
When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment - diodorus
https://medium.com/@writingben/when-roman-barbarians-met-the-asian-enlightenment-2be064d7af9b#.9vqi7x2z6
======
woodruffw
I greatly enjoyed reading this, although the author takes (more than) a few
liberties when comparing the Roman and the various Asian empires:

> Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison

This is a slippery claim, especially when you consider how long the Roman
Empire lasted and how widely its relevance and regional dominance swayed over
its lifetime. During its peak, Rome spanned dozens of cultures on two separate
continents and liberally imported other peoples and norms into their own.
That's not to say that the contemporaneous Chinese empires didn't do the same,
only that the distinction between the two in this aspect is less stark than
the author would have us believe.

> Rome’s legions were fighting fiercely for control of Gaul (modern France and
> Germany), Britain, Egypt, and various parts of the Balkans; while a
> succession of (often unfairly maligned) emperors scrambled to hold Rome
> together through an endless series of famines, wars with the East, coups
> d’état, refugee crises, and revolts.

This is not strictly false, but it's again muddied by the extreme duration of
the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana lasted for two centuries, spanned three major
political dynasties, and is generally the period people think of when they
think of the Roman Empire (or Rome in general). By the time the Chinese
Empire(s) had begun trading silk with the Roman Empire, peace was already the
norm in the Roman world.

The author is correct in his characterization of Rome as less artistically and
creatively inclined than it perhaps ought to have been, considering its size
and wealth during its peak. That being said, Rome's accomplishments in
architecture and culture are visible (and audible) _everywhere_ in the Western
world. I don't think that any one Eastern power of the same period can claim
such cultural permanence to any comparable degree.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
I flagged the article. The author exploited clickbait titles and western guilt
to craft his own narrative. People are going to read this poor cluster of pop
history and get a very wrong idea of the Roman Empire. The second part of the
article was quite fascinating but how can I possibly trust the author after
statements such as _Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison_.

The premise of the article is flawed too, we don't know enough about the
'chinese' skeletons yet:
[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/09/23/chinese-
skeletons-in-roman-britain-not-so-
fast/&refURL=https://www.google.it/&referrer=https://www.google.it/)

" _The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed
Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity,
technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you
get the idea._ "

Read this article with a grain of salt.

~~~
woodruffw
I don't think that was necessary.

There's a few points where he exaggerates or otherwise overstates comparative
claims about Rome, but his research into the antiquity cultures of Asia
Minor/the Middle East is both accurate and refreshing considering how little
recognition they get outside of anthropology and (specialized) classics. The
comparison of contemporary Chinese and Roman power is also a valuable one -
it's not often brought up in either one's respective historical studies.

It's worth keeping in mind that this is a Medium post by a blogger. It's not
peer reviewed, and it should be read with the author's opinions and goals in
mind.

~~~
soufron
Well, his "research" amounts to some quick reading of wikipedia articles...
and that's it.

------
bhritchie
> Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect:
> heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture,
> medicine, philosophy, poetry…

> it’s always made me sad to think of the Romans being largely cut off from
> the main action on the world stage.

This is incorrect because the Romans knew about Greece - in fact they ran the
place.

The Romans _were_ barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece.
They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or
philosophy, for example. And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had
far more interesting philosophy (sadly little known because not very
accessible) than Rome, so sure, "Asia" had better philosophy than Rome (really
India specifically). But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily
inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend _The Shape of Ancient Thought_
for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't
say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Rome wasn't cut
off from the best of philosophy - they were just too practical to care much
about it - and they knew it and said as much.

Philosophy I know something about - I dropped out of the PhD program at
Harvard after studying quite a bit of it. But some of the other parts seem
dubious or of questionable importance. Architecture? The Romans look pretty
good to me there, and I mean they even used concrete. Medicine? Let's be
serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Population? So
what?

~~~
vacri
> _The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece.
> They didn 't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or
> philosophy, for example._

The Greeks never had a lasting widespread empire, and warred amongst
themselves a lot in their golden period. Yes, Alexander conquered all the way
to the Indus, but as soon as he died, his empire splintered. The Romans, on
the other hand, built an empire that lasted for centuries, and their culture
as we see it is not defined by a mere handful of names.

Maybe the Romans didn't exceed the Greeks at philosophy, but they certainly
and uncontestably exceeded them at statecraft, which is why it's odd to hear
them called 'barbarians' in comparison.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The Greeks never had a lasting widespread empire

I am Greek so you can take the following with a big fat pinch of salt but,
yes, yes we did have a "lasting widespread empire". We have it still: it's
called the Western Civilisation. The Greeks conquered, not with swords and
shields, but with philosophy, art and science.

The Romans carried Greek culture along with them wherever they conquered. In
the East, Greek philosophy reached India [1]. Arab scholars transcribed Greek
philosphers' works and carried them over to the Middle Ages where they were
picked up by Christian monks, themselves followers of a religion built on holy
scriptures written in Greek (the Evangels, or, Gospels [2]). Most of early
Western science either confirmed or refuted the ideas of the Greek philosphers
[3]. Greek mathematics still form the basis of mathematical knowledge today
[4]. And who knows what else was lost to war, or natural disasters [5].

I am very well aware of the fact that I would have been equally proud of my
history were I to be British, or a descendant of the Mongols, or even a modern
citizen of the USA. However, I'm not- I'm Greek and I'm proud to be a distant
relative of a people that has gone down in history not for having the vastest
empire, or the most fierce warriors, or the most brutal war machine, but for
having kickstarted civilisation.

Even today, you go to the capitals of the world and you see "Grecko-Roman"
architecture built when people want to show the world that they dont' just
have power, but brains also.

You can bet yer keister we damn well conquered an empire. We conquered
_several_ of the things.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavanajataka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavanajataka)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almagest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almagest)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mathematics)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism)

