Europe versus China - China superior?

[humanist]

China was a good thousand years ahead of Europe for much time. The European Renaissance only occurred after it gained access to Greek and Roman texts that had been preserved by Islam; in the medieval period it was less sophisticated than Rome had been.

Feudal Europe was a backwards hell-hole.

[Felix the Cat]

You misunderstand the Renaissance, which was not characterized by the rediscovery of Ancient Knowledge, but by its refutation

Much of what the Ancients wrote about science was just plain nonsense, but it took great courage to point this out in public

It was in the Renaissance that Europeans stopped blindly following the teachings of the Greeks and Romans and instead began to learn things for themselves

[Blaphbee]

Besides, Europe and China are two completely different nations/peoples. Trying to compare them is an exercise in wasted energy.

Why do you have such an anti-white bias, humanist?

[Jimbo Gomez]

Those ideas, which were only PRESERVED by the moslems, ORIGINATED from the ancestors of modern Europeans, from the same bloodline.

[jcs]

China was a good thousand years ahead of Europe for much time. The European Renaissance only occurred after it gained access to Greek and Roman texts that had been preserved by Islam; in the medieval period it was less sophisticated than Rome had been.

Feudal Europe was a backwards hell-hole.
I disagree. The Medieval era was the best period of time in Europe's history. From this vantage point, modern times are a backwards hellhole.

[Jimbo Gomez]

I disagree. The Medieval era was the best period of time in Europe's history. From this vantage point, modern times are a backwards hellhole.

I agree, the medieval era and then a second golden age in the 19th century.

[Fade the Butcher]

China was a good thousand years ahead of Europe for much time.

This is absurd. Chinese science was nonexistent for all intents and purposes. It was surpassed by the West as early as the eleventh century (which is saying a lot). And no, China was not "thousands of years" ahead of the West.

The European Renaissance only occurred after it gained access to Greek and Roman texts that had been preserved by Islam; in the medieval period it was less sophisticated than Rome had been.

This is false. You don't know what you are talking about. There were translations of Greek natural philosophy texts from Arabic into Latin during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but these translations were often of poor quality and were later translated directly from Greek originals by William of Moerbeke amongst others. The Renaissance was inspired by later translations of the Platonic corpus directly from Greek (most of which was unknown in the Islamic world), not the work of Aristotle that inspired Medieval Scholasticism.

Feudal Europe was a backwards hell-hole.

Backward hellhole:

"Giotto (1267-1337), Gaddi (1300-1366), and Cimabue (1240-1302) in painting; Petrach (1304-1374) and Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in poetry and literature; Boccaccio (1313-1375) and Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) in literature; St. Francis (1182-1226), St. Dominic (1170-1221), and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) in spirituality; Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), Raymond Lully (1235-1315), and William of Ockham (1285-1349) in natural philosophy; St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), Alexander of Hales, and St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in theology; John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) and Peter Abelard (1079-1142) in logic; Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) in chemistry and botany; Frederick II (1194-1250) in zoology; Roger Bacon (1214-1294) in optics and natural philosophy; Petrus Peregrinus in magnetism; Jean Buridan (1300-1358) in physics; Thomas Bradwardine (1290-1349), Richard Swineshead, and John Dumbleton in kinematics and dynamics; the Notre Dame School of Polyphony (1170-1250), Franco of Cologne, and Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) in music; Adam de la Halle (1237-1288) in theater; Leonardo of Pisa in mathematics; Gratian in law; and the Gothic style in architecture.

Tell me the names of the Sub-Saharan African institutions of higher learning that rival the likes of the University of Paris, University of Bologna, University of Salerno, and Oxford University during the Middle Ages. Show me equivilant of the Arthur Legend in England, El Cid in Spain, the Eddas of Scandinavia, the Nibelungen Lied of Germany, Dante's Divine Comedy in Italy, or the Troubadour poems of France. Show me the Sub-Saharan accomplishments in legal theory like the Magna Carta of England or the Canon Law of Gratian."

[Fade the Butcher]

I disagree. The Medieval era was the best period of time in Europe's history. From this vantage point, modern times are a backwards hellhole.Check this out.

The Thirteenth, The Greatest of Centuries (http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/walsh-a.htm)

[Himmler II]

Check this out.

The Thirteenth, The Greatest of Centuries (http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/walsh-a.htm)
While I wouldn't go along with the florid hyperbole of the article, the author does have a good point. The 13th century, while not the greatest century in human history (how would you choose which century was the 'greatest'?), was certainly the pinnacle of the High Middle Ages, and the construction of the cathedrals was the biggest building project which had been undertaken since the Pyramids. The reason we don't think of this period as a glorious chapter in human history is because of the century which followed it - the 14th. The 14th century brought the Black Death, which killed nearly half the population of Europe, and a general climate change which led to chronic famines in the following centuries. But the main effect was psychological - their intense religious faith meant that the people of the 14th century believed that God must be punishing them for their sins. It led to a crisis of both faith and cultural self-confidence. They believed that the catastrophes of the 14th century must be caused by the essentially rotten nature of their own culture and values. It was this collapse of cultural certainty which prepared the path for the Renaissance and the Reformation. And in the process of that transition between the Medieval and the Modern world, we remembered only the devastation and demoralisation of the 14th century and forgot the achievements of the High Middle Ages. We see the 13th century through the filter of the 14th. Even now, academics usually dismiss the Middle Ages as a tedious, benighted diversion between the Ancient and the Modern worlds. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

[Niko Bellic]

China was a good thousand years ahead of Europe for much time. The European Renaissance only occurred after it gained access to Greek and Roman texts that had been preserved by Islam; in the medieval period it was less sophisticated than Rome had been.

Feudal Europe was a backwards hell-hole.

Run away quickly. You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into with a statement like that on this forum.:rolleyes:

[Fade the Butcher]

The fourteenth century gets a bad rap because of the Great Famine, Black Death, and the Hundred Years War amongst other things, but it was also a period of extraordinary dynanism in the arts and sciences. The foundation of modern science was laid by William of Ockham, John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Thomas Bradwardine amongst others (who challenged Aristotle's natural philosophy). There was significant progressive social change as well: the decline of the papacy, the decline of the clergy and its replacement by the bureaucracy, the rise of the nation-state in France and England, the end of feudalism (the knight, the linchpin of the medieval social order, was rendered obsolete by longbowmen, pikemen, and the canon), the decline of serfdom, the rise of professional militaries, the first stirrings of the Renaissance in Italy.

The Islamic world was still slave-addled during the fourteenth century (when Medieval Europe was moving beyond serfdom). The twilight of intellectual life in Islam had come and gone two centuries before.

[A. Radek]

English history from 1180 or so onward through to about the 1470's is interesting stuff, less so for the European continent, with the exception of the Italian city states roughly during the same period. They were interelated in many ways, especially economically. I'm biased toward the English anyway, as they are more interesting as a nation during the High Middle Ages. A lot of modern law has it's roots in that time period.

[humanist]

This is absurd. Chinese science was nonexistent for all intents and purposes. It was surpassed by the West as early as the eleventh century (which is saying a lot). And no, China was not "thousands of years" ahead of the West.
lol, China was ahead of Europe by centuries in:

-Industrialisation -- by 1,000 years
-used coal for fuel way before Europe
-used deep drilling for salt and natural gas way before europe
-used waterwheel-driven bellows in the smelting of metal
-use of the seismoscope for the detection of earth-quakes.
-use of the abacus, also the chinese discovered the exact and precise value of pi, and also the binomial system in mathematics.
-the use of the crossbow, the cannon, and gunpowder rocket in war.

Europe had none of these at the same time.

So yes, the Chinese were centuries ahead of Europe while Europe was living in an ugly feudalism.

[jcs]

Industrialisation -- by 1,000 years
Funny, I don't recall China having an industrial revolution, and certainly not during the 8th or 9th century. In fact, my history professor stressed rather heavily that China did not move beyond an agricultural 'commercial revolution' to industrialization until they got that from the West.
And I'll take the view of a crazy Greek lady with a Ph.D. over yours. Unless you happen to be a crazy Greek with a Ph.D., too.

...now, do you really want someone to come in this thread and create big huge lists of Europe's accomplishments during this era, such that we can uselessly compare two cultures? Seems like a waste of time, despite being fairly easy to do.

What I'm more curious about is your reason for wanting China to have been superior to Europe. Kind of strange, that inverted Eurocentrism.

[Slavic Enforcer]

The only nation in Asia that's somehow "superior" (especially towards her Asian neighbours) is Japan.

[A. Radek]

Funny, I don't recall China having an industrial revolution, and certainly not during the 8th or 9th century. In fact, my history professor stressed rather heavily that China did not move beyond an agricultural 'commercial revolution' to industrialization until they got that from the West.
And I'll take the view of a crazy Greek lady with a Ph.D. over yours. Unless you happen to be a crazy Greek with a Ph.D., too.

...now, do you really want someone to come in this thread and create big huge lists of Europe's accomplishments during this era, such that we can uselessly compare two cultures? Seems like a waste of time, despite being fairly easy to do.

What I'm more curious about is your reason for wanting China to have been superior to Europe. Kind of strange, that inverted Eurocentrism.

China was smelting iron, making steel, and other metals, block printing, making advances in shipbuilding, canal building, building trade routes, etc., long before the 8th or 9th century. They had many rises and declines over some 5,000 years, in contrast to Gauls and Northern Europeans, who did pretty much nothing until Greeks and then Roman civilizations came along. They also followed the pattern of city states, fuedalism, empire, stagnation, followed by collapse several times. They also had a huge source of cheap labor, which pretty much killed off the need for technological innovation and labor saving inventions, just as it did in the Roman empire. They were a more inward looking culture generally, and still are. They were not interested in global empires, as the Europeans were. Europe had to innovate, after the collapse of Rome, and so went off in several directions, surpassing their masters in many ways, going backwards in others. constant warfare plays a big part in European development in the 'dark ages' onward. Crop yields were low, and labor a constant shortage. Having mineral resources and lots of wood was a major advantage along with geographic isolation.

It has nothing to do with 'superiority'. White Europeans are way late as big players on the world scene, only making a splash in the last couple of centuries, and are in fact receding

[Fade the Butcher]

lol, China was ahead of Europe by centuries in: Industrialisation -- by 1,000 years

There was no Industrial Revolution in China.

used coal for fuel way before Europe

The Chinese relied upon wood as their principal fuel source until well into the modern age, as did Europeans and all other human beings until the Industrial Revolution began in Britain.

used deep drilling for salt and natural gas way before europe

I am not sure if I am seeing your point here: there are easier ways to harvest salt. The use of salt as a condiment was common throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Europe. As for natural gas, it was not commercially burned as an energy source until the 20C.

used waterwheel-driven bellows in the smelting of metal

Medieval Europeans made extensive use of watermills and windmills for a variety of industrial purposes; the smelting of metal included.

use of the seismoscope for the detection of earth-quakes.

Such a device doesn't have much utility in a region that doesn't experience many earthquakes like Western Europe. The circumference of the earth itself though was calculated to within 15 percent of its true value by Eratosthenes. Scientific geology was also founded by Albertus Magnus during the Middle Ages.

use of the abacus

The Romans and Medieval Europeans made use of the abacus. The use of the abacus declined in Europe during the Middle Ages as it was discarded in favor of pen and paper calculations using Hindu-Arabic numberals. That the Chinese persisted in using the abacus long after Europeans only illustrates the retarded state of mathematics in China.

also the chinese discovered the exact and precise value of pi, and also the binomial system in mathematics.

Let's grant that Zu Chongzhi was able to calculate the most accurate estimate of the value of pi during the fifth century. It still doesn't follow though that the Chinese were anywhere near as advanced in mathematics as the West, the Islamic world, and India. Greek geometry, arithmetic, and algebra was far superior to that of the Chinese. The Chinese had no knowledge of Euclid, Archimedes, or Diophantes.

