
Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer than any 2015 country - ThomPete
http://brilliantmaps.com/roman-empire-gdp/
======
ppeetteerr
This is common to all periods of the past:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_\(PPP\))

Today, we take for granted that the production of each individual is greatly
improved by machinery. We own multiple items of clothing, eat a varied diet,
and live in homes of concrete heated and cooled by electricity. And this
description applies to upcoming economies like Ukraine.

If you take the example of what a feudal Russian lived in the 1700, many built
their own homes out of wood using an axe and wood from the forest, they would
buy fabric and furs but had to make and mend their own clothes, they would
hunt and work the land of their lord for sustinence. Their diet was restricted
to seasons and death by famine and disease was rampant. The few coins they
could accumulate went towards the purchase of must haves (metal tools, basic
textiles, a furnace, and luxuries like animals). In winter, they would sleep
on top of their furnace for heat, and their home was filled with smoke.

Urban centres were no different. The 1000sqft apartments we have today are
5-10x the size of dwellings in London or Paris during the same period. You can
see this visiting the ruins of Rome too.

Life was tough but we forget how tough it was because most of us idealize the
simpler times of the past.

~~~
kristianp
Makes you wonder if Hunter gatherer times were better. Due to the much lower
population densities than feudal times there would have been less famine I
imagine.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Less famine, much more war. Population densities don't stay down on their own
-- people can breed quite rapidly in good conditions. What happens is that
population rises to the point where there is no longer enough food for
everyone, and then territorial clashes start happening, until someone
identifies a weak neighbor tribe and slaughters them. So everything is better
until that week you're fighting for your life, and the life of everyone you
know and love.

This is exactly how chimpanzees live today, and matches well with most of the
archaeological remains we have of primordial hunter-gatherers. Our forebears
lived very violent lives.

~~~
randomThoughts9
> Our forebears lived very violent lives.

I've been reading some books on the subject that claim the contrary, also
based on archaeological proofs (and on identifying faults with the existing
studies). So I wouldn't state that with such confidence.

See RoboTeddy's comment for some details on this POV.

And also, if we look at bonobos, another primate closely related to us, we
might get a completely different perspective on life in the distant past. It's
just that we discovered chimpanzees first.

~~~
geezerjay
Actually, contrary to your claim, bonobos do wage war against each other. They
behave very similarly to chimpanzees and humans, as they form coalitions and
organize attacks to exterminate rival groups.

It appears that some people prefer to focus on a very specific behavioral
trait pinned on bonobos (having sex with group members to diffuse conflicts)
just because it fits their preconceived notion of an ideal outcome involving
absence of conflicts in general and war in particular. Some people even pin
the name "hippie ape" in what looks like a desperate attempt to validate their
personal ideals. Yet, bonobos are indeed known for organizing attacks on
neighboring primate groups for the express purpose of killing and even eating
them.

~~~
randomThoughts9
I wasn't claiming anything, just providing a different perspective (see the
"might" in my sentence).

But could you please shed some light on this sentence:

> Yet, bonobos are indeed known for organizing attacks on neighboring primate
> groups

Are those primates other bonobos? That could be called going to war. If not,
it's called hunting: those other primates are just food. It's not like we go
to war against whatever other animals we are eating.

~~~
tinkerrr
There's Lynn Saxon's book The Naked Bonobo that debunks a lot of popular myths
about Bonobos - [https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Bonobo-Lynn-
Saxon/dp/1523945516](https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Bonobo-Lynn-
Saxon/dp/1523945516)

To the parent's comment though, bonobos don't actually form patrols and they
tend to avoid contact with other groups, so intra-group conflict is lower for
bonobos than chimpanzees.

------
jaclaz
>While the Romans were able to build engineering marvels such as roads and
aqueducts, they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a mobile phone.

But - to be fair - they wouldn't have needed to buy a new smartphone every two
years or so, nor to pay subscription to any mobile carrier.

With all due respect for the map (and the accuracy of the calculations by the
econo-historian) that may be very valid, the comparison with modern times
(i.e. the linked to article) makes (at least to me) very little sense.

GDP/PPP based calculations on poverty line already (even in modern times
comparisons between different countries) suffer from "skewing" because of the
different needs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#Global...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#Global_poverty_line)

let alone comparing today with 2000 years ago.