~~~
ianamartin
Thank you for saying this. I'm not Greek. I'm a typical U.S. mutt with
somewhat unknown origins.

I'd like to add that the distinction we use now to indicate differences
between Eastern and Western culture/art/and music are largely artifacts of how
things evolved after a key point in time.

I know the most about Music, so I'll speak to that. What we speak of now as
"Western Music" is largely tonal or functional harmony, and it has its origins
in ancient Greece around the time of Pythagoras. But it was a mixture of the
Eastern chant tradition with the applied Mathematical and logical rigor of
Hellenistic Greeks that provided the foundation for what would eventually
evolve to what we now know it as.

For about 1000 years, the early Christians mostly followed in the tradition of
Eastern chant traditions with some additional codification and structure in
what we now call Gregorian Chant. A guy named Boethius described texts by
Pythagoras, Aristoxenus, and Plato, and was reprinted in Renaissance Italy and
got some attention there.

And--just as that several generations tried to do by superimposing Greek
Philosophy onto the Church doctrine of the time--misinterpreted/mistranslated
those pieces of information onto what was at the time a developing, but still
fairly primitive version of polyphony.

What happened from there happened pretty quickly and is well known.
[1]Zarlino, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann,
Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. Pop music took over the mantle of tonal music
right about the time that "classical" composers were getting funky and atonal
in the mid-20th century, and has largely stuck with it.

Everything you hear on the radio that is popular is directly traceable to Bach
(and unfortunately much less interesting). The work of Bach himself was the
almost-inevitable evolution of what happened when Greek thought met Eastern
chant.

[1] Before the Boethius reprint in Italy in the late 15th century, the chant
style that originated in the Church was, in fact, evolving to certain types of
polyphony . . . some of it quite beautiful, and instrumental music was also
becoming its own separate thing rather than just an accompaniment to a singer.
There was a weird time when a lot of mathematics were applied to the
generation of music in the 14th century, and you can find examples of music
from this period that are so odd, you could mistake them for mid-20th century
art music. But this is a) mostly happening in France and the Netherlands, and
b) well before Greek philosophical thought really took fire and spread across
a more modern Europe.

Also, this is really broad, and I'm leaving a lot out. Bottom line is that we
call it Western Music Theory or Wester Music because the mixture of central
Asian and Greek traditions evolved in the way that it did and continues to be
separate from purely Eastern musical traditions where Greek philosophy did
_not_ take a strong hold.

It's a label of convenience to describe the result of a long process; it's not
intended to reflect some kind of a pure origin.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The West - largely because of Greek influence - invented two ideas that were
never invented elsewhere: abstraction, and universality.

Abstraction meant that instead of learning ad hoc practical recipes for art,
science, culture, etc, the West has always had an interest in developing
symbolic systems of representation that allow formal modelling, manipulation,
and prediction.

Universality meant that truth was external to society, and independent of
social status. It's the theoretical basis of much Western politics ("All
people are equal") but it's also the foundation of much science, which
combines abstraction with universality to find reliable invariants.

Asian cultures were very inventive in specifics - sometimes more so than
Western culture. But they never aimed for abstraction and universality in the
same way. The tendency was more to group knowledge into hierarchies of virtue,
and to privilege subjective experiences over objective invariants.

In your example, Western music is what you get when you get both abstraction
and universality applied to sound. There's abstraction in that the music is
written before it's played, which makes it possible to create complex abstract
structures on paper that can be built slowly and expertly for maximum effect.

And there's universality - less successfully, perhaps - in the sense that
there's a belief in a primary set of invariant relationships between the
elements of sound.

Eastern musics have some different attempts at universality, but so far as I
know there was never an interest in abstraction in the same way. E.g. Indian
classical music has systems, but they're more like rules for improvisation,
not rules for building structures out of notes without actually playing any
sounds at all.

The critical thing about abstraction is that it can be a huge amplifier of
creativity, because you can prototype ideas, systems and experiences
symbolically without having to build/generate/perform them in the real world
first.

