What if Ancient Greece Industrialized?
video description
Greek mathematics didnt have a zero, or trig, or anything beyond todays 5th Grade math. Just because you can build small toys with moving parts doesnt mean you can create a steam engine, anymore than building with Legos can teach you to engineer a cable bridge. There was no way Ancient Greece couldve played their cards get a steam engine in just 500 years. Medieval Europeans had a lot more knowledge than Ancient Greeks.
Secondly,
You are out of your mind if you think Greek Philosophy held back civilization. The scientific method wouldnt exist without it.
You say logic and rationality are inferior to empiricism, but you forget that logic and rationality scarcely existed before the Greeks, and that it HAD to be practiced before the scientific method could itself exist.
The scientific method has its origins in Greek philosophy, the only reason Europe created it in our timeline was after Aristotle was rediscovered after the crusades. If you get rid of Western philosophy the scientific method takes longer to develop. You say why bother testing things if morals are inherent? (The answer is because then the natural world can teach more about morals) but most civs at the time would ask why bother testing if truth is relative. Do you honestly think that if postmodernism had prevailed in Ancient Greece they would have become more advanced?
Without Plato there is no Aristotle or Epicurus, and the West takes longer to start testing nature for answers.
Date: 2022-07-15
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Comments and reviews: 9
David
I disagree that people of the past were just as capable as people of today (unless you raised them from birth in a modern society. There is much greater social co-operation, education, and a much lower general rate of violence in today's society; and modern societies have benefited from greatly from the foundation of 500+ years of new ideas since the dark ages. That is, it would have been MUCH harder to trigger an industrial revolution in the ancient world, with widespread innovation and spreading out from a few initial ideas. Less education (and simply less stuff) means fewer people would have been able to put ideas together in the smaller towns outside the political hub; a less co-operative and more violent society would have meant more suspicion and a much greater chance of small inventions being snuffed out before they could spread. There was also simply much less capital available to invest in new ideas, in an era of almost purely agrarian societies, again slowing everything down significantly. A slower innovation rate and spread/development of ideas further puts new inventions at risk of being monopolized and fossilized by local kings, who might want to control them and block any further innovation attempts, so as to maintain their monopoly.
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I disagree that people of the past were just as capable as people of today (unless you raised them from birth in a modern society. There is much greater social co-operation, education, and a much lower general rate of violence in today's society; and modern societies have benefited from greatly from the foundation of 500+ years of new ideas since the dark ages. That is, it would have been MUCH harder to trigger an industrial revolution in the ancient world, with widespread innovation and spreading out from a few initial ideas. Less education (and simply less stuff) means fewer people would have been able to put ideas together in the smaller towns outside the political hub; a less co-operative and more violent society would have meant more suspicion and a much greater chance of small inventions being snuffed out before they could spread. There was also simply much less capital available to invest in new ideas, in an era of almost purely agrarian societies, again slowing everything down significantly. A slower innovation rate and spread/development of ideas further puts new inventions at risk of being monopolized and fossilized by local kings, who might want to control them and block any further innovation attempts, so as to maintain their monopoly.
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Konstantinos
Athens could win the sicilian campaign but this does not mean that Athens would become a new roman empire of some kind. There were several factors missing. One of them was that the romans romanised cities they were conquering whereas the Athenians were very strict on matters regarding racial purity however they defined it. This gave the romans a larger population allowing them to stand the losses inflicted to them by Hannibal. I don't see an Athenian empire surviving the loses of 80, 000 men like Rome. Even Macedonia or the seleukid empire wouldn't. This does not mean that hannibal would have campaigned to Greece had Rome never existed as we know it, but it establishes the fact that there could never be an Athenian empire such as the one you assume in your video. However, what you say regarding gunpowder is true. The Greeks would never develop it even if industrialised, thus, no edge against the barbarians would be held and without the roman structures surviving in Constantinople things could be entirety different, nonetheless, the Greek peninsula would not be easily conquered by barbarians. The gauls, e. g, were defeated.