~~~
stretchwithme
You have no more need to use a mobile phone today than the Romans did. What
you have is the opportunity to use a powerful tool that can save you a lot of
time and provides unprecedented access to people and information.

The needs these devices satisfy have always existed.

If having a mobile device is worth more to you than it costs, you GAIN by
having one. It's not a net loss to you.

~~~
mikeash
You're likely to have a tough time getting a job or going out with friends if
you don't have a mobile phone these days, which would not be the case for a
Roman. People don't exist in isolation, and if society is structured around
the assumption that everyone has a phone, you could be worse off without one
than in another society that isn't structured that way.

~~~
ams6110
I can't recall my mobile phone ever entering into the process of obtaining
employment. I guess if it were my only means of internet access that might not
be the case.

~~~
ghaff
No. Because it's assumed. Try being that weird person who can't receive an
email or a $COMMUNICATION unless you're with your laptop on WiFi. You're
generally assumed to have the normal communications channels at a job.

~~~
pjmlp
A cheap feature phone will do.

------
beloch
In ancient Rome, the gap between the rich and the poor was even more obscene
that it is now. Despite having such a low GDP, Rome's wealthiest private
citizens were as rich, or richer, than the richest of today. For example,
Marcus Licinius Crassus' net worth was estimated to be up to double that of
Bill Gates.

Was Crassus an ancient Bill Gates though? Not so much. Rome's wealthiest
mostly obtained their fortunes from conquest. Crassus, on the other hand, made
his fortune by taking advantage of his peers. For example, during Sulla's
dictatorship, Crassus would buy the estates of other citizens after they fell
victim to Sulla's proscriptions for pennies on the dollar. He even snuck the
names of wealthy individuals onto the proscription lists just so he could
plunder their estates! Crassus also, famously, ran a fire brigade that would
show up to fires and then refuse to put them out until the owner of the
burning property sold out to Crassus for cheap.

For a society of mafia warrior lawyers, the Romans sure let each other get
away with murder.

~~~
briga
Can we really compare wealth between people who lived 2000 years apart though?
The amount of material goods a relatively poor middle class American can
afford is vastly greater than what the richest Romans could buy 2000 years
ago. How do you compare net worth?

~~~
barrkel
Some things haven't changed: land, control over people.

Another way to measure wealth in a comparable way is the proportion of the
economic production someone is able to control.

~~~
andreime
Land hasn't changed, but the right to own it certainly did. In the late roman
republic state owned some land but most of it was owned by large estates of
slave owners. And working the land or being in the military was mostly the
only way to make a living.

So land was a much more important commodity, therefore I don't think you can't
compare it reasonably with today.

------
ramblenode
I'm not an economist or a historian but I wonder if there is an aspect to
Roman wealth here that isn't captured well by GDP. As an example, Roman roads
are famous for their durability, whereas modern highways (which experience
very different traffic) need to be repaved on the order of years or decades.
For the same distance of road, it would seem a great deal more economic
activity in the form of labor, construction, and materials is needed to
sustain a modern roadway. If key Roman infrastructure investments simply had a
longer lifetime than modern infrastructure (because of design, requirements,
etc.), wouldn't that imply the per capita wealth of the empire could be high
without a particularly high GDP? Curious if there is any literature about
this.

~~~
hjnilsson
A very important aspect to consider here is that a roman road did not have 100
000+ multi-ton vehicles traveling on them per day. The reason roman roads
lasted long is that the load on a road with only manual labor traffic is a
thousand times less than that of a modern highway.

Old roads in Europe that are subject to truck and car traffic crumble very
quickly unless meticulously maintained.

~~~
ramblenode
Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough in the post, but yes I realize this. The
point I was trying to make is that whatever the reason (including the purpose
of the infrastructure, its usage patterns, its requirements), if a project
could satisfy its purpose with fewer resources/less GDP needing to be
reinvested over time, then this represents a higher relative return on their
investment. GDP, having the dimension of time, wouldn't necessarily reflect
their overall wealth, including the uncounted utility from historical
investments.