And the interesting thing is that we're only just getting started with it.
Science has mostly been a success, but there's a lot mileage in other areas.
Computers are one step along the way, but there's a lot more about abstraction
still to be discovered and enjoyed.

~~~
vacri
> _It 's the theoretical basis of much Western politics ("All people are
> equal")_

From the 18th century "enlightenment" period, you mean? Before the 18th
century, this idea was pretty much absent from actual western politics. The
18th century is parted from the ancient Greek golden period by more than two
thousand years.

Yes, ancient Greek philosophy was influential, but as fsloth says above, you
can't just ignore the in-between time and its thinkers. Don't forget either
that many of the advances in the Enlightenment came from _breaking_ with the
teachings of classical Greece.

------
platz
Author admits he wrote a spin-piece

"So why, then, would I write such an anti-Roman article? Because I’m trying to
give people who’ve received a eurocentric education a different set of goggles
to try on: the lenses of Roma’s Asian contemporaries, some of whom genuinely
did believe the Romans were “primitive” and “unclean.” This is a perspective
we almost never hear about in the West, and I think it’s an interesting one to
ponder. I do my best to keep my facts straight — but all the historical
stories I write are colored heavily by my own interpretations and blind spots.
My favorite history writers are Will Durant and Pierre Briant. I realize that
this kind of “interpretive” historical writing is now considered obsolete —
maybe even dangerously slanted and over-simplistic — but it’s the stuff I
enjoy reading, so it’s what I write."

~~~
jomamaxx
In other words, he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group,
making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world because of
their ethnicity.

"Dear White People, Since You Are Racist, So Here's How You Ought To Think
About This Subject" kind of thing.

~~~
throwaway729
_> he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group_

I think you should re-read the paragraph you're re-stating -- you don't seem
to have understood the author's meaning, because you're replying to a straw
man.

In fact, IMO, almost _all_ of the comments here seem to have missed the actual
point of the article, which I don't think was _at all_ intended to be taken on
face value...

Giving people "a different set of goggles to try on" is about as far as you
can get from "inflict[ing] an ideology". The entire purpose of the former is
to _explicitly_ recognize the contingency of a particular (or even _any_
particular) ideology.

 _> making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world_

I don't think the assumption that most formal education in the west is pretty
Eurocentric is anything less than accurate. E.g. look at the amount of time
spent on various cultures in history courses and look at how they are
discussed (in their own terms vs. comparatively.)

There isn't necessarily anything _wrong_ with that, either, because it's
easier to learn about things that are familiar to you, and easier to learn
about new things when they are compared to things you're already familiar
with. However, it does motivate the need for popular writing that points out
the ways in which such an education can lead you astray.

In that respect, all of the strongly negative reactions to this article were
_exactly the point_ the author was making. The flaws in Asia-centric thinking
are obvious to us, and the step that the author is hoping an educated reader
will be able to make on their own (perhaps with the help of a footnote) is to
realize that these same flaws are _also_ manifest in Euro-centric thinking.
(Or, you know, just get pissed off and miss the point.)

~~~
jomamaxx
He made an overt assumption that Westerners do not have a grasp of Rome vis-a-
vis Asian cultures, and admittedly and deliberately applied 'spin' \- which is
wrong.

I have a lot of interest in learning about historical issues that are not
necessarily commonplace 'in the West' but zero interest in learning it from
armchair hacks who 'spin' ideas and misrepresent facts.

"all of the strongly negative reactions to this article were exactly the point
the author was making." \- no - this is false. The 'strong reactions' were
against his misrepresentations and 'spin' \- underlying his bigoted assumption
about Westerners perspectives and biases - not about the content itself.
Medium readers in particular would be fond of reading up a bit on Asian
antiquity.

~~~
throwaway729
_> I have a lot of interest in learning about historical issues that are not
necessarily commonplace 'in the West' but zero interest in learning it from
armchair hacks who 'spin' ideas and misrepresent facts._

Part of reading is understand the author's intent.

The purpose of this piece was _not_ to document historical fact, and the
author explained as much in simple and up-front language. So if you're trying
to "learn about historical issues" from this, aside from issues of
historiography, that's your failure as a reader.

------
vacri
> _During the Roman period, the Asian continent was by far the wealthiest,
> most advanced, most culturally diverse place on earth._

'The Asian continent' is not a nation, and as a bonus, it also includes Rome.
How much does it include Rome? Well, the last thousand-odd years of Rome's run
were basically in Asia (who we call the Byzantines, they called themselves
Romans).

It's also weird to proclaim 'cultural diversity' as a symbol of power in that
period, when it was those who could spread their core culture that were the
most powerful. Weirdly, the article later expounds on the cultural homogeneity
of the Chinese as their strength. So Rome is weak because of lack of cultural
diversity, and China is strong because of lack of cultural diversity?

Ultimately the article doesn't even discuss what it suggests in the title - it
expounds upon those wonderous exotic peoples, and then sadly shakes its head
on how two travelers must have felt dying in the 'backwater' of the Roman
empire (of course, we'll neatly ignore that they were also found in a _Roman
backwater_ to begin with - Britannia wasn't exactly paved with marble). No
real discussion on the meeting of the cultures.

China's historical culture and power is often overlooked by us westerners,
sure, but the article is too much "gosh, those exotics!" for me.

------
Chathamization
As others have pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. To give just
one example, the picture he posts of a supposed "temple of the Qin dynasty,
circa 200 BCE" appears to actually be the Nanqiao (south bridge) in Chengdu,
which seems to have been built in 1878 AD. I can give a list of some of the
other errors I noticed if anyone likes (and there are probably many I missed);
either way, I wouldn't recommend anyone take any of this as fact.

Beyond the factual errors, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims. I don't
know how one would come up with an objective way to measure philosophy and
poetry. How much philosophy and poetry from (for example) the Kushan Empire
has survived? What's the background for the claim that its philosophy and
poetry dwarfed the Roman Empire's?

The idea that we should pay more attention to many of the other polities in
history is a valid one. But I don't think an article filled with errors and
baseless claims is terribly useful.