Nicole Oresme founded analytical geometry in his Tractatus de configuratione qualitatum et motuum (anticipating Descartes by several centuries). He also introduced fractional exponents and was the first to prove that the harmonic series diverges. Leonardo Fibonacci is known in the history of mathematics for introducing the Fibonacci sequence. Jordanus de Nemore was the first to formulate the law of the inclined plane. Thomas Bradwardine founded mathematical physics in his Treatise on Proportions. Bradwardine was the first mathematician to study star polygons. John Dumbleton, William Heytesbury, and Richard Swineshead formulated the mean spead theorem. Blasius of Parm argued that no vacuum can form between two plane surfaces in his Question on the Contact of Hard Bodies.

the use of the crossbow, the cannon, and gunpowder rocket in war.Europe had none of these at the same time.

The crossbow, the cannon, and firearms were known and used in medieval Europe during the fourteenth century. The earliest guns and cannons appeared in China towards the end of the thirteenth century; about the same time they appeared in Europe. See Jack Kelly's Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics. The crossbow had been in use in Europe for centuries, but was eclipsed during the Hundred Years War by the superior English longbow at the Battle of Crécy.

Note: You failed to mention that China was conquered by the Mongols during the thirteenth century. That should tell you something about their superior military technology.

So yes, the Chinese were centuries ahead of Europe while Europe was living in an ugly feudalism.

This is false. You are confusing science with technology. Chinese science (if you would even call it that, I wouldn't) was inferior to Western science by the eleventh century. See Toby Huff's The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West for a comparative history of the subject.

[Ixtab]

That the Chinese persisted in using the abacus long after Europeans only illustrates the retarded state of mathematics in China.I must disagree with you on this one minor point; the abacus is superior to the modern calculator. There is nothing backwards about the abacus.

[A. Radek]

My grandfather was a public accountant. He used an abacus, and preferred it for auditing and most tasks. Many jobs required a physical record, so he still had to use an adding machine for the tape, but he ran everything before and after on an abacus. Its' use was still taught in school in his day, some engineers used them heavily as well.

[Jonathan]

Gauls and Northern Europeans, who did pretty much nothing until Greeks and then Roman civilizations came along.
How much do we really know about what they did until the Greeks and Romans arrived ?

[A. Radek]

How much do we really know about what they did until the Greeks and Romans arrived ?

Not much, but the criteria here seems to be a written language and Giant Stone Buildings, which pretty much relegates most of the North to the same level as most of Africa.LOL

Even then, most of Northern European progress has been in the western, formerly Roman dominated areas, France , England, Spain, etc., and the trend of course is still there in middle and High Middle Ages, with Italy still leading the advances as a cultural influence, and the trend remains right up to modern times. When the U.S. began starting up engineering schools in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they relied on French texts, as did the Germans, at first; they were on top engineering wise, with England coming up fairly fast. It wasn't until later in the century that German contributions added much to the body of engineering literature and science, and some 30% of theirs was due to Jews having their 'enlightment' toward empiricism under the influence of Moses Mendlesohn.

Pure 'Aryan' science was still full of nonsense like the Austrians publishing voluminous papers on how Jews had 'different bones than other races', and studying lumps on peoples heads was supposed to be 'psychiatry' to them, right up to the end of the 19th. LOL

[Jonathan]

Not much, but the criteria here seems to be a written language and Giant Stone Buildings, which pretty much relegates most of the North to the same level as most of Africa.LOL
Oy, we had giant stone buildings!:mad:

Seriously though, it just looked like you were going to the other extreem.

[A. Radek]

Oy, we had giant stone buildings!:mad:

Seriously though, it just looked like you were going to the other extreem.

What giant stone buildings? You mean Stone Henge? Granted, but you seemed to be asking about the non-Roman aspects of Northern Europe. It was a little bit of sarcasm, true, but on the whole not far off.

[Jonathan]

What giant stone buildings? You mean Stone Henge? Granted, but you seemed to be asking about the non-Roman aspects of Northern Europe.
Am I picking you up right, are you saying that Stone Henge isn't non-Roman?:confused:

[A. Radek]

LOL, stonehenge wasn't Roman era. You said there were non-Roman era large stone buildings, I was asking like where and what, stonehenge being the first non-Roman stone structure that I thought of.

[Kodos]

Even then, most of Northern European progress has been in the western, formerly Roman dominated areas, France , England, Spain, etc., and the trend of course is still there in middle and High Middle Ages, with Italy still leading the advances as a cultural influence, and the trend remains right up to modern times. When the U.S. began starting up engineering schools in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they relied on French texts, as did the Germans, at first; they were on top engineering wise, with England coming up fairly fast. It wasn't until later in the century that German contributions added much to the body of engineering literature and science, and some 30% of theirs was due to Jews having their 'enlightment' toward empiricism under the influence of Moses Mendlesohn.

I believe Latin was the international scientific language up till the mid 19th century when it switched to German( maybe it was French around the Napoleanic era) and then after WWII it switched to English. South Germany has had its fair share of catholic fanatics and cranks in history...

[Jonathan]

LOL, stonehenge wasn't Roman era.
That's exactly what I mean. That's why I had to question it. You statement just seemed odd.

[infoterror]

Not much, but the criteria here seems to be a written language and Giant Stone Buildings, which pretty much relegates most of the North to the same level as most of Africa.

Dunno about that. First, runic scripts existed in pre-Roman times. Second, those who write upon paper or papyrus in cold, wet climates rarely leave records. Third, there is no need for giant stone buildings when one is an agricultural society, as much of the north was. Less advanced? Possibly. Better long-term design? Assuredly.

Do they have written language in Eastern Europe yet? I know someone was working on teaching the Irish to speak English, but so far, they've only made it to mastery of Spanish.

[A. Radek]

That's exactly what I mean. That's why I had to question it. You statement just seemed odd.

I did run two issues together, instead of making the seperation more clearly. My bad.

[Jonathan]

I know someone was working on teaching the Irish to speak English, but so far, they've only made it to mastery of Spanish.
What's that supposed to mean?

Actually, I've seen you bad mouth the Eastern Europeans and the Irish for some time on the Phora now without actually replying to any of it. I mightn't know much about the Eastern Europeans, but if this anti-Irish stuff persists, something might have to be done about it:p

[A. Radek]

I believe Latin was the international scientific language up till the mid 19th century when it switched to German( maybe it was French around the Napoleanic era) and then after WWII it switched to English. South Germany has had its fair share of catholic fanatics and cranks in history...

Latin was a basic requirement in all U.S. lower education schools as well as colleges, extensively so, so it would be odd to use French texts in their engineering schools, unless they were the major modern ones available. German science didn't make a big splash until later in the century, and most English and Scottish inventors and engineers were self taught, hands on kinds, not big on writing textbooks and scientific papers. Germany wasn't a nation yet, neither was Italy, and it wasn't until later in the century their university and school system started seeing the results of large state funding of education and research. The French were the leaders on the academic side of things late 18th and early 19th centuries, so would have had the lead on texts, and in fact I still occasionly run across references to this fact in older histories.

[Jonathan]

You ought to do that, and prove me right.
Prove you right on what :confused:

Go for it, Pharisee (you lusciously Falid white nigger!).
That's a particularly aggressive tone all of a sudden:nono:

What makes me a Pharisee? Or a Falid white nigger for that matter?

No more flaming.

[A. Radek]

What's that supposed to mean?

Actually, I've seen you bad mouth the Eastern Europeans and the Irish for some time on the Phora now without actually replying to any of it. I mightn't know much about the Eastern Europeans, but if this anti-Irish stuff persists, something might have to be done about it:p


Badmouthing the Irish is sacrilege.

Badmouthing those east of the Rhine is of course, entirely justifiable. They've been a major drag on Europe for thousands of years.

[A. Radek]

Dunno about that. First, runic scripts existed in pre-Roman times.

First, runic scripts existed in pre-Roman times.

Comparing those dance steps for drunken chickens to Latin and Greek alphabets is the height of mockery.

[Jonathan]

Badmouthing the Irish is sacrilege.
Go raibh maith 'ad. Thanks.

Badmouthing those east of the Rhine is of course, entirely justifiable. They've been a major drag on Europe for thousands of years.
I suppose they kept away the Turks and the Asians for a good while though.

[Fade the Butcher]

Badmouthing those east of the Rhine is of course, entirely justifiable. They've been a major drag on Europe for thousands of years.Like Gutenberg, Goethe, and Haydn.

[Fade the Butcher]

Comparing those dance steps for drunken chickens to Latin and Greek alphabets is the height of mockery.The Greeks and Romans invented the alphabet?

[Jonathan]

Comparing those dance steps for drunken chickens to Latin and Greek alphabets is the height of mockery.

I'll post this just for the sake of it:

The ‘Ogham’ alphabet:
Every letter is associated with a tree, bird, colour and date. Each letter is represented by lines carved into the corner of a Gallán(cuboid standing stone)
B=Beithe(Birch tree), Besan(pheasant),white and 24th December-20th January. Half a strait line(by half line, I mean it is only carved on the right side of the corner)
L=Luis(Rowan tree), Lacha(duck),Light Grey and 21st January-17th February. 2 half strait lines
F=Fearn(alder tree), Faoileán(gull),Crimson and 19th March-14th April. 3 half strait lines.
S=Saileach(willow), seabhac(Hawk), Fire and 15th April-12th May. 4 half strait lines.
N=Nion(ash), naoscach(snipe), Transparent and 18th February-18th March. 5 half strait lines.
H=(H)uath(hawthorn)hadaig(night crow), Earth and 13th May-9th June. 1 half strait line (on the left side)
D=Dair(oak)dreoilin(wren), Black and 10th June-7th July. 2 half strait lines.
T=Tinne(holly)truit(starling), Grey and 8th July-4th August. 3 half strait lines.
C=Coll(hazel)corr(crane), Brown and 5th August-1st September. 4 half strait lines.
M=Muin(vine)meantan(titmouse), Motley and 2nd September-29th September. 1 full diagonal line.
G=Gort(ivey)géis(mute swan), Blue and 30th September-27th October. 2 full diagonal lines.
Ng=(n)getal(broom)ngé(goose), Green and 28th October-25th November. 3 full diagonal lines.
R=Ruis(elder)rocnat(rook), Blood Red and 26th November-29th December. 5 full diagonal lines.
A=Ailme(pine)airdhircleog(lapwing), Piebald and Winter Solstice. 1 full strait line.
O=Onn(furze)odoroscrach(cormorant), Dun and Vernal Equinox. 2 full strait lines.
U=Úr(heather)uiseog(sky lark), Resin and Summer Solstice. 3 full strait lines.
E=Eadad(poplar)ela(whistling swan), Red and Autumn Equinox. 4 full strait lines.
I=Iúr(yew)illait(eaglet), White and Winter Solstice. 5 full strait lines strait lines.
If you wanted to right a book with this it would take a stone a mile long.

[A. Radek]

Ogham, and Runic scripts don't appear to be all that old, compared to the various Greek alphabets and Etruscan, and indeed a case can be made they were influenced by them.