~~~
bryondowd
The upfront investment of a Roman road might still be comparable to the
lifetime investment of a modern one when you factor the human resource. How
many man hours are spent on a mile of road, including building the tools
(cement truck, bulldozer, etc) now versus the mass manual labor required then.

------
indubitable
I do not understand why people consider GDP a meaningful indicator of wealth.
The United States is a great example of a very real issue with it. Our
GDP/capita has been skyrocketing. Since just 2000 it has increased by about
17%. However, since 2000 the real median income has increased by less than 1%.

It seems like our country, and many others, are optimizing for GDP growth. I
assume at some point in the past, it presumably did correlate to wealth, so
this made sense. But I think our attempt (and success) at maximizing GDP has
shown that such a correlation was indeed just a correlation, and not a causal
relationship. Nonetheless, we continue to focus on GDP, and this is simply
bemusing.

And now to compare GDP optimized modern nations, to an out of left field
ballpark estimate for an ancient empire? I think that's clearly not a very
reasonable thing to do.

~~~
fsloth
"I do not understand why people consider GDP a meaningful indicator of wealth"

So what would you measure instead? At least empirically GDP gives a good
ballpark estimate of the general level of development in a country. Not that
itself alone makes sense, but in a global world it's a pretty good indicator
at where a country is economically.

GDP of a pre-modern empire is far more debatable, of course. But, the life of
a roman peasant was not that much different from that of a rural worker in,
say, india. Except, no cell phones, not even the slightest chance for
vaccination, the cultivated species were probably less productive, etc.

~~~
indubitable
I would focus on something much easier - what was life, approximately, like
for somebody in the exact 50th percentile of socioeconomic status. It even
makes more sense today. How has life changed for somebody in the 50th
percentile in 2000 versus today? How has it changed for somebody in the 50th
percentile in 1970 vs today?

This focus on the lifestyle approximation also makes much more sense than even
factors like inflation. For instance inflation today is ostensibly very low,
with the Fed becoming increasingly aggressive with monetary policy to try to
sustain it (deflation is not fun). Nonetheless, that doesn't really mesh well
with the 50% who have seen many of the necessities of life (housing,
education, healthcare, etc) inflate at rates vastly greater than the reported
inflation rate.

Quantification makes things seem much more scientific, but the key word there
is _seem_. Without a strong 1:1 mapping of a quantification to what it
implicitly represents, it becomes less than useless -- it becomes actively
misleading. So for instance I think based on what I said above you might
suggest I'm just referring to median personal income. Of course in nations
where e.g. women do not work, median personal income would be incredibly
misleading. So perhaps I am talking about median household income. Yet in
countries where large numbers of poor individuals reside within a single
household, again the value becomes meaningless.

I do not think there is any singular consistent and clear way to compare
wealth over time and circumstance, other than to compare an average
approximation of a lifestyle. I think this thread is a good example of this.
Many have mentioned that by many metrics today, the average person today is
wealthier than a medieval king. Yet how many people would rather be an average
individual today than a king of a medieval era? If people like the things that
these metrics represent, the answer to that question should cohere with their
measured increase today. In other words most people should prefer to be an
average person today. I strongly suspect that is not the case.

~~~
fsloth
"Yet how many people would rather be an average individual today than a king
of a medieval era?"

I presume you approach this from the vanity angle? Given the type of person
who hungers after such vain glory I presume the persons who would like to be a
medieval king, and who would choose to remain in such a role after trying it
out is very small. I know, some prefer a challenge of violence and filth for
it's own sake. The best thing one can say is that you can be drunk the entire
time and no one will complain.

~~~
indubitable
What is wealth?

In my opinion at the most fundamental level it is just a representation of
access to raw materials and especially to labor. Everything else is ultimately
just a derivative of those. Being a king would provide a practically endless
supply of both. That wealth enables you to have the resources to try to make
the world a better place, and certainly to be able to enjoy all the world has
to offer.