~~~
cconroy
I just read a few paragraphs and gave up when it said Rome was left out of the
civilized world (referring to the middle east blocking china).

I guess he forgot the greeks and hellenization. Oh but the greeks were
barbarians too.

The tone also angered me.

~~~
1474295912
> The tone also angered me

I Read the article and I understand that it's flawed in some parts. However,
that's exactly how the non-western major world civilisations are called.
Barbarians, mysticals and unscientific etc are the words used to describe
them. I would urge you to look past the eurocenticism as I did and you'll
discover that there's truth in the facts.

If we leave out the mislabeling of images, the fact remains that the eastern
world was in fact more connected, advanced and globalised compared to Rome.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> However, that's exactly how the non-western major world civilisations are
called. Barbarians, mysticals and unscientific etc are the words used to
describe them.

"Barbarian" though is a Greek word, used by Greeks to describe anyone speaking
a language that wasn't the Greek language. I'm guessing the article either
ignores this or uses "barbarian" as a translation of a similar term used in
the Far Eastern world, and which I don't know. I'm pretty sure there must have
been one.

~~~
digi_owl
May have been the origin of the term, but these days it is basically "any
culture that have practices and norm we do not understand and deem inferior to
our own".

~~~
Veen
> we do not understand and deem inferior to our own

Of course, those two things don't have to go together. It's perfectly
reasonable to understand something and deem it inferior. And deeming it
inferior isn't necessarily an indication that something isn't understood.

------
danblick
I've been enjoying the "History of the Ancient World" lecture series on Amazon
streaming. (I also really enjoyed the "Decisive Battles" series by the same
professor Greg Aldrete.)

The article claims that China dwarfed Rome, but the course actually claims
that Rome and China under the Han dynasty were about equal in many ways
(geographic size and population). There are several lectures comparing the
two.

[http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-
ancien...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancient-
world-a-global-perspective.html)

------
diodorus
Disclaimer: yes, there is some annoying, borderline clickbait-y language in
this article, including in the title. And yes, it is badly overstating things
to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater
by comparison" to Asia. That said, lots of interesting information and imagery
here that seemed worth a share.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> a philosopher and statesman known as Kung Fuzi (“Master Kung,” known in the
> West as “Confucius”) codified the heavenly rules into a series of texts that
> would form the backbone of Chinese culture for the next two thousand years.
> Master Kung’s intricate philosophy, _known as kung fu_ , utterly permeated
> every area of Chinese existence, from statecraft to family life, from
> etiquette to martial arts.

(emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original)

This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to
suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning
skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern
Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware
of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is
the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was
(and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not
"kung fu".

~~~
jessaustin
It sounds so cool, it's almost worth the fake etymology. Who could deny that
Jackie Chan is a worthy successor to Confucius?

~~~
wojcech
I'm going to be that guy: me, their philosophies are almost completely
incompatible^^

------
arcanus
> The Palace of Versailles is, in its way, one of the last dim shadows of the
> Han court

Lots of arguments are a pretty big stretch in this article.

~~~
AvenueIngres
Yeah, this article is garbage. The only reason it got on the front page is
because of the clickbait title.

------
dredmorbius
As many have noted, this piece does plenty of axe-grinding, conclusion-
stretching, and fact-spinning, as well as simply getting a fair bit wrong.
_But for all of that_ it does convey a fundamental truth: there was a _hell_
of a lot of established civilisation going on _outside_ the general scope of
Western History -- principally the Mediterranian basin.

In particular, China was home to a huge, advanced, and highly active culture.
I'm only slowly becoming aware of this myself through recent reading. As I've
just commented, I only discovered in the past year the work of British
biochemist-turned-sinologist Joseph Needham. His _Science and Civilisation in
China_ , proposed as a brief 5-6 volume work in the early 1950s, _continues to
be developed to this day_. Just reading the titles of the 24 completed volumes
gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at
least two more volumes forthcoming.

[http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html](http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html)

Simon Winchester's _The Man who Loved China_ gives the background for this
story, and is highly recommended.

Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't:
there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the time of the Roman
empire, and it easily rivalled, and quite possibly surpassed, Rome.

------
gmarx
Many of the items the author claims China dwarfed Rome on seem pretty
subjective. Philosophy and poetry?

I didn't read very far past this. I am under the impression that Rome was
pretty technologically sophisticated, even beyond what we normally picture.
Does the author go on to compare tech sophistication with examples?

~~~
jcranmer
Nope. Well, there's a claim that the Asian empires had the most advanced
weaponry of their age. But no examples.

Such a claim is probably false, given that China historically lagged the
Mediterranean in terms of adopting technologies like swords, iron-age
weaponry, chariotry, Greek fire. The main exception to this rule (gunpowder)
isn't really an exception, since the development of weapons that made
effective use of gunpowder (namely, the arquebus) did not occur in China but
in Western Europe.

The author also conveniently ignores that many of the large European powers
tried to claim the right to be the successor to the Roman Empire--the Ottoman
Empire, the Byzantine Empire (which always called themselves the Roman
Empire), the Russian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. And the fact that
Latin and Greek was the mark of learned scholars, that classical works like
Aristotle and Euclid were the textbooks of learning, all the way through the
1800s is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Confucius' teachings were
considered the mark of proper learning in China. It can be argued that viewing
Chinese history through the lens of the Mandate of Heaven hurts understanding,
not helps, since it downplays the (sometimes significant) periods of disunity
in China.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's worth keeping in mind that China's needs for military capability differed
from the various Western empires.

Rome fought with Persia to the East, the Gauls and Vandals to the north, and
Carthage to the south, as well as the colonised peoples of its own empire,
pretty much constantly. As I understand history, China was buffered by land
(north, west, and south), and sea (west) from any significant challengers.
Most of its threats were internal, the notable exception being the Mongol
invasions, but that wasn't until the 1200s BCE.

On the other hand, what China _did_ have in absolute spades and wheelbarrows
full was technology (including, for the record, wheelbarrows). I've only
learnt of the major study of this myself in the past year, British biochemist
Joseph Needham's absolutely epic _Science and Civilisation in China_. Needham
conceived of the work whilst in China on behalf of the British government
during WWII, and proposed a 5-6 volume treatment in the 1950s. _Seven decades
later_ the work continues, with the total volume count approaching 30. Author
Simon Winchester tells the story of Needham in _The Man who Loved China_ (a
single volume, should you fear to ask -- not a foregone conclusion as several
digests of S&CIC run to multiple volumes themselves).

The breadth, scope, and _precociousness_ of China's explorations in science,
maths, and technology are staggering. The volume listing of the work itself
gives some sense of the scope and scale, this is given at Wikipedia:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China)

Scientific thought. Maths, astronomy, & geology. Physics. Mechanical
engineering. Civil and nautical engineering. Paper and printing. Spagyrical
discovery (alchemy and immortality). Military technology. Textiles. Ferrous
metallurgy. Ceramics. Mining. Botany. Agriculture. Agroindustry & Forestry.
Biology & botany. Fermentation & food science. Medicine. Language and logic.
Two volumes, topics unspecified, are given as "work in progress", I suspect
these would concern military and weaving technologies respectively.

[http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html](http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html)

~~~
jcranmer
My knowledge of ancient Chinese history is fuzzy, but the Jin dynasty, the
Song dynasty, and the Ming dynasty were all ended by the conquest of what the
Chinese considered barbarians, and I seem to recall that barbarian problems
(or at least the cost of barbarian pacification efforts) fueled the fall of
the Han and Tang dynasties as well.

