Neato, if true:
http://www.livescience.com/history/archimedes-set-roman-ships-afire-with-cannons-100627.html
A legend begun in the Medieval Ages tells of how Archimedes used mirrors to concentrate sunlight as a defensive weapon during the siege of Syracuse, then a Greek colony on the island of Sicily, from 214 to 212 B.C. No contemporary Roman or Greek accounts tell of such a mirror device, however.
Both engineering calculations and historical evidence support use of steam cannons as “much more reasonable than the use of burning mirrors,” said Cesare Rossi, a mechanical engineer at the University of Naples “Federico II,” in Naples, Italy, who along with colleagues analyzed evidence of both potential weapons.
The steam cannons could have fired hollow balls made of clay and filled with something similar to an incendiary chemical mixture known as Greek fire in order to set Roman ships ablaze. A heated cannon barrel would have converted barely more than a tenth of a cup of water (30 grams) into enough steam to hurl the projectiles.
As the inventions of Archimedes, Heron of Alexandria and others (especially the Antikythera Mechanism) show, the ancient Greeks were poised on the edge of the Industrial Revolution. Had history gone slightly differently, steam powered ships, land vehicles and factories could have arisen somewhere around 100 CE to 300CE, rather than after 1800 CE. So we would now be nearly two thousand years into a scientific and technological era, rather than a mere few hundred. As Carl Sagan pointed out, we could well be plying the spacelanes between the stars at this point… had history gone a little differently.
The problem is that getting history to go differently might have been virtually impossible. Sure, the technology was nearly there, and the basic principles of science were well understood; on a purely technical level, an Industrial Revolution might seem to ahve been immanent. But culturally, Europe was nowhere near ready. Slavery, for instance, was far too entrenched of an institution. Slave-powered ships were perfectly fine for the world of the Mediterranean; there wasn’t a globe-spanning British Empire in need of a faster mode of transport than sail-powered ships, nor was there an American West needing to be opened. So it might have seemed difficult to imagine what practical value a steam-powered ship would offer. Worse, what would ahppened with the slaves? What would happen to the fortunes of those in the slave trade?
More, this was an era of absolute monarchs and deep mysticism. Both of these concepts are great evils that have done little but retard progress. Overthrowing the mystics – the mystery religions, the Pythagoreans, the Church, and so on – and watering down the power of the monarchs may well have been absolute requirements for an Industrial Revolution to occur. Any sci-fi author contemplating an alternate history where the ancient Greek scientific tradition takes off and leads to a world nearly two millenia more advanced, take note of the cultural issues involved.
Not entirely true, but it gets the idea across:
30 Responses to “Archimedes Set Roman Ships Afire with Cannons”
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So why wasn’t the whole left by the Christian Dark Ages filled with the Muslim Age of Enlightenment? 😉
“hole” (dammit)
> why wasn’t the whole left by the Christian Dark Ages filled with the Muslim Age of Enlightenment?
Remember my bit about “mysticism and absolute monarchs *bad?*” It seems vaguely relevant here…
The Muslims preserved ancient Greek and Roman “pagan” knowledge that the Christians were merrily torching. For which we should be grateful. But they didn;t really do much to exapnd on it. It wasn’t until the Rennaissance, whent he Europeans started getting some of that info *back,* that people started building on what the Greeks had done.
And what helped bring on the Ren was the Black Death. You wipe out half of a continent, your culture’s gonna shift. If you are *already* deeply mired in mysticism and absolute monarchs, having some massive catastrophe that neither the kings nor the Church can do a damned thing about is gonna shake up the social order a bit. And the beauty of a biological plague is that it wipes out the labor base but leaves the physical wealth (gold, buildings, knowledge, stuff, etc.). So suddenly the entrenched powers are knocked on their collective asses *and* there is a massive need for innovation.
Ta-da….
Are we lucky or not, that no sharp Greek or whoever, realized what high speed steam ships with steam cannons could do to opposing fleets?