Of course we have become vastly wealthier in some ways. Education in
particular is something that has always been a product of wealth, and to this
very day still is. Nonetheless, any individual with an internet connection now
has access to what is, at least ostensibly, an MIT caliber education - for
free. The lack of education is no doubt a part of the reason for why the
peasants stayed peasants.

But nonetheless, royalty of past times would of course have had access to the
absolute best education available of the time. It's phenomenally interesting
reading things like 'The King's Mirror' [1]. Various translations are
available at the bottom. It was written in the 13th century intended as a
childhood educational tool for a king. It's surreal considering that it was
written about 800 years ago.

Ultimately I think things like having a fluffier bed (to reference an anecdote
from this thread) or access to electronic gadgetry is hardly a meaningful
measurement of wealth. As you mention, if somebody wants to just live their
life in pure hedonism now a days there are many ways to do so - much as in the
past people could have just drunk themselves to death in the past (or
present). But hedonism becomes rapidly unfulfilling. And it leaves us wanting
to create, to produce. And wealth is what enables one to fulfill this most
fundamental and intrinsic desire that's what brought us from primate to man.
And the middle today are vastly far away from the middle of times past, yet
simultaneously still vastly far from the elite of times past.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1)

------
PeterStuer
Food for thought: Put 20 people in a circle, each growing, cooking and eating
their own meal. GDP=0 Put those same 20 people in the same circle, each
growing, cooking but instead of eating their own 'buying' the meal from the
person to the left for a fixed price. GDP>0 GDP isn't what it's made out to
be.

~~~
lmm
That's a known issue with a relatively small impact on GDP, and there are ways
to fix it (imputed labour costs). All models are wrong, but some are useful;
GDP is pretty good as far as it goes.

------
epicureanideal
The people at the time were able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and so
on. I have a hard time thinking of this as a less than $1000 equivalent
existence, but maybe it is...

This also reminds me that GDP isn't a measure of overall wellbeing, and the
article doesn't claim it is. I'd be interested to see a map of relative
wellbeing. I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I don't think you have an appreciation for how difficult it was to clothe
yourself in those times. A piece of clothing was double-digit percentages of
your annual income.

~~~
Spooky23
Remember that income didn’t mean what it did now.

My neighbor had a 1600s era farm in upstate NY. The original taxes were
denominated in pigs, chickens and wheat. Cash was rare for normal people until
recently.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
This depends greatly on when and where. The Roman economy was extensively
monetized -- normal people did typically get most of their income as cash.

~~~
Spooky23
Not everyone. A large minority of the population were slaves.

------
balance_factor
Different things can be shown by different measurements. Income disparity in
Brazil is high, so you have a few people like Jorge Paulo Lemann worth tens of
billions of dollars, and then a lot of poor people. So per capita GDP there is
more an indication of how he is doing than everyone else (GDP divided by
population).

One metric we can use is hours worked per week. Obviously, the less hours of
required work needed, the better for the average worker. Of course
measurements like this are not the focus of many blog posts. And you yourself
are probably deficient in this respect to many hunter-gatherer bands, who do
less than 40 hours of work per week. They spend the rest of their time in
leisure activities. Marshall Sahlins "Stone Age Economics" goes into this. You
yourself are probably required to work more hours per week than native people
in Polynesia and other areas.

~~~
Retric
Brazil has 207.7 million people. One guy making even 5 billion $ per year is
only 25$ per person worth of GDP.

~~~
pyromine
Either way, mean (as in per capita GDP) is probably not the best measure of
central tendency for showing how the typical person lives.

~~~
Retric
GDP is less about what the average person has than it is the capabilities of a
given society. Liechtenstein may have a very high standard of living, but it
can't exactly fund a space program with a ~6 billion dollar GDP.

Also, median also has issues dealing with things like the US's vast
undocumented workforce. So, you really want to slice things up by income
percentile, family type, PPP and non etc.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Median is a mathematical concept that doesn't know or care about a person's
immigration status.