Origin

Most Runic texts are found on hard surfaces such as rock, wood, and metal, and this might explain its angular shape. Because of the resemblance to Mediterranean scripts, it is very likely that Futhark was adapted from either the Greek or Etruscan alphabet. Even though the earliest Runic inscriptions are from the 3rd century CE, its origin may lie much deeper in the pre-history of Northern Europe. A few clues might shed light on this. The earliest Futhark inscriptions don't have a fixed writing direction, but instead can be written either left-to-right or right-to-left, which was a feature of very archaic Greek or Etruscan alphabets before the 3rd century BCE. Other clues to the age of Futhark come from the history of Germanic languages. The letter æ was extraneous in even the earliest texts because the sound /æ/ has disappeared from Germanic languages by the 3rd century CE, yet it existed in the alphabet (that is, it would always appear in a list of all the letters). However, from linguistic reconstruction it seems that Proto-Germanic, the ancestral language of subsequent Germanic languages, had the vowel /æ/. This means that the letter must have been created when there was a need for its sound, but due to tradition was kept in the alphabet even when there was no need for it anymore. Another internal clue comes from the spelling convention in Futhark which dictates that the sequence ai stands for the sound /e/. Once again, historical linguistics tells us that the Proto-Germanic sound /ai/ became the sound /e/ in later Germanic languages. This means that the original spellings of the words were standardized during Proto-Germanic times, and due to the conservative nature of the writing system, the original forms of the words were preserved even after their pronuncations had changed over time. All of these clues, both external and internal, suggest the time of Futhark's creation to the 1st millenium BCE.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/futhark.html

I'm satisfied that literature and writing at what would be called 'civilized' levels began with the Greeks and Latins in the West, and it is indeed the parts of western Europe conquered by the Romans that advanced quicker and further throughout later history than those left unconquered. You can argue amongst yourselves about it, but it's fairly obvious as a general historical principle, as is the flow of culture in Northern Europe is from West To East through the Germanic nations, nitpicking anecdotal speculation and minor exceptions to the rule not being a real refutation of this trend.

[Jonathan]

Ogham and Runic scripts
Note that it was infoterror who specifically brought up Runic script.
I spcifically added that I was posting the Ogham part "for the sake of it" and I would never suggest that it pre-dates "civilized" writting.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the written word was "banned" in Ireland by the Aos Dána(learned class) who put great emphasis on "memorizing" laws and customs. They feared that if texts were written, then the fodhuine(underclass) would pick them up, thus the Aos Dána would loose their privilaged position in society. Ogham was only used to mark Graves and Boundaries.

It was only with the rise of monasiticism (which was linked to the Gaelic custom of "White Martyrdom") that writting became more common.

I'm satisfied that literature and writing at what would be called 'civilized' levels began with the Greeks and Latins in the West, and it is indeed the parts of western Europe conquered by the Romans that advanced quicker and further throughout later history than those left unconquered.
“All our sources of information, intentional and unintentional alike, suggest that the barbarians did most of the compromising and dealing with Rome and Mediterranean civilization. Roman influence upon the barbarians is evident with respect to material goods and political organization, for example, but Rome’s inspiration was not nearly so Transformative as it first appears. If for comparison we use data from Roman rural areas, not just urban centers, then the differences between Roman society and that of the barbarians becomes far less notable. Were we to focus our attention on those areas within the empire bypassed by Roman urban and military culture, we would find fewer differences still.”T. S. Burns, 2003.

You can argue amongst yourselves about it, but it's fairly obvious as a general historical principle, as is the flow of culture in Northern Europe is from West To East through the Germanic nations, nitpicking anecdotal speculation and minor exceptions to the rule not being a real refutation of this trend.
What would you attribute this too? Monks? Charlemagne? Feudalism?

[Slavic Enforcer]

You ought to do that, and prove me right.

Go for it, Pharisee (you lusciously Falid white nigger!).

What a tragicomedy.

The only person on this board that behaves like an ape calls other people nigger..

[A. Radek]

Note that it was infoterror who specifically brought up Runic script.
I spcifically added that I was posting the Ogham part "for the sake of it" and I would never suggest that it pre-dates "civilized" writting.

I know. If I can answer several questions in one post on a related subject, I try to do that.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the written word was "banned" in Ireland by the Aos Dána(learned class) who put great emphasis on "memorizing" laws and customs. They feared that if texts were written, then the fodhuine(underclass) would pick them up, thus the Aos Dána would loose their privilaged position in society. Ogham was only used to mark Graves and Boundaries.

I'm familiar with that, but Ireland isn't the entire Western part of Europe.

It was only with the rise of monasiticism (which was linked to the Gaelic custom of "White Martyrdom") that writting became more common.

I didn't know about 'White Martyrdom', but I have read on Irish Monastics and their preservation of many written works during the 'Dark Ages'.


“All our sources of information, intentional and unintentional alike, suggest that the barbarians did most of the compromising and dealing with Rome and Mediterranean civilization. Roman influence upon the barbarians is evident with respect to material goods and political organization, for example, but Rome’s inspiration was not nearly so Transformative as it first appears. If for comparison we use data from Roman rural areas, not just urban centers, then the differences between Roman society and that of the barbarians becomes far less notable. Were we to focus our attention on those areas within the empire bypassed by Roman urban and military culture, we would find fewer differences still.”T. S. Burns, 2003.


What would you attribute this too? Monks? Charlemagne? Feudalism?

I'm well aware that many tribes adapted what they wanted, and disposed of what they didn't want from Roman influence. It doesn't refute the fact that Med culture was a tremendous spark in advancing them along to higher levels of acheivements, whichever course they chose to go in. What's the argument here? That the various cultures changed over time? OF course they would; there was no way they could recreate such a large slave economy on the scale of the Med empires, so they had to develop other options, like technologies to augment a relatively scarce labor force.

[A. Radek]

What a tragicomedy.

The only person on this board that behaves like an ape calls other people nigger..

One of the Organ Grinders around here apparently lets his pet monkey post outside the Lounge for some reason, probably sexually related.

[Jonathan]

I'm familiar with that, but Ireland isn't the entire Western part of Europe.
It was the connection with Ogham that I was going after. I could just as easily post something about Scandinavia or something:

In the first instance overpopulation encouraged the growth of a violent and divided society, where bands of pirates and land-grabbers habitually preyed on their neighbours and disturbed the peace. In the second instance it pushed these same pirates to seek their fortunes overseas: and in the last instance it provoked mass emigration-P Sawyer 1962

Yet another technical factor must also have been at work. In the previous era of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, there were no ocean-going ships…improvements in ship design and navigation had given the ‘Northmen’ much greater confidence and potential…When the Northmen felt the urge to set sail, they were not confined to creeping round the coasts. They must have felt that there was nowhere in the world they could not reach - swiftly and directly-J Graham-Campell 1991

It's not really pivotal, just some nice quotes :)

I didn't know about 'White Martyrdom', but I have read on Irish Monastics and their preservation of many written works during the 'Dark Ages'.
No Irish Christians were martyrd during the conversion of the Island, unlike Roman and other places. The early Irish felt like they had to prove themselves to God (because they hadn't died for him like the Roman Christians), so they developed the theory of "Red Martyrdom"(the killing of a Christian for their beliefs) and "White Martyrdom"(giving up all worldly possessions and devoting one's self to learning and prayer). It was this concept of "White Martyrdom" which was new to Irish society which kick started academic learning. It all started with “Liturgy, homiletics, biblical exegesis and paraphrase, hymnody and eulogy, hagiography, Latin and Irish grammar, etymology, onomastics, topography, annals, genealogy, legal tracts concerning the church and lay society, gnomic literature, prophecy, vision and voyage narratives, saga and history”-McCone 1990. From there on learning became more popular with secular society too. Libraries were opened such as Cathaoir Mheic Neachtáin in Corca Modh Ruadh for example.

Anyway, I'm just trying to account for the original retardation, but eventual rise, in academics.

It doesn't refute the fact that Med culture was a tremendous spark in advancing them along to higher levels of acheivements, whichever course they chose to go in.
I'm not saying that it wasn't. The opposite infact.

What's the argument here?
There isn't really any disagreement as such. I'm just trying to account for some of the rise in academics in northern Europe through social change as oppossed to racial/genetic difference.

Now in the interest of the Eugenic posting policy, would you like to explain the west-to-east trend of northern European academics. I've suggested Monks, Charlemagne, and Fedualism.

You don't have to, I'm just trying to get good posts going.:)

[Slavic Enforcer]

One of the Organ Grinders around here apparently lets his pet monkey post outside the Lounge for some reason, probably sexually related.

Hahaha.. :rofl:

[A. Radek]

It was the connection with Ogham that I was going after. I could just as easily post something about Scandinavia or something:

In the first instance overpopulation encouraged the growth of a violent and divided society, where bands of pirates and land-grabbers habitually preyed on their neighbours and disturbed the peace. In the second instance it pushed these same pirates to seek their fortunes overseas: and in the last instance it provoked mass emigration-P Sawyer 1962

Yet another technical factor must also have been at work. In the previous era of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, there were no ocean-going ships…improvements in ship design and navigation had given the ‘Northmen’ much greater confidence and potential…When the Northmen felt the urge to set sail, they were not confined to creeping round the coasts. They must have felt that there was nowhere in the world they could not reach - swiftly and directly-J Graham-Campell 1991

It's not really pivotal, just some nice quotes :)


No Irish Christians were martyrd during the conversion of the Island, unlike Roman and other places. The early Irish felt like they had to prove themselves to God (because they hadn't died for him like the Roman Christians), so they developed the theory of "Red Martyrdom"(the killing of a Christian for their beliefs) and "White Martyrdom"(giving up all worldly possessions and devoting one's self to learning and prayer). It was this concept of "White Martyrdom" which was new to Irish society which kick started academic learning. It all started with “Liturgy, homiletics, biblical exegesis and paraphrase, hymnody and eulogy, hagiography, Latin and Irish grammar, etymology, onomastics, topography, annals, genealogy, legal tracts concerning the church and lay society, gnomic literature, prophecy, vision and voyage narratives, saga and history”-McCone 1990. From there on learning became more popular with secular society too. Libraries were opened such as Cathaoir Mheic Neachtáin in Corca Modh Ruadh for example.

Anyway, I'm just trying to account for the original retardation, but eventual rise, in academics.


I'm not saying that it wasn't. The opposite infact.


There isn't really any disagreement as such. I'm just trying to account for some of the rise in academics in northern Europe through social change as oppossed to racial/genetic difference.

Ah, okay, now I see. Good post in general; more details on the Irish are always welcome.

Now in the interest of the Eugenic posting policy, would you like to explain the west-to-east trend of northern European academics. I've suggested Monks, Charlemagne, and Fedualism.

I will; I have a post related to Gutenburg coming up ...

You don't have to, I'm just trying to get good posts going.:)

Ah ha! I've been elected to be on the bottom of the dogpile, I see ... Feudalism was a step backwards, but in essence the Frankish kingdoms led the way out eventually; I can elaborate in pieces, I don't have a lot of time, since I'm not fucking off in college pretending to 'study'.;)

[A. Radek]

Like Gutenberg, Goethe, and Haydn.

Mainz was a major Roman port on the Rhine. Looking at a map of the spread of his printing techniques, by 1480 Italy, France, the Belgium and low lands area, i.e. a line from Gouda through Mainz to Vincenz, there are over 28 or so presses west of it. East of it, you find a press in Pilsen, Nuremburg, and Bamburg in Germany proper, one in Cracow, Prague, and Budapest, 6 total by 1480, compared almost 4 times that in western Europe. Wonder where the biggest demand was ... Even Spain had three, about the same number as Germany proper. tiny England had two, at London and Oxford. Italy had 11.

[A. Radek]

Interestingly, you see the same patterns of adoption with the fulling mill from the 10th through the 12th centuries, though the first recorded is in Italy. The same line as a divider for the printing press applies.

[Jonathan]

I will; I have a post related to Gutenburg coming up ...
Can't wait.

Ah ha! I've been elected to be on the bottom of the dogpile, I see ...
Elected? Didn't you know that Democracy is frowned upon at the Phora :p

Feudalism was a step backwards

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3520

I don't have a lot of time, since I'm not fucking off in college pretending to 'study'.;)
:D

[Fade the Butcher]

Let's discuss German achievements in science prior to the 19C in Early Modern Europe. I will draw from the useful index Charles Murray put together in Human Accomplishment.

1464 -- Regiomontus's De Triangulis Omnimodus is the first systematic European work on trigonometry as a subject divorced from astronomy.

1502 -- Peter Henlein invents the mainspring in a pocket watch )and invents the pocket watch itself).

1530 -- Paracelsus pioneers the application of chemistry to physiology, pathology, and the treatment of disease.

