Re: RE: Glorantha Digest, Vol 11, Issue 152

From: Donald R. Oddy <donald_at_grove.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 12:32:44 GMT

In message <75CFC296F70A08409390004F30EF9B8504080F24_at_uk-ex001.groupinfra.com> "Silburn, Luke" writes:
>Donald:
>>>I don't think you can keep the low tech feel you describe unless you
>>>exclude all the early medieval stuff as well - drop all the viking
>>>analogies and merely allow technology up to the 1st or 2nd centuries
>>>AD. That peak of Roman technology wasn't exceeded until the late
>>>middle ages when gunpowder appears in europe.
>
>You're arguing against yourself here surely?

Sorry, I meant you'd have to take it back prior to that peak.

>If early Imperial Rome was
>a technological peak that wasn't surpassed until the late medieval then
>you don't need to exclude the early medieval stuff. In any case I don't
>agree with that last assertion - the Romans had the 'soft' technologies
>(organisation, economic stability, communications, security for trade
>etc) which allowed them to to do things on an impressive scale but the
>sophistication of the actual technological solutions they deployed were
>nothing to write home about - stirrups, mold-board ploughs, an effective
>draft-harness, wheelbarrows, wind/water mills and many other things came
>into common use in Europe between Constantine and the Comnenii.

Certainly there some advances in this period but they were mostly imported from the east. Overall the technology level of what was the western part of the Roman empire went backwards with the fall of Rome and hadn't fully recovered by the industrial revolution.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/


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