The dataset plugged in and the mathematical operation performed on it are two
distinct concepts and shouldn't be confused. It's the same reason the IRS lets
undocumented citizens and documented citizens performing unsavory work
(including drug dealing and prostitution) to file taxes :)

~~~
Retric
My point is if 50.01% of the population makes 50+k then that's where the
median is. You completely miss out on if the bottom 10% making 10k or 30k
which has huge social implications.

For an extreme version southern slaves made ~0 income but because they made up
less than 50% of the population they disappeared from that statistic.

~~~
ComputerGuru
The dollar amount of the earnings that are under 50% of the population
disappears in the statistic, but they are not unrepresented.

Their presence in the tally means that the median skews their way. For each
undocumented person earning under minimum wage, the median shifts one person
over to the left.

I agree that there should be a better way of displaying that info (at least
quartiles) but the median is a surprisingly effective measure.

------
pipio21
It is just not that: you need to display Mesopotamia and China and the Indus
valley. Those were the fertile and rich places in the world along with Egypt.

Those places are now devastated by war, revolutions or overpopulation, or just
were invaded by other empires.

It is a reminder of the powerful forces of change.

------
jxramos
When you visit the Tower of London and enter the bedroom chambers of the King
and check out the modest bed and other things the tour guide pokes some fun at
how most modern people today live better than kings of the past.

~~~
HarryHirsch
On the other hand, consider the Arnolfini marriage portrait (that's this one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Eyck_-
_Arnolfini_Port...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Eyck_-
_Arnolfini_Portrait.jpg)), and you recognize that clothes like the couple are
wearing in the painting are affordable only to 1-percenters. Then and now.

~~~
zeveb
> you recognize that clothes like the couple are wearing in the painting are
> affordable only to 1-percenters. Then and now.

I'm pretty sure that someone in the SCA has made one of those outfits. In
fact:
[https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1b/9a/4b/1b9a4b90019bef529ca2e4cd0...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1b/9a/4b/1b9a4b90019bef529ca2e4cd0fca46ea.jpg)

~~~
HarryHirsch
Google makes it possible: [http://www.naergilien.info/my-costumes/medieval-
renaissance/...](http://www.naergilien.info/my-costumes/medieval-
renaissance/the-arnolfini-dress/)

 _About two weeks of sewing (14 days) with approximately 7-10 hours per day
(every day!); resulting in approximately 100 hours of work before the dress
was finished._

~~~
dom0
i.e. the labor costs alone are around 1500-3000 €.

------
littlestymaar
Breaking news : pre-industrial civilisation had less material wealth than
ours.

~~~
emmelaich
You could be less snarky but yeah.

Shorter history: For a long time people had short brutal lives. Then the
industrial revolution happened.

------
soVeryTired
GDP might be useful for comparing what happened this year to what happened
last year, but It's hard to see it making sense for comparison between times
or places that are significantly different.

For one example of how the comparison breaks down, consider the cost of adding
up a page full of numbers in 1950 vs. today. In 1950, you'd need to hire an
accounting clerk. Nowadays it's essentially free. In 1950, the clerk would
have added the value of his labour to GDP, Today, the computer doing the same
job contributes little or nothing.

The same problem crops up everywhere. If I develop a $1000/month treatement
for hepatitis, I might add a vast amount to GDP. If I develop a $5 one-off
cure, not so much.

GDP can't 'see' goods and services that are so cheap to produce that they're
practically free.

~~~
readittwice
Did you read the full article? They have an paragraph on that under the
section Methodology. IMHO this addresses your concern. What's your problem
with that reasoning?

~~~
soVeryTired
The only thing I can find is this:

>The numbers for the map come from historian Angus Maddison who uses
Sestertius records to find wheat equivalent figure for national disposable
income and makes comparisons based off that.

But all that says is that some guy used historical records for Roman income
figures. It doesn't tell you anything about how to relate income in Roman
times to income today.

------
baybal2
Interesting, their methodology is kinda khmm thought.

When historians were going over the archives of the medieval Khivan Khanate,
they found out from tax records that ~12% of all households in Khiva and
Bukhara had over 10kgs of gold.

Yet, if you were to apply the same methodology there, you will get same
contradicting results