1551 -- Rheticus prepares tables of standard trigonometric functions, defining trigonometric functions for the first time as ratios of the sides of a right triangle rather than defining them relative to the arcs of circles.

1556 -- Georgius Agricola's De re Metallica is for centuries the best text on mining.

1597 -- Libaviusis Alchemia is the first chemistry textbook, with detailed descriptions of many chemical methods.

1604 -- Johannes Kepler observes a second nova, confirming Brahe's discovery.

1609 -- Johannes Kepler's Astronomia Nova contains the first statement of Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion.

1612 -- Simon Marius publishes the first systematic description of the Andromeda Nebula.

1645 -- Otto von Guericke discovers that, in a vacuum, sound does not travel, fire is extinguished, and animals stop breathing.

1650 -- Otto von Guericke demonstrates the force of air pressure, using teams of horses to try to pull apart metal hemispheres held together by a partial vacuum.

1674 -- Henning Brand discovers phosphorus, a.n. 15, the first element known to have been discovered by a specific person, and the first element not known in any earlier form.

1693 -- Gottfried von Leibniz invents an improved calculator for multiplication and division.

1755 -- Immanuel Kant's Allegemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie Des Himmels hypothesizes that the solar system is part of a huge, lens-shaped collection of stars, that other such "island universes" exist, and proposes a theory of the evolution of the universe in which particles conglomerated to form heavenly bodies.

1794 -- Ernst Chladni and Heinrich Olbers defend the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites and offer a scientific explanation of them.

1795 -- Carl Gauss proves the law of quadratic reciprocity.

1796 -- Carl Gauss discovers a method for constructing a heptadecagon with a compass and straightedge and demonstrates than an equilateral heptagon could not be constructed the same way, constituting the only notable advance in classical geometry since ancient Greece.

1798 -- Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) demonstrates that heat is a form of motion (energy) rather than a substance.

1799 -- Carl Gauss presents a new and rigorous proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra.

[Fade the Butcher]

That list doesn't discuss German accomplishments in literature, painting, philosophy, and music. It doesn't take into account the tremendous contributions to science and technology made by Germans after the 19C either.

[humanist]

This is absurd. Chinese science was nonexistent for all intents and purposes. It was surpassed by the West as early as the eleventh century (which is saying a lot). And no, China was not "thousands of years" ahead of the West.

That is utter madness, Fade. The west could not surpass anything in the 11th century. It was the middle of the dark ages!

China was indeed a thousand years ahead of the West - Europe had its medieval period around 1000-1500. China had its around 0 - 500. China invented the crossbow, which was new in the West in the 11th century, in 250-odd AD.

I could go on at great length - see the Cambridge "Shorter Science and Technology of China", volumes I through IV.

This is false. You don't know what you are talking about. There were translations of Greek natural philosophy texts from Arabic into Latin during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but these translations were often of poor quality and were later translated directly from Greek originals by William of Moerbeke amongst others. The Renaissance was inspired by later translations of the Platonic corpus directly from Greek (most of which was unknown in the Islamic world), not the work of Aristotle that inspired Medieval Scholasticism

You are still failing to addressed the point - this knowledge had been lost in the West. It was only by going through Arabic intermediaries that Europe rediscovered the lost classics of the ancient mediterranean - because learning had not been valued in the barbarian states, but it had been in Islamic states.

Tell me the names of the Chinese institutions of higher learning that rival the likes of the University of Paris, University of Bologna, University of Salerno, and Oxford University during the Middle Ages. Show me equivalent of the Arthur Legend in England, El Cid in Spain, the Eddas of Scandinavia, the Nibelungen Lied of Germany, Dante's Divine Comedy in Italy, or the Troubadour poems of France. Show me the Chinese accomplishments in legal theory like the Magna Carta of England or the Canon Law of Gratian
Tell me, are you just reciting things you are familiar with? Is your entire argument based on the fact that you are ignorant of the creations of other cultures? That is almost certainly the cause.

Yes, China has an immense corpus on the theory of governance and the state. That is to say, what Confucious was famous for - the articulate of the "mandate of heaven" concept of regnal legitimacy. The single most famous tale is that of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but of course who knows how much remains untranslated into English?

Where is a Western equivalent to the elegant proofs of geometric theorems in diagrams? You appear to be in complete ignorance of technologies that developed in China, such as gunpowder or metal casting, and diseminated to other regions.

Sheer nonsense I am afraid.

[Jonathan]

The west could not surpass anything in the 11th century. It was the middle of the dark ages!
Why is it that so many of the so-called egalitarians often go to the opposite extreem?

It was only by going through Arabic intermediaries that Europe rediscovered the lost classics of the ancient mediterranean - because learning had not been valued in the barbarian states, but it had been in Islamic states.
1)There is already a thread on Islam and academics.
2)I would have thought that the Church did indeed value learning in the "barbarian states".

[Fade the Butcher]

That is utter madness, Fade. The west could not surpass anything in the 11th century. It was the middle of the dark ages!

I will submit this absurd ignorant statement as evidence to the gallery that they should take into consideration when evaluating humanist's future claims. The West was in the MIDDLE of the Dark Ages in the 11th century!

China was indeed a thousand years ahead of the West

This is false.

Europe had its medieval period around 1000-1500. China had its around 0 - 500.

And this one too.

China invented the crossbow, which was new in the West in the 11th century, in 250-odd AD.

The crossbow was not new to the West in the 11th century. It was just banned in that century.

I could go on at great length - see the Cambridge "Shorter Science and Technology of China", volumes I through IV.

You seem to be a little confused here: science and technology are two different things. BTW, I see you fail to mention that China was conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century.

You are still failing to addressed the point - this knowledge had been lost in the West.

I have already addressed this point. I addressed all the others too.

It was only by going through Arabic intermediaries that Europe rediscovered the lost classics of the ancient mediterranean - because learning had not been valued in the barbarian states, but it had been in Islamic states.

Again, I will cite this as yet another example of humanist's ignorance of medieval history. It is true that the Aristotlean corpus and other works of Greek natural science were translated into Latin from Arabic during the twelfth century, but it is also true that these works were retranslated directly from the Greek originals shortly thereafter by William of Moerbeke amongst others. So no, the revival of Greek natural science in the West after the 12C cannot be attributed to Islam. The Greek translations were preferred over the Arabic translations which were of inferior quality. Finally, you don't know wtf you are talking about with respect to learning in Europe during the Early Middle Ages. The reason there was so little interest in Greek natural science during the Early Middle Ages is because the Romans themselves had little use for it and few Westerners were fluent in Greek. Early Germanic kings like Theorodic the Ostrogoth and Charlemagne patronized scholars like Boethius and Alcuin.

Tell me, are you just reciting things you are familiar with?

I am far more versed in the history of science and the Middle Ages than you are.

Is your entire argument based on the fact that you are ignorant of the creations of other cultures? That is almost certainly the cause.

Oh really?

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2911

Yes, China has an immense corpus on the theory of governance and the state.

Medieval China is actually best understood as a lesson in how not to run a state, as evidenced by the retarded state of science in China in comparison to the West and the Islamic world.

That is to say, what Confucious was famous for - the articulate of the "mandate of heaven" concept of regnal legitimacy.

LOL . . . Confucious. I am not normally so pedantic about spelling errors, but that one gave me a laugh.

The single most famous tale is that of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but of course who knows how much remains untranslated into English?

Okay.

Where is a Western equivalent to the elegant proofs of geometric theorems in diagrams?

Bwahahaha . . . the Chinese had . . . elegant proofs of geometric theorems??? :p

You appear to be in complete ignorance of technologies that developed in China, such as gunpowder or metal casting, and diseminated to other regions.

I know all about gunpowder and the other technologies that can be attributed to China. What is in dispute here is your contention that China was A THOUSAND YEARS ahead of the West. I am assuming here you believe that the Chinese had firearms A THOUSAND YEARS before Europeans.

Sheer nonsense I am afraid.

Your post.

[humanist]

Guess I have some more refuting to do. . . .

I submit this absurd ignorant statement as evidence to the gallery that they should take into consideration when evaluating contracycle's future claims. The West was in the MIDDLE of the Dark Ages in the 11th century! Laugh out loud

Quibble noted. :rolleyes: The 11th C is the Early Medieval, if you insist.

This is false.

No, it isn't.

And this one too.

Such witty repartee

The crossbow was not new to the West in the 11th century. It was just banned in that century.

HA! Banned because it was new and SHOCKING. Although it had been known to Rome, which only goes to show the futility of talking about "Europe"; it not being a meaningful entity with a singular history.

You seem to be a little confused here: science and technology are two different things. By the by, I see you fail to mention that China was conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century.
I am aware of the distinction, but not why you start to introduce military history at this point, instead of technical history. It is irrelevant.

I have already addressed this point.
You have not. You have eluded the fact that, were it not for preservation of this knowledge, by Islam, Europe would never have rediscovered it. That is why we still have Arabic words: al-gebra, al-cohol, and so on.

Again, I will cite this as yet another example of humanist's ignorance of mediaeval history.
You do that.

It is true that the Aristotlean corpus and other works of Greek natural science were translated into Latin from Arabic during the twelfth century, but it is also true that these works were retranslated directly from the Greek originals shortly thereafter by William of Moerbeke amongst others.
Your order of events is either selective or faulty:

"At the request of Thomas Aquinas he undertook a complete translation of the works of Aristotle or, for some portions, a revision of existing translations. He was the first translator of the Politics (c. 1260). The reason for the request was that the copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation had originated in Spain (see Gerard of Cremona), from the Arabic schools of the rationalist Averroes whose texts had passed through Syriac versions before being re-translated into Arabic."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Moerbeke

So no, the revival of Greek natural science in the West after the 12th Century cannot be attributed to Islam.
Without Averroes, Europe would not even have known these works existed.

Finally, you don't know wtf you are talking about with respect to learning in Europe during the Early Middle Ages.
Hmm. Perhaps you should do more research, huh?

There was so little interest in Greek natural science during the Early Middle Ages because the Romans themselves had little use for it and few Westerners were fluent in Greek. Early Germanic kings like Theorodic the Ostrogoth and Charlemagne patronised scholars like Boethius and Alcuin.
I am aware of the reasons. But they are irrelevant - for good reasons or bad reasons, Europe was not the leading edge of progress, contrary to your claim. Despite the fact that the Greeks had calculated the sphere of the Earth, this was a time in which religious dectrone pushed that back and re-asserted that the world was flat. The European Dark Ages were undoubtedly marked by a scientific and technical regression by comparisoin to the preceeding period under Rome.

I am far more versed in the history of science and the Middle Ages than you are.
Not on the evidence so far, but you have kind of given my answer the affirmative - you are indeed familiar with the mediaeval West, and unfamiliar with the East. Your misperception arises from only studying one side of the equation.

Oh really?

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2911
Then show your know. You do not even appear to know of Averroes! Did you know that Chinese cities had Muslim enclaves when Marco Polo arrived?


Medieval China is actually best understood as a lesson in how not to run a state, as evidenced by the retarded state of science in China in comparison to the West and the Islamic world.
Haha. First of all, your little rantlet is a non-sequitur: I referred specifically to the governance of the state, and you refer to general technology. And you fundamentally reveal your ignorance by asserting that China was backward! You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

Bwahahaha . . . the Chinese had . . . elegant proofs of geometric theorems???
So once again your mission is to publicly demonstrate your ignorance?

I know all about gunpowder and the other technologies that can be attributed to China. What is in dispute here is your contention that China was A THOUSAND YEARS ahead of the West. I am assuming here you believe that the Chinese had firearms A THOUSAND YEARS before Europeans.
Why would you think that? It appears you operate from a form of technical determinism.

A thousand years of progress does not necessarily produce the same outcomes.

