RE: A documentary on the Roman empire
January 14, 2013 at 12:04 pm
(This post was last modified: January 14, 2013 at 12:07 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 14, 2013 at 11:53 am)Minimalist Wrote: The Romans did prefer the practical. If they needed something decorative they got some Greek slave to do it for them.
Case in point, some of the crown jewels of technological innovation handed to us from the middle ages were completely useless to the romans - namely, ag tech. They had no use for the heavy plow, no use for the 3 field rotation - meanwhile their irrigation and water mills were vastly superior - and the romans actually utilized mechanized harvest technology.
That last bit, in fairness, was useless to feudal europe - there were plenty of peasants around to swing scythes.....
Deployment of tech is vastly more important than it's actual innovation. An advance not put to use is practically no different from no advance at all - and the advances of the middle ages were spotty in deployment at best. In the ag sector their advances merely allowed them to yield at rates commensurate with the methods used by the romans in warmers climates with lighter soils.
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