~~~
EthanHeilman
>Yet, if you were to apply the same methodology there, you will get same
contradicting results

Can you explain this point further? Are you saying that Khanate tax records
are inaccurate or that the Khivan Khanate were more wealthy than people today?

~~~
baybal2
Yes, people were saying for long that if Khiva was still a country today, it
would be joining ranks of places like Andorra, or Luxembourg. Yet, people had
to spend a big part of their income on simply food, water, clothing, and fuel

------
jitix
I think the Roman gdp from that period should be compared with the gdps of
other countries of that time. Sure the average ancient Roman might have been
poorer than the average modern Congolese but I think humans in general were
poor during that time.

------
Spooky23
The better question is how did GDP for a Roman citizen compare to a
contemporary barbarian or slave?

The productivity difference between a modern worker is multiple orders of
magnitude more than an ancient one. GDP comparisons are of questionable value.

------
ghaff
The author of Why the West Rules--For Now has published a separate PDF that
goes into the social development index that he developed for the book. [1]
Essentially, development level went way down after the Roman Empire but the
industrial revolution made all the development before pale by comparison. This
is just another attempt to frame a very complex topic but it does take a lot
of factors into account.

[1] [http://ianmorris.org/docs/social-
development.pdf](http://ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf)

------
Isamu
> The numbers for the map come from historian Angus Maddison who uses
> Sestertius records to find wheat equivalent figure for national disposable
> income and makes comparisons based off that.

Links to several of Angus Maddison books, I assume it is this: Contours of the
World Economy 1-2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History

------
peter303
“Behind every modern man are 200 energy slaves”, a calculation attributed to
Buckminster Fuller and others. You calculate the per capita energy usage
divided by a humans daily caloric intake (on human labor eqivalent) to
estimate an energy slave count. 3/4ths of the energy comes from fossil fuels
which has been storing solar energy for hundreds of thousands of years.
Technologynthat harnesses energy creates much of modern GDP.

I doubt we will ever sink back to the lows where as much as 2/3rds the
population is slave labor to a ruling class (Rome, Vikings, US South). When
fossil fuels become too expensive, we’ll have figured out how to have gotten
more efficiency out ofbthe remaing 50 renewable energy slaves.

------
gadders
"If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during
which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would,
without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the
accession of Commodus"

I believe Edward Gibbon said that "modern" life only overtook that period
during the early 19th century.

------
chewz
With the respect for authors this might be at best rough estimation with large
error margin. We know little about economic relations, purchasing power,
prices etc. in Roman Empire.

Also I wonder how these numbers would look like if slave population is
excluded.

------
CalChris
Is that a GDP problem or did they have an income distribution problem? I'm
going to hazard a guess that since slavery was the backbone of the Roman
Empire, they had an income distribution problem.

~~~
rsynnott
Even beyond that, they had a huge income distribution problem, with most of
the land (and therefore most of the income; it was primarily an agrarian
economy) belonging to very few people. Of course, this wasn't unique to the
Roman Empire; it was an almost universal state of affairs until at least the
industrial revolution.

------
tryingagainbro
_Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer than any 2015
country_

Take away iPhones, cable bills, insurance, college, cars....and you may do
just fine (eat 1-2 times a day :)) with their Capita GDP.

~~~
rpedela
At that GDP, also take away vaccines, antibiotics, refrigeration,
sanitation...and you are living like them with high mortality. Almost every
person living in a modern country is living better than all the kings, nobles,
emperors, etc in all of history. There are still plenty of poor people who we
should help, but "poor" is relative historically.

~~~
jszymborski
Just because vaccines, antibiotics, and refrigeration exist, it doesn't mean
there is universal access to them.