So this is a mixture of ranting bvelligerance - aimed, I presume, at some lauding of "Whites" - built in essence on selective sources and ignorance. Par for the course for people obsessed by investigating a spurious "national character" or similar.

[Thomas777]

Humanist:

Which is it? Are some cultures/civilizations superior to others, or are all peoples/cultures "equal"?

You do understand, do you not, that the arguments that you are forwarding on this thread, and the propositions that you are presenting on other threads are fatally inconsistent?

[Fade the Butcher]

Guess I have some more refuting to do. . . .

You could start by addressing my points for a change. I have addressed every single one of yours.

Quibble noted. :rolleyes: The 11th C is the Early Medieval, if you insist.

The 11C was the beginning of the High Middle Ages.

No, it isn't.

I have already dispensed with this claim. We are still waiting for your response, btw.

Such witty repartee

Let me get this straight: Tang China was 'modern'?

HA! Banned because it was new and SHOCKING.

This is false. The crossbow had been around for centuries in Europe. It's condemnation was part of the Peace of God movement.

Although it had been known to Rome, which only goes to show the futility of talking about "Europe"; it not being a meaningful entity with a singular history.

Wrong again. The crossbow was commonly used in Europe during the Early Middle Ages.

I am aware of the distinction, but not why you start to introduce military history at this point, instead of technical history. It is irrelevant.

Why didn't the Chinese stop the Mongols? They were endowed with superior technology like firearms and the cannon a thousand years before Europeans, right?

You have not.

The gallery is free to browse the thread and see that I have addressed this point twice now. humanist is being nonresponsive.

You have eluded the fact that, were it not for preservation of this knowledge, by Islam, Europe would never have rediscovered it.

This isn't true. You forgot to mention that Islam acquired Greek natural philosophy and science in the first place from the Byzantines who were always in possession of it. This would include many texts that were never translated into Arabic such as most of the works of Plato. Medieval Europeans heard about the existence of such texts and went searching for them in Islamic Spain and Byzantium. The earliest translations occurred in Islamic Spain during the 12C, but they shortly fell out of general use once translations were made from the original Greek.

That is why we still have Arabic words: al-gebra, al-cohol, and so on.

The etymology of the words proves nothing. Algebra is a good example of this. Contrary to popular myth, the Arabs did not invent algebra. They acquired it through translations of Diophantes of Alexandria.

You do that.

Noted.

Your order of events is either selective or faulty

Relying upon Wikipedia now? You didn't mention that William of Moerbeke translated the texts directly from Greek and that they came from Byzantium. Byzantium was a far more important source of the preservation of Greek knowledge than the Islamic world.

Without Averroes, Europe would not even have known these works existed.

This is false.

Hmm. Perhaps you should do more research, huh?

More nonresponsive tripe.

I am aware of the reasons.

You asserted that it was because Germanic kings did not patronize learning.

But they are irrelevant - for good reasons or bad reasons, Europe was not the leading edge of progress, contrary to your claim.

I have dealt with the claims about science in Medieval Islam in another thread. In any case, science was far more advanced there than it was in China. Science was nonexistent in China.

Despite the fact that the Greeks had calculated the sphere of the Earth, this was a time in which religious dectrone pushed that back and re-asserted that the world was flat.

Is it not completely obvious by now that humanist knows absolutely nothing about Europe during the Middle Ages? The idea that medieval Europeans believed the world was flat is a modern myth that has no basis in history. The sphericity of the earth was attested to in dozens of sources throughout the Middle Ages, from Isidore of Seville to Albertus Magnus.

The European Dark Ages were undoubtedly marked by a scientific and technical regression by comparisoin to the preceeding period under Rome.

This is false. Slavery disappeared in Europe during the so-called 'Dark Ages'. It continued to flourish in the Islamic world until well into the modern age. This is because Europeans during the 'Dark Ages' began to make widespread use of better technology such as watermills. Jean Gimpel and Lynn White have addressed this issue in the past.

Not on the evidence so far, but you have kind of given my answer the affirmative - you are indeed familiar with the mediaeval West, and unfamiliar with the East.

I am familiar with the history of Medieval Islam and Medieval China as well.

Your misperception arises from only studying one side of the equation.

The Chinese had elegant geometrical proofs, right? :p

Then show your know. You do not even appear to know of Averroes!

I discussed Averroes in that thread.

Did you know that Chinese cities had Muslim enclaves when Marco Polo arrived?

Yes. The Chinese relied upon Muslim astronomers because they were so inferior in astronomy and mathematics. Did you know that?

Haha. First of all, your little rantlet is a non-sequitur: I referred specifically to the governance of the state, and you refer to general technology.

No. I specifically addressed public administration in Medieval China and pointed to the disastrous effect it had upon science relative to the Medieval West with its autonomous universities and corporations.

And you fundamentally reveal your ignorance by asserting that China was backward! You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

China was backward relative to both the West and the Islamic world with respect to science.


So once again your mission is to publicly demonstrate your ignorance?

By all means, illustrate my ignorance. I would like to see these logical geometric proofs in Medieval China. See, I was under the impression that the Chinese possessed no knowledge of Euclid.

Why would you think that? It appears you operate from a form of technical determinism.

You don't recall saying China was A THOUSAND YEARS ahead of the West? This would include logic, right?

A thousand years of progress does not necessarily produce the same outcomes.

A thousand years of progress and the Chinese still didn't discover elementary logic? :p

So this is a mixture of ranting bvelligerance - aimed, I presume, at some lauding of "Whites" - built in essence on selective sources and ignorance.

We are still waiting to see the Chinese geometrical proofs.

Par for the course for people obsessed by investigating a spurious "national character" or similar.

humanist has been shot down yet again.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

HA! Banned because it was new and SHOCKING. Although it had been known to Rome, which only goes to show the futility of talking about "Europe"; it not being a meaningful entity with a singular history.

The Crossbow had been around in the west under other names already since Roman times based on previous Greek models.

http://198.144.2.125/Siege/Aitor/Cheroballistra.htm

Fade is correct also that Islamic translations from Classical authors comes straight from their violent conquest of the areas where these works were preserved in the first place such as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, from the Byzantines. I´m fairly positive Byzantium had no intention of forgetting about those works.

[1-800]

"At the request of Thomas Aquinas he undertook a complete translation of the works of Aristotle or, for some portions, a revision of existing translations. He was the first translator of the Politics (c. 1260). The reason for the request was that the copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation had originated in Spain (see Gerard of Cremona), from the Arabic schools of the rationalist Averroes whose texts had passed through Syriac versions before being re-translated into Arabic."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Moerbeke



That article does not have even one source.

Wikipedia is on an academic par with Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections: The Ultimate Guide to Star Wars Vehicles and Spacecraft and My First Book of Animals from A to Z.

[humanist]

You could start by addressing my points for a change. I have addressed every single one of yours.
Sheer evasion.

I have already dispensed with this claim. We are still waiting for your response, by the way.
Have you?

Let me get this straight: Tang China was 'modern'
Are you mad? Please stick to the topic.

This is false. The crossbow had been around for centuries in Europe. Its condemnation was part of the Peace of God movement.
It was not part of the peace of god movement, which was an attempt to curtail private warfare. It was specifically issued becuase it undercut the military power of nobles - the very opposite of the peasant-freindly Peace of God issue.

Wrong again. The crossbow was commonly used in Europe during the Early Middle Ages.
Evidence please.

Why didn't the Chinese stop the Mongols? They were endowed with superior technology like firearms and the cannon a thousand years before Europeans, right?
Perhaps becuase technology is not the only decisive factor? Perhaps because muscle-powered technology is rather different in scale than industrial? Perhaps because the Mongols were extremely sophisticated metal workers and had quite a high technology of their own? There are many relevant factors in war, as Sun Tzu would tell you.

The gallery is free to browse the thread and see that I have addressed this point twice now. Humanist is being nonresponsive.
Precisely so, and now your incompetence will be surmounted by duplicity.

This is not true. You forgot to mention that Islam acquired Greek natural philosophy and science in the first place from the Byzantines who were always in possession of it.
My, the Eastern Roman Empire; mentioned previously under the rubric "Greek and Roman". Are you unfamiliialr with the origin of the Byzantines, then?

This would include many texts that were never translated into Arabic such as most of the works of Plato. Mediaeval Europeans heard about the existence of such texts and went searching for them in Islamic Spain and Byzantium. The earliest translations occurred in Islamic Spain during the 12C, but they shortly fell out of general use once translations were made from the original Greek
Thank you for finally conceding the point you have hitherto attempted to deny.

The etymology of the words proves nothing. Algebra is a good example of this. Contrary to popular myth, the Arabs did not invent algebra. They acquired it through translations of Diophantes of Alexandria.
What it PROVES is the vector of transmission. Please try to keep up.

Relying upon Wikipedia now? You failed to mention that William of Moerbeke translated the texts directly from Greek and that they came from Byzantium. Byzantium was a far more important source of the preservation of Greek knowledge than the Islamic world.
I did NOT fail to mention they were from the greek - that appeared in the paragraph I quoted. Here, look again: "The reason for the request was that the copies of Aristotle in Latin then in circulation had originated in Spain (see Gerard of Cremona), from the Arabic schools of the rationalist Averroes whose texts had passed through Syriac versions before being re-translated into Arabic."

Once again you have been caught purposely ignoring your opponent's argument.

This is false.
Reduce to simple assertion, are you?

You asserted that it was because Germanic kings did not patronize learning.
I said BARBARIAN, not Germanic.

I have dealt with the claims about science in Medieval Islam in another thread. In any case, science was far more advanced there than it was in China. Science was nonexistent in China.
... and that is just as ignorant claim now as it was when you first made it.

Is it not completely obvious by now that Humanist knows absolutely nothing about Europe during the Middle Ages? The idea that mediaeval Europeans believed the world was flat is a modern myth that has no basis in history. The sphericity of the earth was attested to in dozens of sources throughout the Middle Ages, from Isidore of Seville to Albertus Magnus.
Oh dear, now you are resorting to Christian apologists, seeing as you know you are on the ropes. And once again, you dishonestly rely on misrepresenting my actual argument to shore up your weak claims. Let us, see, what *I* said was: "Despite the fact that the Greeks had calculated the sphere of the Earth, this was a time in which religoius dectrone pushed that back and re-asserted that the world was flat." You CHOOSE to interpret this as "Europeans believed the world was flat", despite the fact that is not what I claimed.

You are now demonstratiung a poattern of selective quotation, misrepresentation, and making invalid generalisations.

And thus you have failed to address the regression in knowledge, and have denied the Churchs' attempts to repress such arguments on the basis of contradiction of scripture.

This is false. Slavery disappeared in Europe during the so-called 'Dark Ages'.
Quite wrong; the conflict between Danes and Saxons was consistently characterised by slave-taking. And this continued in Europe throughout the middle ages despite the rise and then decline of serfdom because of the market in the East - many of the notorious Barbary pirates ropean adventurers.


I am familiar with the history of Medieval Islam and Medieval China as well.
I simply don't believe you.

The Chinese had elegant geometrical proofs, right?
Yes. Here's Liu Hui from the third century:
"The shorter leg multiplied by itself is the red square, and the longer leg multiplied by itself is the blue square. Let them be moved about so as to patch each other, each according to its type. Because the differences are completed, there is no instability. They form together the area of the square on the hypotenuse; extracting the square root gives the hypotenuse."

I discussed Averroes elsewhere.
Did you? Where?

Yes. The Chinese relied upon Muslim astronomers because they were so inferior in astronomy and mathematics. Did you know that?

The Chinese have been making astrological observations since the Shang dynasty at least; the Gan Shi Xing Jing is the earliest stellar catalogue in the world.

The reason for the weakness of Chinese astronomy from time to time is that the archives, as state secrets, were burned more than once - at least in 213BCE and again during the Mongol invasion. Which is a great pity, because if they had been preserved we might have consistent observations going back to 3000 BC.