I’m not buying the steam cannon idea; although I could see him using some sort of steam or water pressure-driven pump to operate a primitive flamethrower, as the Byzantine Empire used those to project “Greek Fire” from the bows of their warships.
They did try out the mirror concept back in 1973 and it did work BTW.
sorry but
“The Muslims preserved ancient Greek and Roman “pagan”
knowledge that the Christians were merrily torching.” is Muslims propaganda
as Alexandra was conquer by moslims in 642 Ad
the general Amr ibn al-As look on remains of
Library of Alexandria (wat the Christians had not burn in 319 ad)
he gave this order:
BURN ALL WAT IS NOT COMPATIBLE TO THE KORAN
the bathhouses run several weeks with library scrolls
wat escape the burn was taken by fugitives to Constantinople
allot of those scroll were there “reused” in monasteries
ink scraped off and copy of Bible penned over …
> is Muslims propaganda
Not entirely. While the Muslims did their own share of burning books, they were not as *complete* about it as the Christians were. As I said, many copies of Greek texts only exist today because there were Arabic translations. Many of these were captured when the Christians finally drove the Muslims out of Spain and found Muslim/Arabic libraries. Muslims went through their spasms of “burn everything,” they were just never entirely successful at it. The loss of knowledge is bad enough as it is, but had the Muslims destroyed all their “pagan” writings, then we’d know virtually nothign of the Greeks and Romans other than they built buildings out of stone.
History of World Civ is something I’ve been reading about for a while now. I’ll try to be brief and not produce a “Get my own damn blog” length rant.
– An argument that Civilization was retarded from expansion needs to explain why China did not conquer the world during the European Dark Ages. Chinese empires match or surpass Roman lvl tech, including periods where they mass produce iron implements using coke (refined coal) fired furnaces (Song Dynasty, shortly before the Mongols take over). Why no breakout over there?
– The Industrial Revolution itself is dependent on multiple pre-requisites:
— For fifty-eight years, the Newcomen engine and it’s derivatives had ONE commercial use, to pump water out of English coal mines. The engines burned the coal tailings that were not efficient to sell on the market, so the power was essentially free. If the mines had been dry (like Chinese coal mines) there would have been no demand for water pumps. Half a century of incremental improvement preceded the innovations of James Watt, which set the steam engine free from the mines, and English industry free from pre-industrial power-sources.
— Watt’s activities are greatly aided by existing know how on production of clockwork mechanisms. The Medieval Roman Catholic Church, starting as early as 1280, invested in clocks for monasteries and cathedrals so that people could be called to prayer at particular hours of the day. Clocks grew in popularity throughout Europe from that policy, primarily as a management tool so that work would begin at and end at a particular time not only for Church “employees” but for guild workers and others. More than 400 years of development of gear trains, axles, and mechanical linkages preceded Newcomen’s engine. By Watt’s era, good clocks, and knowledgeable clockwork “engineers” are available throughout Europe and Britain. The Wiki article you link to speculates that the knowledge incorporated in the Antikythera Mechanism was passed back to Europe from the Middle East when mechanical clocks came into vogue. Were those 400 years rediscovery or necessary incremental improvement for this technology?
— During the 1400s Prince Henry the Navigator and his successors sponsor voyages of exploration and conquest along the African Coast. By the early 1500s the Portuguese are making amazing money by hauling shiploads of spices (cloves, pepper, nutmeg, and others), return on investment occasionally tops 1000% (yes, three zeros). This is simultaneously the foundation of European world trade and a titanic boost to European consumer culture. By the time Watt reinvents the steam engine, multiple European nations compete in trade in sugar, tobacco, coffee, tea, silk, cotton and linen, as well as early factory spun cloth. Volume of shipped goods is sufficient to cause commercial associations to form for the construction of canals and roads in England to handle the scale of the shipments. Steam power puts an existing commercial revolution on steroids.