I think the references to "almost every person" and "modern country" are
sweeping away a lot more people than you let on.

~~~
rpedela
Here are some stats on vaccines in the US [1]. You can do your own research on
the rest, but I think you'll find the numbers to be extremely high. Even
homeless people, who I am not counting, in the US have some access to those
things. My wife, a clinical pharmacist, is always giving antibiotics to the
homeless who come to the ER for free. I know the US the best, but I would be
surprised if other modern countries weren't similar in terms of basic
healthcare, sanitation, etc. We can of course argue what "modern country"
means.

1\.
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/immunize.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/immunize.htm)

------
campuscodi
Of course they were. They worse sandals and rode on horses. All countries in
the past, regardless of size, are poorer even in comparison to the poorest
countries today

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Looking at that map, helps to understand why the Eastern Roman Empire was in
much better shape than the Western Roman Empire.

------
dghughes
Off-topic but modern Spain being in the news I found it interesting how modern
Spain is shown on the map in 14 AD. There is a sharp divide between Spain and
what is now France I imagined Catalonia and Occitania would have been one
province.

~~~
boomboomsubban
The Pyrenees mountains have been a natural border splitting the two regions
basically forever. Also, Occitania is doing slightly better than most of
Spain, likely due to the proximity and earlier acquisition.

As for the rest of France, Caesar conquered Gaul sixty years earlier,
slaughtering up to a million Gallic people. That's the kind of thing that can
set your economy way back.

~~~
dghughes
Ah yes the Pyrenees I forgot about them.

In the news I keep hearing about how closely related Occitan and Catalan
languages are I figured there was more of a connection geographically.

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boomboomsubban
In 14 AD, while Rome was still recovering from nearly a century of civil war.
Huge chunks of that land had been bloodily acquired in the past sixty years,
and an unrecorded numbers of Romans died during the fall of the Republic.

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fallingfrog
GDP only measures taxable activity (goods bought and sold), which was a far
smaller part of a person's day to day activity back then. Also, these are 1990
dollars, which are worth about twice as much as 2017 dollars.

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anesmike
Energy is the master resource and rome did not have oil; its that simple.

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criley2
Crude oil was irrelevant 2000 years ago. The primary forms of energy were
wood, dung, and charcoal if I'm not mistaken.

There wasn't really energy infrastructure like there is today, outside of
firewood/charcoal supply, which the Romans had in great supply.

But the average roman did not require much energy outside of cooking, as the
temperate Mediterranean weather did not require heating energy.

The modern concept of energy running the world is really an Industrial/post-
Industrial concept. Coal, then oil energy driving mass industry is the driver
of modern power. Energy -> +Industry -> +Economic activity -> +Money -> +Power

~~~
chewz
You are mistaken. Romans had been on industrial scale mining copper, gold and
silver in Spain and other places. That required unbelievable amounts of energy
- mostly charcoal.

Romand knew waterwheel as a source of energy but rarely used - compared to
medieval Europe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Output](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Output)

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alexasmyths
You can't do PPP across cultures that have no bearing one another, so it's
utterly ridiculous to do a 'GDP' measure.

How much did the Romans value 'clean air'? Because they don't breathe fumes,
whereas we do.

'Comparative Value' makes it impossible.

We can only say: "this is what the average Romand had and did - and this is
what the average American/European/Asian has" etc..

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snrplfth
Haha. They breathed tons of fumes, most of their households' cooking and
heating was fueled with either wood, charcoal or dung, in open or not-well-
sealed hearths. (Woodsmoke is still the world's deadliest source of
pollution.) Roman cities especially were ferociously polluted.

~~~
alexasmyths
If there is a stove-pipe then they are not breathing any fumes.

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snrplfth
A lot of stovepipes leak fumes, an in any case most people in the Roman empire
had no such thing as a stovepipe. It's absolutely a myth that most premodern
people had "clean air". No, it was generally filled with smoke, dung dust,
mold spores, etc.

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WillReplyfFood
Romans and Greeks where also Post-Wood- meaning, they had deforrested most of
the mediterainian for ship wood.

Macchia

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anigbrowl
The map is interesting but the economic analysis is really poor. Trying to use
purchasing power parity to compare a feudal society with an industrial
capitalist one is misguided, given the vast differences in property rights,
the existence of slavery as a fundamental (and complex) economic institution,
and so on.

~~~
CharlesDodgson
I agree, to talk only about GDP is misguided and narrow, I think the power
dynamics of the time were far different and it's a case of apples and oranges.