No. I specifically addressed public administration in Medieval China and pointed to the disastrous effect it had upon science relative to the Medieval West with its autonomous universities and corporations.
Now that is a much more reasonable position to adopt, and that argument has much merit. But that does not undercut any of the claims I have made; after all, it is those theories of public administration that make their way to the West in the form of "princes mirrors", which formed the inspiration for Machiavelli's work, among others.

China was backward relative to both the West and the Islamic world with respect to science.
Repetition doesn't make it more true. There is undoubtedly a difference in the terms science as a pure art is held, but this is counterpointed by the relative stability of China and the accumulation of knowledge.

By all means, illustrate my ignorance. I would like to see these logical geometric proofs in Medieval China. You see, I was under the impression that the Chinese possessed no knowledge of Euclid.
See above.

You do not recall saying China was A THOUSAND YEARS ahead of the West? This would include logic, right?
Would it? Hmm, yes, you ARE working from technical determinism.

A thousand years of progress and the Chinese still didn't discover elementary logic?
Of COURSE they discovered it, in the persons of the Mohists, and of course Gongsun Long who famously argued that "a white horse is not a horse". And then there are the Daoists, who had what was very very nearly a model of scientific naturalism.

It just was not as important as order and the continuity and stability of the world, manifested by the empire, and this strand of thought was effectively suppressed in favour of the Confucian doctrine of the good state.

We are still waiting to see the Chinese geometrical proofs.
And now you have seen one.

[A. Radek]

Why is it that so many of the so-called egalitarians often go to the opposite extreem?

Both sides are indulging in extreems here. It's an entirely subjective topic base on entirely personal 'value' judgments, whether one was 'superior' to the other. They both had entirely different geographies and their societies had radically different philosophies of Nature and government. And, 'History' ain't over yet, despite some current delusions to the contrary.

The idea of 'superiority' assumes a continuitarian view of history, the tendency to look back on the past and flattening out the rise and fall of history so that it resembles a long rising line of 'progress' from the past to the present, which is not really the case. This view is given a big rasberry by C. Vance Woodward.

" In his memoir Thinking Back, historian C. Vance Woodward claimed that his critics on both the left and the right shared a common flaw of historical vision which he labeled 'Continuitarianism'. By this Woodward meant a reductionist tendency to flatten out the peaks and valleys of historical experience , to average down its variety by collapsing it into a relentless stream of continuity, moving toward the present like a glacier. From the myopic perspective of the present, distant mountains blurred into hillsides, rolling ineluctably toward us to produce what we are". Widely admired as the "dean of Southern historians," Woodward devoted a distinguished career at Johns Hopkins and Yale to demonstrating the discontinuity of the South's historical experience. Constant change in the South had created a broad menu of usable pasts, Woodward argued, and this maximized the freedom of choice for present generations to shape the future." I am not a determinist of any kind," he said.

From Hugh Davis Graham's The Civil Rights Era:Origins And Development of National Policy, page 450 of the Oxford University Press hardcover edition.

The primary source is Thinking Back: The Perils Of Writing History-C. Vance Woodward.

The book is on the Civil rights Era, but the 'Continuitarianism' view pretty much applies in this thread and a lot of others.

[Fade the Butcher]

humanist,

I'm going to whip up something special for you this time around. I dealt with Who Are You? in a similar way over at SF. Stay tuned.

[humanist]

Don't forget about Mehgreb, which would've had the great library at Carthage, as well as several other libraries that would've fueled Roman and Greek knowledge in Spain and Southern Italy at the time of the moors, later to be fuel for the Renaissance. The only means of arguing that the moors didn't ignite the Renaissance would be ignorance; it's common knowledge that it wasn't until the crusades that Western Europe had interested in trade and learning, and that the greek and Roman sources came from Muslim areas ruled by the moors.

Also, the european basis for the Ancient Roman and Greek texts themselves is dubious. Plenty of knowledge acreditted to the greeks came from Egypt and Semetic empires. Two such examples are the references to Hypocrates as the father of medicine, properly attributed to Imhotep, and Pythagras Therem, also dating to the Egyptians at the time of Imhotep's planning of the Great Building. In fact, Imhotep's existence flies in the face of anyone who attemps to assert the greak origin of great thought; he stood as a great astrologer, priest, scientist, doctor, mathematician, etc. and he lived thousands of years before the golden age of the greeks. Even the greeks themselves attributed much of their knowledge to the Egyptians, and praise the origins of all human greatness as being ethiopian.

[OVERWATCH]

Even the greeks themselves <...> praise the origins of all human greatness as being ethiopian.

evidence?

......

[Fade the Butcher]

Don't forget about Mehgreb, which would've had the great library at Carthage, as well as several other libraries that would've fueled Roman and Greek knowledge in Spain and Southern Italy at the time of the moors, later to be fuel for the Renaissance.

Those Almoravids and Almohads were big tolerant patrons of science and philosophy. :p

The only means of arguing that the moors didn't ignite the Renaissance would be ignorance

Ebusitanus will get a few laughs when he hears this one. What happened to al-Andalus, btw? Here is a better question for you. Why did Maimonides and Averroes leave Islamic Spain?

it's common knowledge that it wasn't until the crusades that Western Europe had interested in trade and learning, and that the greek and Roman sources came from Muslim areas ruled by the moors.

This isn't common knowledge. The commercial revival began in Europe during the tenth century in the cities of Northern Italy long before the Crusades. The revival in learning goes back even further to the Carolingian Renaissance. See Rosamond McKitterick. Also, I have already explained in the other thread how Greek natural philosophy and science was acquired in the Islamic world through Byzantium and how translations of classical Greek texts into Latin were made from the Greek originals.

Also, the european basis for the Ancient Roman and Greek texts themselves is dubious.

Oh Christ. Here we go. The Afrocentrist myth of the stolen legacy.

Plenty of knowledge acreditted to the greeks came from Egypt and Semetic empires.

Not really. Anyone who knows much about Greek philosophy and science knows how radically different it was from that of Egypt.

Two such examples are the references to Hypocrates as the father of medicine, properly attributed to Imhotep, and Pythagras Therem, also dating to the Egyptians at the time of Imhotep's planning of the Great Building. In fact, Imhotep's existence flies in the face of anyone who attemps to assert the greak origin of great thought; he stood as a great astrologer, priest, scientist, doctor, mathematician, etc. and he lived thousands of years before the golden age of the greeks. Even the greeks themselves attributed much of their knowledge to the Egyptians, and praise the origins of all human greatness as being ethiopian.

Mary Lefkowitz has dealt with this crap in Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/046509838X?v=glance). I have addressed it numerous times before on now long lost threads on the old Phora.

[Petr]

The only means of arguing that the moors didn't ignite the Renaissance would be ignorance;
Actually Renaissance was largely ignited by Greek scholars who had to flee westwards after Turks overran the Byzantine realm...


Petr

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Great library at Carthage? Which one? The original one got either looted by the Romans or burned. Later roman versions based upon the Roman veteran colony build upon the ruins of ancient Carthage were never as big as the fromer Phoenician colony. Then of course came the Vandals who made quite an honor to their name throughout North Africa and the western med islands so not sure what would have survived that one. Then warfare goes back and forth over that area for quite some centuries. Not sure what would the Muslims have found that could not have been found elsewhere in the fromer Roman lands.

About the "Golden age" of "Moorish" Spain..well...there are at least one threat dealing with that myth already somehwhere (to lazy at work to search :D) Lets just say that there was more infighting and religious/ethnic intollerance in the Caliphate and its later inheritors than anything the evil and backward Christians could dish out.

[Sulla the Dictator]

The crossbow, the cannon, and firearms were known and used in medieval Europe during the fourteenth century. The earliest guns and cannons appeared in China towards the end of the thirteenth century; about the same time they appeared in Europe. See Jack Kelly's Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics.


The Chinese were using gunpowder for military purposes from the 1100s onward. Including some rather sophisticated forays into rocketry.

[Fade the Butcher]

The Chinese were using gunpowder for military purposes from the 1100s onward.

Their early gunpowder weapons (i.e., fire arrows and fire lances) were crude and ineffective. Their gunpowder bombs during the twelfth century were the equivilant of large firecrackers. Northern China was conquered by the Jurchens during the twelfth century and China proper was conquered by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The first guns emerged in China towards the end of the thirteenth century and the cannon first appears during the early fourteenth century.

Gunpowder was known in Europe by the middle of the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon mentioned it in his Opus Majus that he wrote for Pope Clement IV. He had been writing about gunpowder for several decades before that. The gun and the cannon made their first appearance in Europe around the late thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries. The idea that Europe was a thousand years behind the Chinese in the development of gunpowder is laughable.

Including some rather sophisticated forays into rocketry.

Their rockets were useless for the most part. They certainly were nowhere near as deadly as the longbow which was a far more effective long range weapon.

[Anima Eternae]

Their early gunpowder weapons (i.e., fire arrows and fire lances) were crude and ineffective. Their gunpowder bombs during the twelfth century were the equivilant of large firecrackers. Northern China was conquered by the Jurchens during the twelfth century and China proper was conquered by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The first guns emerged in China towards the end of the thirteenth century and the cannon first appears during the early fourteenth century.

Their rockets were useless for the most part. They certainly were nowhere near as deadly as the longbow which was a far more effective long range weapon.

O rly?

http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=245928&postcount=45

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:hvj400_NfQEJ:www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Black_powder

By the 10th century, gunpowder began to be used for military purposes in China in the form of rockets and explosive bombs fired from catapults. The first reference to cannon appears in 1126 when oil bamboo tubes were used to launch missiles at the enemy. Eventually bamboo tubes were replaced by metal tubes, and the oldest cannon in China dates from 1290. From China, the military use of gunpower appears to have spread to Japan and Europe. It was used by the Mongols against the Hungarians in 1241 and was mentioned by Roger Bacon in 1248. By the mid 14th century, early cannons are mentioned extensively both in Europe and in China.

In China as in Europe, the use of gunpowder to produce firearms and cannon was delayed by difficulties in creating metal tubes that would contain an explosion. This problem may have led to the false myth that the Chinese used their discovery only for the manufacture of fireworks. In fact, gunpowder powered cannon and rockets were extensively used in the Mongol conquests of the 13th century and were a feature of East Asian warfare afterwards.



..

[Fade the Butcher]

O rly?

I don't see anything in this post that contradicts what I said.

[Fade the Butcher]

The weakest part of Guns, Germs, and Steel is without a doubt the Epilogue in which Jared Diamond discusses why the Fertile Crescent and China lost their lead to Western Europe. He only spends a few pages discussing the matter which is entirely indefensible given the importance of how the changes internal to Western Europe during the High Middle Ages would alter the course of human history. It is as this point that his geographic determinism most evidently falls apart.

In the case of China, Diamond argues that Chinese unity stiffled scientific and technological development whereas Western disunity fostered scientific and technological progress. The tension in this argument should be obvious: throughout the earlier part of the book, Diamond devoted enormous attention to how food production gave rise to centralized government which had hitherto been of overwhelming importance to his argument, but here Diamond begins to reverses himself. It is now disunity, not unity, that is the decisive factor in scientific and technological progress. This disunity has its origins in geographic barriers that prevented European consolidation into a single state, but here again Diamond had hitherto stressed the importance of geographic barriers in inhibiting development.

There is another big flaw in this argument. Diamond identifies the state as being the locus of development. China ossified because it was unified as a single state (why after only 1450 did this happen?), but Western Europe flourished because it was composed of separate independent states (although it was just as divided before 1450). The state wasn't the predominant player in the development of science and technology in Western Europe, though. This took place largely within the confines of semi-autonomous institutions and practices internal to Western states (i.e., universities, corporations, guilds, independent organizations, etc.) that had nothing to do with geography.