It's worth first pointing out that the timeline of that series is slightly
misleading; for proper comparisons, you're not comparing the Han dynasty
against Rome but rather the various Chinese dynasties against Western
tradition from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Islamic and medieval
worlds up to perhaps the end of the Early Modern, which does reduce some of
the impressiveness of the achievements. It's also interesting to look at what
the Chinese don't invent--they invented gunpowder, but neither corned
gunpowder nor the arquebus; they never appear to have been much interested in
geodesy or cottoned on to the idea of the spherical Earth; they developed
printing, movable type, and paper but never developed the printing press nor
the literary industry of Western Europe.

~~~
dredmorbius
My Chinese history ain't so sharp either, but checking, the three dynastic
periods you're referencing start about 1115, or some 700 years after the fall
of the Western Roman Empire. The barbarian invaders in each case are the
Mongols, whom I'd mentioned (along with the timeframe) above. So this largely
proves my poiont.

Whilst yes, there are multiple Chinese dynasties being considered here,
there's pretty much a single cultural tradition, as opposed to the equivalent
period of Western history which spans Egypt, the Phoenecians (or Phillistines,
from which Palistine comes from), Minoans, Greeks, Macedonians, and Romans, as
well as the Persian, Syrian, and several other cultures from what's now
considered the Middle East.

The whole quesition of why China's progress stopped where, when, and how it
did is a fascinating one. It's actually what Joseph Needham was getting at,
and is termed "the Needham Question". It's strongly related to the parallel
question: why did the Industrial Revolution emerge in 19th century England,
and not elsewhere, or earlier, or later? I've been exploring that and could
venture some suggestions.

In aaddition to Needham, there are Karl Polanyi ( _The Great Transformation_
), Kenneth Boulding ( _The Meaning of the Twentieth Century_ ), Jared Diamond
( _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ ) and many of the titles in the series the
Princeton economic history of the world
([http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=hotseries&q=se%3A"Princeto...](http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=hotseries&q=se%3A"Princeton+economic+history+of+the+Western+world.")).

Vaclav Smil's _Energy in World History_ explores the question somewhat, though
I'd suggest mining the excellent bibliography for further reading (I've got a
scanned copy that's not handy for extracting refs at the moment).
[http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-
history/oclc/3...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-
history/oclc/30398523&referer=brief_results)

I can see a few influences, some of which are pretty well developed by others,
some perhaps not. Geography, politics, trade, uniformity, writing system,
philosophy and theology, population, and environment all quite probably play
significant roles.

------
Ericson2314
I would have enjoyed this more had it more nuance. Even if you don't know
squat about history, its important to get of this single-dimension "who was
greatest" \+ Western self-loathing (and ironic combo too).

========

From what I learned in school and remember off the top of my head:

\- Rome was an ugly place, but they kind of knew it hence upper classes went
Greek and the eastern empire became more prominent. Romans were great for
trade, but their empire could only be held together by growth (plunder) and
that's not sustainable

\- Greeks were more civilized, but clearly sucked at empire building
(Alexander is Macedon). Hellenization shows that even if he messed up Persia,
the culture was influential.

\- China couldn't really expand because it is so isolated geographically, so
it is harder to for it to influence other places. But this had an effect that
arguably they were less interested in conquest and influence (outside of
uniting accessible areas) \- Confucianism raggin' on merchants, artisans, and
whatever else might form a middle class \- Ming treasure fleet might have
reached Africa, but no fucks given.

\- Mesopotamia did do great things back in the day, but by 1000 was past its
peak (as was the Levant). Interesting how ethnic identity, especially among
Semitic groups, seems quiet fluid, though invading armies + Islam explains a
lot of that.

\- Persions were _not at all_ taught (before college). Seriously wtf, we
covered everybody else said to be skipped in American education. But I later
learned in college that perhaps they were more rural/feudal than eastern
Mediterranean, (the article says more Urban than Rome, but then makes a bunch
of medieval comparisons, so who knows?)

\- While we didn't cover it. I read about Kush/Bactria on Wikipedia (and the
other Kush hah (south of Egypt not what you were thinking hah)). I can kind of
understand that as an influenCED rather than influencING kingdom it was easy
to gloss over (oh we talked about the silk road, but usually in the abstract).
But I do like covering it as concrete evidence that those things which were
said to be influential actually were.

Basically, even in fairly leftist history curricula, it was all about who does
the most trade, most urbanization, and most interaction with neighbors. Any
overly courtly civilization was suspect.

Arguably then the same things that made China so dominant early on and steady
thereafter also lead to its eventual falling behind. Central Eurasia might
have become the dominant world culture except the Europeans got a huge steroid
injection with easiest access a humongous place you could depopulate by
coughing.

==========

Author asked in a caption about better timelines. I inherited some company's
Hammond's "Graphic History of Mankind" from the 1950s. Some things there
should definitely be revised (though they kept on extending and publishing the
timeline until at least 2000) but the concept is great.

Somebody should make some crazy SVG thing where as you zoom in more details
would appear. Make it procedural generated and open source so non-technical
history buffs can send you PRs (or figure out how to scrape Wikipedia). I'll
be forever grateful.

~~~
throwaway729
_> its important to get [out] of this single-dimension "who was greatest"_

That was the _entire point of the article_. Read in particular the last few
paragraphs, noting the wink-and-nod tone...

------
jordanlev
Dear Medium engineers (if any of you happen to see this): why must
localStorage and/or cookies be enabled in my browser for images to be
displayed on your site?

------
Retric
This really overstates things, there was regular contact between Europe and
China back several thousand years before Rome. It's not actually that far on
foot, and rumor can easially travel both ways even if few people make the
trip.

------
kmicklas
> Imagine if you could visit Rome today, and find it still populated by Latin-
> speaking, toga-wearing Romans.

Maybe no more togas, but isn't this basically true? While for example Spanish
is Basquified and French is Germanicified, modern Italian is basically the
direct descendant of classical Latin just as Mandarin is a direct descendant
of classical Chinese.

~~~
kafkaesque
Uh, no?

The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way,
classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already
used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation
and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally
studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a
simplification of this old, vernacular form.

Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already
existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include
old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there
were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used
classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say
probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman
Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less
influences by other world languages such as Arabic.

My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand
classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.

~~~
thaumasiotes
There is also no way to understand classical Chinese if you speak any modern
Chinese language.