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Athens could win the sicilian campaign but this does not mean that Athens would become a new roman empire of some kind. There were several factors missing. One of them was that the romans romanised cities they were conquering whereas the Athenians were very strict on matters regarding racial purity however they defined it. This gave the romans a larger population allowing them to stand the losses inflicted to them by Hannibal. I don't see an Athenian empire surviving the loses of 80, 000 men like Rome. Even Macedonia or the seleukid empire wouldn't. This does not mean that hannibal would have campaigned to Greece had Rome never existed as we know it, but it establishes the fact that there could never be an Athenian empire such as the one you assume in your video. However, what you say regarding gunpowder is true. The Greeks would never develop it even if industrialised, thus, no edge against the barbarians would be held and without the roman structures surviving in Constantinople things could be entirety different, nonetheless, the Greek peninsula would not be easily conquered by barbarians. The gauls, e. g, were defeated.
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RyuuTenno
glad to see that someone put my theory into words. I've had an idea of how the world could potentially be far more advanced, had they established the steam engine and the railroad. Rapid industrialization of the bronze age prior to the rise of rome, would have absolutely altered the game. Though, it's also likely possible that some of these nations would end up being crippled upon meeting China since they figured out gunpowder. If they find out they keep getting beat by the others, at some point, they would've thought to outright weaponize it and mobilize their nation (to the best of their abilities) to create guns and related weapons. No idea how they'd fair against such a large and vast empire that has the ability to simply transport troops to the edges of their territory in a matter of days (versus the weeks or months needed traditionally); but, I imagine they could survive for a while before being completely dominated, if they're unable to hold it off to establish their own powerful empire.
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glad to see that someone put my theory into words. I've had an idea of how the world could potentially be far more advanced, had they established the steam engine and the railroad. Rapid industrialization of the bronze age prior to the rise of rome, would have absolutely altered the game. Though, it's also likely possible that some of these nations would end up being crippled upon meeting China since they figured out gunpowder. If they find out they keep getting beat by the others, at some point, they would've thought to outright weaponize it and mobilize their nation (to the best of their abilities) to create guns and related weapons. No idea how they'd fair against such a large and vast empire that has the ability to simply transport troops to the edges of their territory in a matter of days (versus the weeks or months needed traditionally); but, I imagine they could survive for a while before being completely dominated, if they're unable to hold it off to establish their own powerful empire.
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Whatifalthist
For all the statements about how Egypt wasn't socialist, if you are using leftist theory, that is accurate. However, I don't care about any ideology's theories and I merely look at its results. Ptolemaic Egypt in structure was quite similar to the actual socialist regimes of history. The state controlled the distribution of grain and turned agriculture into a command economy. The state controlled production of artisanal goods and manufacturing, demanding quotas from artisans. If that's not a Communistic ideology, I don't know what is. If the results are similar, I see no purpose to arguing over the words people are saying. The main difference is private ownership of slaves among the elite, which is frankly not super dissimilar to the massive slave systems seen in the Soviet Union or Communist China with the gulags and concentration camps, with the main difference being the slaves were controlled by the Central State in these nations while in Ptolemaic Egypt it was owned by the elite.
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For all the statements about how Egypt wasn't socialist, if you are using leftist theory, that is accurate. However, I don't care about any ideology's theories and I merely look at its results. Ptolemaic Egypt in structure was quite similar to the actual socialist regimes of history. The state controlled the distribution of grain and turned agriculture into a command economy. The state controlled production of artisanal goods and manufacturing, demanding quotas from artisans. If that's not a Communistic ideology, I don't know what is. If the results are similar, I see no purpose to arguing over the words people are saying. The main difference is private ownership of slaves among the elite, which is frankly not super dissimilar to the massive slave systems seen in the Soviet Union or Communist China with the gulags and concentration camps, with the main difference being the slaves were controlled by the Central State in these nations while in Ptolemaic Egypt it was owned by the elite.
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Terrence
Even if gunpowder was not discovered I still think that we would have rifles eventually. if there are hundreds of engines running all it takes is one blowing up and somebody's thinking to themselves well why did that thing fly so fast.
creating better steam engines would mean making better seals and containing higher pressures it just takes one clever or unaware dude to stick something in a pressure vent and watch it go. Lead is an easily cast metal that we were using for slings even before we understood the metallurgical term ductility and before modern o-rings they used cattle horn which can contain 4000 PSI. The major improvements to air rifles since the Ottomans have just been adding more valves, To the guns and the pumps.