It was the lack of such autonomous institutions in the Islamic world and China that inhibited scientific and technological progress there and the rise of such institutions in the West after 1000 that facilitated the transformation. Chinese unification had nothing to do with it. The U.S. is a clear counterexample. Geography also lent itself to consolidation in the case of America, but American consolidation hasn't inhibited scientific and technological progress. This is because there are all sorts of semi-autonomous practices and institutions that foster science and technology that are independent of the state just like there are in contemporary Europe.

[Anima Eternae]

1. Chronological discrepancies

2. Effectiveness of gunpowder weapons

3. Chinese as "intellectually myopic"

[Fade the Butcher]

1. Chronological discrepancies

2. Effectiveness of gunpowder weapons

3. Chinese as "intellectually myopic"

I took my info from the history of gunpowder book cited in this thread.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Their early gunpowder weapons (i.e., fire arrows and fire lances) were crude and ineffective.


My question is: So what?

All 'early European gunpowder weapons' were crude and ineffective. Intermediate European gunpowder weapons are crude and ineffective. Bullpup assault rifles don't spring fully formed from a fountain.

The fact is that they EXISTED. Their existence shows a level of ingenuity and innovation that is impressive: PARTICULARLY because they predate their European equivalents.

http://www.silcom.com/~vikman/isles/scriptorium/firearm/handgonn.gif

The above is a piece of garbage, militarily speaking. It is far less efficient, accurate, or dangerous than a longbow. It is useless in poor weather. It is less deadly than a crossbow.

Now, do we mock the ridiculous Europeans for this silly weapon? Or do we recognize this as part of an evolution of technology, and salute their ingenuity?

Furthermore, saying that Chinese rockets were "crude and ineffective" isn't even true. Rockets are terror weapons unless they're guided. Thats the way the British used them in the Napoleonic Wars. WHEN they work correctly they're devastating. And they allow an attack in depth that normal battery fire was incapable of, with the use of its arc. They're actually very clever weapons. Indeed, we can see that modern armies are more and more tending towards dependance on rocketry than artillery.

The earliest we know true rockets were used is 1232, a time when the Chinese and Mongols were at war. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled their enemy with a barrage of “arrows of flying fire” — the first solid-propellant rockets. A tube, capped at one end, was filled with gunpowder; the other end was left open and the tube attached to a long stick. When the powder was ignited, the rapid burning of the powder produced hot gas that escaped out the open end and produced thrust. The stick acted as a simple guidance system that kept the rocket moving in the same general direction throughout its flight. Just how effective fire-arrows were as military weapons is not clear, but their psychological effect must have been formidable because following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols began making their own rockets and may have been responsible for the spread of this technology to Europe.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/Chinese_fire-arrows.html


Their gunpowder bombs during the twelfth century were the equivilant of large firecrackers.


Thats absurd.

During the Jurchen siege of Xiangyang in A.D. 1206 to 1207, the defending Song dynasty fabricated baked or sun dried mud balls filled with noxious substances to be flung by their catapults. The reason for this was two fold. The first was to cause a spray of poisoned shrapnel upon impact so as to incur widespread damage, and the second was to deny the attacking Jurchens from reusing the projectiles and flinging them back at the city. By A.D. 1126, Song defenders of the Jurchen siege of Kaifeng were firing gunpowder strapped HuoJians and flinging gunpowder filled grenades at their attackers. In A.D. 1231, the transition had been made for grenades from soft case to iron casing. The desperate defending Jin used the "Heaven Shaking Thunder Crash Bomb" against their new tormentors, the Mongols.

http://authors.history-forum.com/liang_jieming/chinesesiegewarfare/siegeweapons-earlygrenades.html


Northern China was conquered by the Jurchens during the twelfth century and China proper was conquered by the Mongols in the thirteenth century.


The Russians, Poles, and Hungarians were smashed by the Mongols just the same, at around the same time.

Nations lose wars. Especially when they fight the Golden Horde.

The first guns emerged in China towards the end of the thirteenth century and the cannon first appears during the early fourteenth century.


Or not.


I have found the earliest illustration of a cannon in the world, which dates from the change-over from the Northern Song to the Southern Song around 1127, which was 150 years before the development of the cannon in the West.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/china/age.html


Gunpowder was known in Europe by the middle of the thirteenth century.


The Chinese had gunpowder much earlier.


Roger Bacon mentioned it in his Opus Majus that he wrote for Pope Clement IV. He had been writing about gunpowder for several decades before that.


And it is very possible that he heard word of it in Europe from muslims, who likely heard of it in dealings with the Chinese or their neighbors.


The gun and the cannon made their first appearance in Europe around the late thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries. The idea that Europe was a thousand years behind the Chinese in the development of gunpowder is laughable.


You're confusing cannon with gunpowder. You're conflating Chinese development of projectile weapons and European development of projectile weapons with the development of gunpowder.

Which is inaccurate, obviously.

After the Tang Dynasty (618-907), things took a much faster course as gunpowder was already used in simple hand-grenades which were thrown by a catapult. In 1126, Li Gang, a local official, recorded how he ordered the defenders of the city of Kaifeng to "fire cannons" at the invading Nuzhen tribal people, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders.

The first prescription for gunpowder appeared in 1044, much earlier than the earliest (1265) gunpowder-making instructions recorded in Europe. By the Song Dynasty (960-1126), gunpowder was in extensive use. Weapons made with it included rifles and rockets. The Song army also used a kind of flame thrower which involved packing gunpowder into bamboo tubes. The earliest picture of a European cannon shows that it bears a striking similarity to Chinese cannon of 1128.

About 1230, the Song army had cannon powerful enough to breach city walls.

A bronze Chinese cannon cast in 1332 is the oldest one in the world extant today. Many bronze and iron cannons have been unearthed in China, most of them bearing inscriptions dating them to between 1280 and 1380.



Their rockets were useless for the most part.


‘The English Artillery made dreadful havoc in our ranks; we were so completely exposed, that their rockets passed easily through all the lines, and fell in the middle of our equipage, which was placed behind on the road, and its environs.’

--French officer at Waterloo

http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Articles/Rockets/History_of_Rockets.htm

The concept of the Congreve rocket was in fact very similar to the Chinese rocket. The only difference was available materials and trial and error. The British rockets even suffered the same problems.

But they were considered VERY useful. Especially, as I said earlier, as terror weapons.


They certainly were nowhere near as deadly as the longbow which was a far more effective long range weapon.

The 'hand gonne' isn't as effective as a longbow either. Its cheap. Its easy to use. Its for mass volley. Its for terror.

Its NOT INTENDED to be accurate.

[Anima Eternae]

Wow, great post.

[OVERWATCH]

The Japanese were way ahead of Europe in firearms tactics, late XV cent., Oda Nobunaga pioneered the snail method, which was three(3) rows of gunners, the front row firing, the second and third row in progressive states of reload, when the last row had reloaded they would move forward as the front line and fire their weapons, they would 'walk' the line across the battlefield like this. I'm not sure how long this took to catch on in Europe but I believe it wan't employed until XVII cent.

http://img485.imageshack.us/img485/2396/gunner22oo.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The Japanese were also the undisputed masters at culturing pearls with highly secret techniques for quite some time.

Also, from what I've seen of traditional Oriental construction methods, it's quite complicated indeed.

[Anima Eternae]

Jewish pro-yellow propoganda. Everyone knows asians only copy and are intellectually myopic. My username depicting a Mozart composition combined with my greek bust avatar means I am wholly qualified to speak on such matters with the utmost authority.


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04787a.htm

http://images.art.com/images/-/Lysippos/Portrait-bust-of-Alexander-the-Great-356-323-BC-known-as-the-Azara-herm-Greek-replica--C11726888.jpeg

[The Retard]

The black egyptian invented gunpowder.

From as early as 10,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D., Blacks were in the forefront in the development of science, culture and technology. Black empires and civilizations from the prehistoric Zingh Empire of 15,000 B.C. which was situated in Mauritania
to to ancient Khemet (Egypt) and Nubia-Kush, which existed about 17,000 years ago, experimented in various aspects of science and technology. Some of these sciences and technologies were so advanced that stories of flying machines and the invention of advanced machines has been passed down through ancient writings. Later Black civilizations such as Khem and Mali experimented and created various sciences and technologies such as the chemical and mystry sciences of ancient Khemet to the surgical sciences of Mali, in West Africa. As early as about 400 B.C., a Black Pharaoh named Pi Di Amen built a model glider to conduct experiments in flight. Centuries before, the Black Egyptians had alread invented gunpowder for use in their temples and mystry schools. http://community-2.webtv.net/PAULNUBIAEMPIRE/THEGLORIESOFTHE/

[Anima Eternae]

of these sciences and technologies were so advanced that stories of flying machines and the invention of advanced machines has been passed down through ancient writings.

lol pwnage

[Fade the Butcher]

My question is: So what?

I take it you are not disputing my point.

All 'early European gunpowder weapons' were crude and ineffective.

I don't recall ever suggesting otherwise. The question is when did gunpowder technology become an effective military weapon in Europe and China; were Europeans 'a thousand years' behind China in this respect as per humanist's argument. This was not the case.

Intermediate European gunpowder weapons are crude and ineffective.

This is false. Gunpowder had become a very effective military weapon in Europe during the fourteenth century. It had rendered the castle obsolete which undermined the whole feudal system which in turn paved the way for the rise of the nation-state. The French made extensive use of it to drive the English out of France during the Hundred Years War. I don't suppose I need to point out the fate of Constantinople in 1453.

"By the first decade of the fifteenth century, guns had evolved to such a state that no commander would neglect to bring them along on such a campaign."

Jack Kelly, Gunpowder: Alchemy Bombards and Pyrotechnics (The History of the Explosive That Changed the World)[/i] (New York: Basic Books), p.45

Bullpup assault rifles don't spring fully formed from a fountain.

I don't recall ever making that argument. Hammer away at your straw man, though.

The fact is that they EXISTED.

I haven't argued that Chinese "fire lances" and "fire arrows" did not exist. I simply pointed out that one cannot say that Chinese possessed superior military technology because they possessed crude and ineffective gunpowder weapons. China was conquered twice by Northern barbarians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Their existence shows a level of ingenuity and innovation that is impressive: PARTICULARLY because they predate their European equivalents.

I never said that Europeans possessed gunpowder before the Chinese; that the Chinese did not invent the first gunpowder weapons. The fate of gunpowder weapons in China is rather interesting though. Say, why don't you relate to us the state of gunpowder technology in China during the sixteenth century when Europeans arrived there?

The above is a piece of garbage, militarily speaking. It is far less efficient, accurate, or dangerous than a longbow. It is useless in poor weather. It is less deadly than a crossbow.

The above is an early fifteenth century English hand gun. It is true that early hand guns were far outclassed by the longbow. The same cannot be said, of course, about the cannon during the same time period. The Mons Meg:

http://www.rampantscotland.com/edinburgh/graphics2/monsmeg3e.jpg

Now, do we mock the ridiculous Europeans for this silly weapon?

I haven't mocked the Chinese for their fire arrows and fire lances. I have disputed the notion that they possessed superior military technology relative to foreigners in light of their possession of early gunpowder technology which, of course, is evidently false in light of the conquest of Song China twice within two hundred years.

Or do we recognize this as part of an evolution of technology, and salute their ingenuity?

Medieval Chinese fire lances and fire arrows did not evolve into the modern gun. Gunpowder weaponry in China continued to develop in China along an independent course. The Chinese possessed vastly inferior firearms when Europeans arrived there during the sixteenth century.

Furthermore, saying that Chinese rockets were "crude and ineffective" isn't even true.

No. It is true. They were used against the Jurchens, a semi-nomadic tribe from the north, who conquered Northern China in the twelfth century.

Rockets are terror weapons unless they're guided. Thats the way the British used them in the Napoleonic Wars.

We aren't discussing the Napoleonic Wars.

WHEN they work correctly they're devastating. And they allow an attack in depth that normal battery fire was incapable of, with the use of its arc. They're actually very clever weapons.