> The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a
> mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form.

This is certainly not the case in the US. That sounds more like studying
church Latin, which will be mocked if you're studying Latin outside an
explicit religious context. Where are you?

~~~
huahaiy
Not really. Ancient Chinese poems as far back as 3000 years ago are still
required materials for recitation by Chinese school children. Any educated
modern Chinese can read and understand ancient Chinese text.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Ancient Chinese poems as far back as 3000 years ago are still required
> materials for recitation by Chinese school children.

This is true.

> Any educated modern Chinese can read and understand ancient Chinese text.

This is false. Try them on something they haven't seen before.

Furthermore, just as modern Chinese who have studied ancient Chinese can read
it, modern Italians who have studied Latin can read that, too. In fact, modern
Italians who have studied ancient Chinese can even read that! That doesn't
mean their knowledge of Italian is helpful; it isn't.

~~~
huahaiy
I was merely questioning the claim that modern Chinese cannot read ancient
Chinese. I made no claim whatsoever on Italian as I have no knowledge on that
matter.

However, I have first hand knowledge that modern educated Chinese can read
ancient Chinese text, which by definition means reading text they have not
seen before.

The Chinese writing system changed very little since Han dynasty. Even with
the mainland Chinese's simplified Chinese system, most mainland Chinese can
still read traditional Chinese without special training. Because the
simplification was mostly codifying the existent shortcuts in ordinary
people's hand-writings.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Sinologist Victor Mair reports: " On Thursday we had our Spring mid-term
examination. I always test the students on a seen portion and an unseen
passage. Because we go over the text in class together so very carefully, they
usually do well on the seen passage, but often the unseen passage — for which
I try to pick a text that is at about the same level of difficulty as the
stage we're at in class at the time — completely throws the students for a
loop. This time it happened that the students (2 from China, 2 with a Japanese
background, 2 from the United States, 1 from Hong Kong, 1 from Vietnam, and 1
from Ghana) were stymied by the unseen passage that I gave them. They could
understand all of the characters singly, and I even gave them additional
vocabulary notes and explanations. But they just couldn't make sense of the
passage as a whole nor even of its constituent sentences. Among the 9
students, only 2 could roughly figure out what was happening in the unseen
passage. Of course, this is terribly frustrating for the students, but it is
also good practice to push them to their limits to see what they can do
unaided (like letting a child try to ride a bike without training wheels after
a period of using them). In cases like what happened on Thursday, I tell the
students that I will be lenient, so I'll add on 20 or 30 points to their grade
because I fully realize how hard the test is. If they can get any part of it,
I'm proud of them."

(
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24459](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24459)
) and also a detailed answer from an otherwise-anonymous stackoverflow user:
[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15452/can-
chines...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15452/can-chinese-
people-read-the-literature-of-2-500-years-ago-as-easily-as-yesterday)

~~~
huahaiy
These students are college aged people in US. They are not what I call
"educated Chinese people".

The way the classic Chinese was written has always been different from
everyday vernacular Chinese. This has been true for every generation of
Chinese learners since ancient times.

How people spoke Chinese have changed over the years dramatically. I don't
think the ancient ways of speaking Chinese is understandable by modern
Chinese. However, the way the language is written in formal setting has
changed little up to the end of Qing dynasty in 1912.

An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese
writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my
claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and
understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam
requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text, and
answer questions about it. During the exam, some enterprising students could
even write their essays entirely in classic Chinese, garnering wide
circulations on the internet.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> An education in Chinese means to learn how to read these traditional Chinese
> writings. This education is still enforced today in modern China, hence my
> claim that an educated modern Chinese person can still read them and
> understand them. For example, a part of the Chinese college entrance exam
> requires the students to read an unseen piece of traditional Chinese text,
> and answer questions about it.

There's a serious conflict here with your simultaneous claim that college
graduates aren't yet "educated".

~~~
huahaiy
What's the conflict? College graduates from where? A college graduate who has
gone through the entire Chinese education system would be required to learn
reading comprehension of classic Chinese.

Granted, there are always students for one reason or another claimed that they
have leaned nothing from school. It's either a false claim, or if that's true,
calling them educated would be a stretch, isn't it?

------
restalis
What irks me it that the article makes its comparison by picking the best
aspects of non-Roman civilizations spread all over Asia and from there draws
the conclusion that those "born into the light" Chinese who ended up in
Britannia must have felt like being in wilderness. It actively ignored the
aspects that people outside the Roman empire would most likely considered
impressive compared to other Asian empires. For one, the civilizations around
Mediterranean were sea-faring types, and even more so for the Roman Empire
which relied on sea transport for much of its normal functioning. That is not
something one could see in any of the Asian empires, not nowhere near that
scale. Law. Rome had a law system that was so good that it was willingly
adopted by most of the civilizations coming after, regardless of the fact that
the said civilizations might have had their own distinct cultural heritage
that included law. The individual liberties and the personal property rights
seem to be timeless attractions, going back since the Roman era. (By the way,
the Chinese really appreciate that to this day, Vancouver real estate prices
speak for themselves.) Constructions. Although concrete was older than Romans,
they were the ones to take it seriously and made extensive research on it.
That allowed them to build things that were simply impossible without
concrete. There's only so much complexity you can get just by piling up blocks
of stone, or there can be only so much heightened weight using just softer
binders. Don't get me started on jewelry and complex works like ones that
involved developing glass with layers of metal inside it, or other such things
that weren't developed nowhere else. Yeah, that must have been underwhelming,
that is how darkness must have been perceived like!