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Even if gunpowder was not discovered I still think that we would have rifles eventually. if there are hundreds of engines running all it takes is one blowing up and somebody's thinking to themselves well why did that thing fly so fast.
creating better steam engines would mean making better seals and containing higher pressures it just takes one clever or unaware dude to stick something in a pressure vent and watch it go. Lead is an easily cast metal that we were using for slings even before we understood the metallurgical term ductility and before modern o-rings they used cattle horn which can contain 4000 PSI. The major improvements to air rifles since the Ottomans have just been adding more valves, To the guns and the pumps.
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ша
One of requisites of industrialization that is often overlooked is advanced metallurgy, something which was developed slowly over millenia. You can theoretically understand how a coal or steam powered machine or engine works and how you could construct it, but this is all meaningless unless you can manufacture the complex metal components to the quality standard needed to allow for smooth and repetitive motion when assembled, and that too at a meaningful scale. You could probably send a fully qualified modern engineer to the classical era and they would fail to set off the industrial revolution because they simply wouldn't be able to build or have built the parts they know are necessary for even basic mechanisms.
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One of requisites of industrialization that is often overlooked is advanced metallurgy, something which was developed slowly over millenia. You can theoretically understand how a coal or steam powered machine or engine works and how you could construct it, but this is all meaningless unless you can manufacture the complex metal components to the quality standard needed to allow for smooth and repetitive motion when assembled, and that too at a meaningful scale. You could probably send a fully qualified modern engineer to the classical era and they would fail to set off the industrial revolution because they simply wouldn't be able to build or have built the parts they know are necessary for even basic mechanisms.
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Theodore
An industrialized Greece might not develop but powder, but they would likely refine Greek fire. That would give us a world in which flame throwers proliferate instead of guns. I can see that giving civilization a significant advantage over the barbarians. Also, remember that wars are won by logistics, not weapons. The logistical advantages of an industrial society are extreme and would readily overwhelm most barbarian forces.
Finally, if you havent read it already I would recommend perusing Culture and Carnage. Effective military organization was not unique to the Romans, but a general trait of non-decadent western cultures. That theme would likely still prevail in this timeline.
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An industrialized Greece might not develop but powder, but they would likely refine Greek fire. That would give us a world in which flame throwers proliferate instead of guns. I can see that giving civilization a significant advantage over the barbarians. Also, remember that wars are won by logistics, not weapons. The logistical advantages of an industrial society are extreme and would readily overwhelm most barbarian forces.
Finally, if you havent read it already I would recommend perusing Culture and Carnage. Effective military organization was not unique to the Romans, but a general trait of non-decadent western cultures. That theme would likely still prevail in this timeline.
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Zeriel
Rome seems like a likelier scenario when you consider they did have mega-industry projects like hydraulic mining literally carving out an entire mountain range, and stuff like the Barbegal waterwheel complex which was the largest concentration of known mechanical power in the ancient world. It seems like if the Empire hadn't started to decline in the late 100s and early 200s they might have evolved in that direction with more state projects (and hell there's probably more we don't know about. By the same logic, it was the distribution of that knowledge via the Roman Empire being everywhere that eventually led to medieval versions of the same technology.
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Rome seems like a likelier scenario when you consider they did have mega-industry projects like hydraulic mining literally carving out an entire mountain range, and stuff like the Barbegal waterwheel complex which was the largest concentration of known mechanical power in the ancient world. It seems like if the Empire hadn't started to decline in the late 100s and early 200s they might have evolved in that direction with more state projects (and hell there's probably more we don't know about. By the same logic, it was the distribution of that knowledge via the Roman Empire being everywhere that eventually led to medieval versions of the same technology.
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education
Be careful when you speak of what Greeks believed en masse based on the very few surviving documents from the era. Plato wasn't the mouthpiece for the monolith. And the hellenistic period that car after has next to none actual documentation. That's why we don't even know what the antikythera mechanism was called and why not a single published work by Aristotle exists for us to read.
So the idea that every great mind of that era though that 2 objects of different mass fall at the rate based on their mass doesn't sit well with me. I don't buy it.
But nice video! !
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Be careful when you speak of what Greeks believed en masse based on the very few surviving documents from the era. Plato wasn't the mouthpiece for the monolith. And the hellenistic period that car after has next to none actual documentation. That's why we don't even know what the antikythera mechanism was called and why not a single published work by Aristotle exists for us to read.
So the idea that every great mind of that era though that 2 objects of different mass fall at the rate based on their mass doesn't sit well with me. I don't buy it.
But nice video! !
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