuation of Roman technology in the middle ages. What we thought were inventions or reinventions are now thought to be continuations from Roman times. Watermills, for one.

Plus, you are comparing the size of a watermill to the size of a loom, which doesn't make sense as they are two entirely different things. Might as well compare the size of Chinese canals to Roman water mills in that regard.

You were using the looms as an example of how surpluses from agriculture was funding the develop of such things as the looms. Watermills and sawmills demonstrate that Romans too had surpluses from agriculture to invent and build things, and these were even larger and so required greater surpluses. Perfectly valid comparison.

You want them to censor things on their forum that's wrong? I can also take examples of academic books which is blatantly wrong about Roman inventions. Take Philo's washstand, for example, which was often claimed to have the world's first escapement. Except it don't have an escapement, it doesn't even have a single gear, but having at least one gear is kind of a requirement as per the definition of escapement.

Definition of Escapement:

a device in a timepiece which controls the motion of the train of wheelwork and through which the energy of the power source is delivered to the pendulum or balance by means of impulses that permit a tooth to escape from a pallet at regular intervals [/quote]

I don't agree that Philo's escapement was one, but it is much of one as the Chinese one that I have heard claimed was the first escapement.

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Given military trainers were paid less I find this doubtful.

Really which ones?

Only if you look at construction workers for temples as representative

Touche. But... no worse than claiming a soldier on a monthly retainer is representative. Fine use the slightly less secure data for hired farm data from the 5th century and correct for inflation and you slightly over a drachma a day in pure silver. Which still gives a higher welfare ratio than Rome or Han. Also wage is of course difficult since money wage is difficult to pin down but if allow three tricks for a street walker (unskilled but freelance prostitution) in Athens a day (a low number) for Metic or Citizen than 9 obols is a fair return. 124 grams of silver a month (250 working days). Recall prostitution was legal and Athenian citizens were executed for hubris against working girls. He or she would owe the prostitution tax, but like the Metic tax it was either a small fixed amount that was allowed to dwindle via inflation over 150 years or it may have been a 1% tax. But again small time operators could easily fly under the radar such as was in Athens. But even if identified 1.24 grams of silver is hardly a stiff tax.

Which was why I used Pliny's number for light soils just in case Chao Cuo's numbers were for light soils. Nevertheless it's still 1.19 acres per day for the inferior Han plough compared to .625 acres for Roman ones mentioned by Pliny.

Where is that specified in you Chao Cuo's quote.

Athenians were not a farm based economy like the Han and Rome

Ahh but it was. But just not a one based on taxing peasants growing grain. Rather one based on exporting cash crops olives and olive oil, figs, honey. and wine for example.

Furthermore, Athens were leeching resources from their colonies/allies

I was waiting for that which is why I have be using the 4th century - the one where the Democracy had no empire.

so to be fair just looking at the wages for the city of Athens would result in a high estimate for the average wages of the Athenian empire. So Athens kind of did have an empire, albeit in the form of an alliance.

Not in the 4th century

The Han probably had little to no fallow lands due to the practice of alternating fields. Not requiring fallow lands also increases the land available for other things, such as cash crops or raising livestock.

All fallow is not created equal. Some fallow in the Med region is driven by water retention needs. Much as in the Palouse in WA now you have to fallow some land to restore retained moisture.
In any case please consider me stupid and describe with small words the alternate fields of Han as if I am not sure what you are talking about.


But even if you rotating every year to a different crop in the same field it still means last years crop is a weed and you would to plough once to control its regrowth and and left over

such as cash crops or raising livestock.

You have examples?


https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e0...ournal+article


Not han but at least 1000 AD cash cropping did not seem like a big thing.

We're talking about grain, not fruits. You can store grain for years.

You can potentially in ideal circumstances. But at the end of the day if you wealth is locked up in grain it more risky than silver. Bugs and leaks and damp don't really affect silver. Or put it this way the rice I have in a sealed plastic tub in a relatively climate controlled environment in my pantry will indeed last for years (white not brown so much). In a not sealed container in a my former garage in Houston subject to Houston humidity every year not so much at all. The Romans could store grain in Egypt for up to maybe 15 years. But its notable the oldest grain did not fetch the same price as the current year harvest. In York the Romans look had burned down the dockside grainy storage every couple of years to destroy pests and molds.

He used the average price of grain in the Chu-yen slips.

Yes but that would still be a particular place correct or were they a survey of all of the Han dominion?

If conscripts were paid significantly above unskilled laborers, the country probably wouldn't need conscripts because people will want to choose to be conscripts, and conscripts by definition are forced into service.

Your logic is not entirely sound. US soldiers get paid more than burger flippers, but a surprising amount of Americans opt for burger flipping and not the military.


Also conscripts don't have a choice either way. But even if the solider pay is individually equivalent to unskilled labor in other fields None of those come with family benefits, so its still poor example.

Silver price don't affect the result, it's not an important part of the calculation.

Yes it is, all the items in the basket are priced in silver. I still need to see some evidence that 500 cash (the converted wheat in cash) is worth as much pure silver as indicated as far as I can tell is simply asserted as fact.


A further thought in choosing a soldier. What of weapons, armor, uniform, equipment. In Imperial Rome this was deducted from your pay. What of the Han?