The Jurchens were not devastated by Chinese fire arrows. The Mongols were not devastated by them either when they conquered China a hundred years later.

Indeed, we can see that modern armoes are more and more tending towards dependance on rocketry than artillery.

The bottle rocket firecracker, the modern descendent of Chinese fire arrows, is not a lethal weapon. Gunpowder is used today only in firecrackers. Modern shells rely upon other explosives that were developed in the nineteenth century.

The earliest we know true rockets were used is 1232, a time when the Chinese and Mongols were at war. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled their enemy with a barrage of “arrows of flying fire” — the first solid-propellant rockets. . . . Just how effective fire-arrows were as military weapons is not clear, but their psychological effect must have been formidable because following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols began making their own rockets and may have been responsible for the spread of this technology to Europe.

Is this your evidence that Chinese fire arrows were not crude and ineffective; the fact that the Song Dynasty used them against the Jurchens? Are you unaware of the fact that the Chinese LOST and were CONQUERED by the Jurchens (who ruled Northern China until its conquest by the Mongols)?

Thats absurd.

Once again, Sulla doesn't know what he is talking about.

"In the eighty years since they had recorded the first gunpowder formulas, Sung technicians had discovered a new use for the magical substance: the first explosive bombs. They fashioned these bundles of explosive from traditional materials like bamboo or paper wrapped with string. They probably borrowed the idea from the fabricators of fireworks -- the bombs were in fact little more than large firecrackers."

Ibid., p.11

The Russians, Poles, and Hungarians were smashed by the Mongols just the same, at around the same time.

No one has argued that the Russians, Poles, and Hungarians possessed superior military technology over a thousand years beyond that of their contemporaries.

Nations lose wars. Especially when they fight the Golden Horde.

The Chinese had been producing their fire arrows for over two hundred years before they were conquered by the Mongols. That says a lot about their superior military technology. :p
Or not.

Or yes.

"The earliest guns appeared in China in the late 1200s -- the oldest extant hand cannon is tentatively dated 1288."

Ibid., p.17

The Chinese had gunpowder much earlier.

I agree. They had been used them in firecrackers for centuries. The cannon and the hand gun only came around much later, though.

And it is very possible that he heard word of it in Europe from muslims, who likely heard of it in dealings with the Chinese or their neighbors.

Perhaps. Gunpowder arrived in Europe via the Muslims or Mongols. No one knows for sure. We do know that Europeans were aware of gunpowder though by the middle of the thirteenth century.

You're confusing cannon with gunpowder.

I haven't confused gunpowder with the cannon or hand gun at all.

You're conflating Chinese development of projectile weapons and European development of projectile weapons with the development of gunpowder.

This is false. I don't deny that the Chinese had been experimenting with gunpowder since the ninth century. The question is when did Europeans and the Chinese respectively begin to make effective use of gunpowder weaponry, as gunpowder only warrants significance in this respect. I have argued that the first effective gunpowder weapons emerged in China and Europe at roughly the same time; that Europeans were not 'a thousand years' behind China in this respect.

Which is inaccurate, obviously.

Sulla elaborates on his straw man.


‘The English Artillery made dreadful havoc in our ranks; we were so completely exposed, that their rockets passed easily through all the lines, and fell in the middle of our equipage, which was placed behind on the road, and its environs.’

--French officer at Waterloo

http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Articles/Rockets/History_of_Rockets.htm

The Napoleonic Wars have nothing to do with this debate.

The concept of the Congreve rocket was in fact very similar to the Chinese rocket. The only difference was available materials and trial and error. The British rockets even suffered the same problems.

I said that Medieval Chinese fire arrows and rockets were crude and ineffective military weapons. In order to falsify my claim, you would have to demonstrate that this was not the case. You have gone about this by citing their use against the Jurchens who DEFEATED the Chinese and ruled Northern China until its conquest by the Mongols. The rockets and fire arrows were used again against the Mongols a century later and again the Chinese were defeated.

But they were considered VERY useful. Especially, as I said earlier, as terror weapons.

Medieval Chinese gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, rockets, fire lances, firecracker bombs and so on might be of some antiquarian interest but they were not effective weapons of war. It was only with the emergence of the gun and the cannon that the use of gunpowder became revolutionary in warfare.

The 'hand gonne' isn't as effective as a longbow either. Its cheap. Its easy to use. Its for mass volley. Its for terror.

See my quote about fifteenth century guns.

Its NOT INTENDED to be accurate.

If the longbow was superior to the earliest guns, the China obviously didn't possess superior military technology during the 13C.

[Fade the Butcher]

The Japanese were also the undisputed masters at culturing pearls with highly secret techniques for quite some time.

You forgot to point out that the Japanese abolished firearms and didn't make use of them again until the nineteenth century. Imagine what Europe would be like today if the nobility had abolished the use of the cannon and the gun.

[Fade the Butcher]

The black egyptian invented gunpowder.

Blacks brought civilization to China. I don't suppose you were around years ago when that Afrocentrist (forgot his name, sopdet maybe?) registered here and posted about that.

[Gleb]

Without reading the rest of the posts in this thread, I apologize if my question has been answered, but of what use are all those Chinese "inventions" if not applied the way Europeans have applied them? What apllication did the gun powder find except being used in some stupid fireworks? The same with any other invention, except maybe paper. Or forgive my ignorance I simply don't know any other inventions (I forgot - seismograph, LOL).


The Russians, Poles, and Hungarians were smashed by the Mongols just the same, at around the same time.


If you are suggesting that Mongols had some secret superior weapon you are wrong, their number was much greater than that of separated Russian principalities who could not unite for quite a while, that was the only reason they were so victorous in the beginning.

[OVERWATCH]

If you are suggesting that Mongols had some secret superior weapon you are wrong, their number was much greater than that of separated Russian principalities who could not unite for quite a while, that was the only reason they were so victorous in the beginning.

That's false, the mongols were often outnumbered, but the Europeans and Russians cultivated the land for farming, and could not afford pasture space for horses. The nomadic horsemen in contrast did not farm, but instead followed herds and therefore each one had at least three(3) horses and as such their entire force was mounted, thereby achieving superior mobility, and had perfected the skill of mounted archery.

The Europeans had large numbers of foot soldiers and levies, and only small numbers of cavalry. When the cavalry was neutralised, the European foot soldiers were mincemeat for Mongol horse archers, who could always stay out of range until the enemy was weakened by a long barrage of arrows, demoralised and then finally breaking formation and routing under attack of Mongol cavalry or simply desperation to escape the arrow barrage.

The Mongols also made the best of their superior mobility, cleverly employed feigned retreats which lured the Europeans out of strong positions, and also were very capable in seigecraft.

The Mongols were also better organised.

Machiavelli Institute (http://giskhan.tripod.com/Genghis_Khan.html)

[Gleb]

It (black powder) was used by the Mongols (1279 - 1368) against the Russians and was mentioned in a European manuscript by Roger Bacon in 1248.


I don't believe this for a second. I'd have read about this in Russian sources. How the hell would English Roger Bacon know what mongols used in Russia anyway? Did he travel to Russia in those times? Russia was so isolated there were hardly any foreigners, not talking about Western Europeans.

I've read through the thread and I think it is all a load of crap made up by Chinese to prove that they had some kind of inventions, they even claimed to have found a Chinese map from 14th century with both Americas and even Greenland. LOL, Chinese in Greenland in 14th century. I do not believe Chinese sources and I do not believe in the authenticity of their findings.

[Gleb]

That's false, the mongols were often outnumbered, but the Europeans and Russians cultivated the land for farming, and could not afford pasture space for horses. The nomadic horsemen in contrast did not farm, but instead followed herds and therefore each one had at least three(3) horses and as such their entire force was mounted, thereby achieving superior mobility, and had perfected the skill of mounted archery.

The Europeans had large numbers of foot soldiers and levies, and only small numbers of cavalry. When the cavalry was neutralised, the European foot soldiers were mincemeat for Mongol horse archers, who could always stay out of range until the enemy was weakened by a long barrage of arrows, demoralised and then finally breaking formation and routing under attack of Mongol cavalry or simply desperation to escape the arrow barrage.

The Mongols also made the best of their superior mobility, cleverly employed feigned retreats which lured the Europeans out of strong positions, and also were very capable in seigecraft.

The Mongols were also better organised.

Machiavelli Institute (http://giskhan.tripod.com/Genghis_Khan.html)

True, but that's only one of the reasons. The main reason was still un-unified Russian principalities. The mongols have been defeated in the long run not because the situation with horses changed on either side, but because Russian principalities united.

[Fade the Butcher]

. . . they even claimed to have found a Chinese map from 14th century with both Americas and even Greenland. LOL, Chinese in Greenland in 14th century. I do not believe Chinese sources and I do not believe in the authenticity of their findings.

There is a book about this called 1453. I have seen it in the bookstore several times. It got very negative reviews, but that won't stop the masses from swallowing this sort of swill. In any case, it doesn't establish that the Chinese were in the New World before Europeans. We know for a fact that the Vikings were here centuries before that.

[Fade the Butcher]

How the hell would English Roger Bacon know what mongols used in Russia anyway? Did he travel to Russia in those times? Russia was so isolated there were hardly any foreigners, not talking about Western Europeans.

I don't recall Bacon mentioning anything about the Mongols using gunpowder against the Russians. He did write about gunpowder, though.

[Gleb]

Nomad society can not have any significant achievements by definition, in order to achieve something you need big cultural centers and a school of thought, you need farmers taking care of food, soldiers defending the borders etc. That is why Mongols to the present day move from place to place in their Yurts with every member of the family "having three horses". I doubt they even invented arches by themselves, probably adopted them from someone else, but at those times such a primitive way of life helped to defeat the enemy, but it couldn't lead anywhere.

[Gleb]

I don't recall Bacon mentioning anything about the Mongols using gunpowder against the Russians. He did write about gunpowder, though.

I got it from the link in Anima's post, it states clearly that Bacon described Mongols using black powder against Russians. Can't find it now.

[edit] Actually I re-read it, indeed it only says he mentioned black powder, didn't read carefully enough, my mistake. Than what is their source to say it was used against Russians by Mongols?

[Gleb]

Here we go

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:hvj400_NfQEJ:www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Black_powder

[Gleb]

There is a book about this called 1453. I have seen it in the bookstore several times. It got very negative reviews, but that won't stop the masses from swallowing this sort of swill. In any case, it doesn't establish that the Chinese were in the New World before Europeans. We know for a fact that the Vikings were here centuries before that.

Chinese should stop embarassing themselves. I could believe they could accidentally make it to the pacific coast of America, but Greenland? And not just a part of Greenland - the whole island in the Atlantic ocean. One must go all around it (the northern waters of which are probably covered with ice) to make such a precise description. And even the whole north coast of Siberia. You don't have to be a specialist to understand that it is bullshit.

[Anima Eternae]

Amazing how people will change history to better suit their racial agenda, isn't it?

'Cuz the Multicultural Digest/Occidental Quarterly said so...

[IZVN]

lol, China was ahead of Europe by centuries in:

-Industrialisation -- by 1,000 years
-used coal for fuel way before Europe
-used deep drilling for salt and natural gas way before europe
-used waterwheel-driven bellows in the smelting of metal
-use of the seismoscope for the detection of earth-quakes.
-use of the abacus, also the chinese discovered the exact and precise value of pi, and also the binomial system in mathematics.
-the use of the crossbow, the cannon, and gunpowder rocket in war.

Europe had none of these at the same time.

So yes, the Chinese were centuries ahead of Europe while Europe was living in an ugly feudalism.


Nonsense. These gunpowder weapons you speak of the Chinese using were so primitive they would have no real effectiveness against the heavily armored cavalry and long rang archers of Europeans. On the battlefield cold steel would prove the decisive factor in battle and not fireworks.

[Anima Eternae]

Yet they had them first, and if not for the Mongol invasions of central Europe 1240-1242, may not have even spread to Europe.