------
wangyounonce
One interesting bit from the article

"But we don’t still identify as “citizens of the Roman Empire,” and we
certainly aren’t ruled by emperors who derive their authority from the gods of
Mt. Olympus."

Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual
successors of the Roman empire leading to things like having american
"Senators" meeting in the "Senate". Also possibly why some of the commentators
here seem so put off by the article.

~~~
endisukaj
> Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual
> successors of the Roman empire

I'm sorry, what? I'm not an American so this is the first time I'm hearing
this. Can someone recommend some reading on this topic? Seems pretty
interesting.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
The reading of history of ancient civilisations in the article is kinda cool,
if a bit naive.

I would not mind reading a historical novel based on it (I understand that's
what the article is really a plug for). I would certainly welcome a _game_
based on the historical periods and geographic areas covered. It's a bit sad
that so many games are set in the European middle ages when there are so many
more colourful periods of history to conquer or loot in (hey- you can play the
Sassanids in Rome: Total War, at least; and yeah, cataphracts do tear a new
one to legionnaires).

The big problem of the article however, and one that puts an obvious hole
smack in the middle of its claim that "westerners were the true barbarians"
is, as others have pointed out, that it avoids pretty much any discussion of
the intellectual activity that went on between the shores of the Middle East
and the Adriatic Sea:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece)

Not to mention: everything started in Babylon, and ancient Sumer, and Aegypt,
but then it got carried over to the western world through the Greeks and lives
on to this day.

So it's a bit silly to separate the achievements of different peoples
according to geography when they obviously and clearly were smart enough to
learn from each other. It's much better to speak of a human civilisation that
covered the globe and survives to this day, thank the gods.

A barbarian, in the end, is just a person who can't see beyond the borders of
his or her own country.

------
soufron
This article does not get the main difference between the Roman Empire and all
these other great states. Most notably, the fact that we are still living in
the Roman Empire.

Property Law? Check. Marriage and Divorce? Check. Democracy and Public Life
processes? Check.

Well it evolved of course. But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not
Kushan Whatever.

~~~
FlyingSnake
> But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.

Is HN really a place for such uneducated snarky comments? The reason we use
Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in
the past.

There were democracies in Ancient East too, and if you read the laws of
Ashoka/Gupta etc, you'll find they were much more advanced than most of their
contemporaries. We don't need to stoop so low to discredit other cultures just
because we can't overcome our bias.

~~~
endisukaj
> The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization
> by European powers in the past.

The amount of self-loathing in the West is reaching critical levels.

------
mrtree
Medium is becoming a pamphlet...

------
soufron
If you want a serious update on the current level of research on Roman and
antiquities studies - including the place of the roman empire in the world,
you'd better go there: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-
inheritance-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-inheritance-
of-rome)

------
jbmorgado
Medium is becoming the Social Justice Warrior de facto pamphlet. With
absolutely no regard to facts as long as it fits their narrative.

Like many already pointed this "article" is totally fantasious.

------
kafkaesq
Not sure about the historical narrative. But the work of the visual artist,
Dmitry Zaviyalov, featured at the top is quite impressive, at least.

------
jond3k
I'm suspicious of any article that's widely slated by a community yet still
trending.

I feel there's a market need for a browser plugin that lets you filter out
clickbait factories like his employers and all the dirty tricks they use to
hijack our attention. There's no way we can keep up with them without computer
assistance.

------
huahaiy
Don't know why this is down voted. Why is it so hard to learn some fact that
may be contrary to your imagination?

~~~
kafkaesque
I don't know if what you said is right, but I have been basically relaying
what my Latin professors have taught me and what I, as an A-student in Latin,
have learnt, yet I am being downvoted. A similar thing happened to me when I
started talking about Latin American literature and history.

I'm assuming most people here have gotten their information off the Web and
have a very one-sided view of whatever they have decided they have attained
"knowledge" on.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I downvoted you for this line:

> The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a
> mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form.

You're on solid ground to say that in the classical period there were several
registers of Latin, that the lower registers gave rise to vulgar and late
latin, and that those gave rise to church latin. (I can only really interpret
"medieval Latin" as referring to church latin.) You're certainly on solid
ground to say that speaking Italian won't let you understand Latin.

But the Latin you study in a normal Latin course is the high register of the
classical period, Classical Latin. It doesn't derive from medieval Latin, it
predates it by many hundreds of years.