— The spread of techniques and knowledge that enables invention and commerce is itself dependent on the information revolution started by Johannes Gutenberg. Printed books pushed knowledge to a larger segment of society, instilling both knowledge and desire for things that were not yet available. The printed word reached many more humans than hand copied works in each society that adopted it.
Summary: It seems clear the that historical Industrial Revolution was dependent on per-requisites that neither the Roman nor the Chinese empire eras duplicate. How many things would need to be changed to summon the 1000 year distant future? Is it really likely that the industrial revolution was “just missed” at those earlier times?
What would be interesting to know about the Antikythera mechanism is if it really did show the position of Mars correctly.
Because if it did, that would mean it could take into account the retrograde motion of Mars when Earth passes it in its orbit, and the easiest way for it to do that would have its mechanics based on a Sun, not Earth, centered cosmos.
As the philosopher Aristarchus had already suggested that in the 3rd century BC, it not out of the realm of possibility that the Antikythera device from a couple of hundred years later could be based on that concept also.
Pure bigotry.
Next: An article explaining how the International Jewish Conspiracy keeps us from having flying cars and rocket belts.
> Pure bigotry.
Translation: “you’ve speaking unpleasant facts about my preferred system of woo. Stop now, or I will resort to the sort of “race card” tactics made popular by the hard Leftists.”
Hate to tell ya, but the history of Christianity is *littered* with bullcrap that has retarded the progress of mankind. In this respect it is no different than any other religion.
Or is it my opposition to the monumental stupidity that is the whole concept of monarchy that irritates you?
> I’ll try to be brief and not produce a “Get my own damn blog” length rant.
Get yer own damned blog!
Or… continue to post useful, cogent and intelligent comments on this blog. Whatever floats yer boat…
> An argument that Civilization was retarded from expansion needs to explain why China did not conquer the world during the European Dark Ages.
We get back to my “mysticism and absolute monarchs suck” hypothesis.
> It seems clear the that historical Industrial Revolution was dependent on per-requisites that neither the Roman nor the Chinese empire eras duplicate.
Indeed so, which was one of the muddled points of my post. Too many alternate history books have some minor change leadign to massive divergences, when in reality sometimes it would require major changes to effect even minor divergences. Send back teams of assassins and whack Chinese emperors left and right, you’re still quite unlikely to create some sort of Libertarian utopia. The authoritarian bug was planted far too deeply in the cultural psyche to be easily removed.
Similarly, there’s a strain of modern nuttiness that holds that much of modern technology was derived from a crashed alien ship from 1947 Roswell. But the problem is, the technology required for some sort of “hyperdrive/antigravity” interstellar Winnnebago is vastly beyond us *today.* Put one of ’em in front of our best and brightest and we’d likely have no better luck reverse engineering it than if you gave Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson an iPhone and told ’em to work out a cellular phone network. In order for some technological revolutions to occur and take hold, the steps leading up to it must also be taken. And some of these steps might require lots of things happening just right over the course of *generations.*
mmm, returning to the original post thesis, I beg to differ that slavery had any influence on the stop (or precipitous slow down) of technological progression in circa 100 BCE. The use of slaves in the South plantations to man machines is too well known to insist upon, but keep in mind that during the Hellenistic and Roman Empire slaves were not used to propel the oared ships. Slaves were started using during the late Middle Ages and during all the Modern Eras (i.s., until oared warships went out of fashion). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_slave
There are some hints that at times Roman emperors like Vespasian resisted using big mechanical devices in public works, but the justification wasn’t “I have slaves by the score”, but, “Listen, son, your machine is fantastic and here is money for you for having invented it, but I have score of poor free people without a job out there (Rome’s Suburra) and I have to find a way to keep them occupied, lest they start making trouble” (look at the episode, it is in Suetonius’ “Life of Vespasian”). Any chord stroken of the apparent arrest of robotic factories introduction in Western World since the end of the Cold War and so called Globalization ?
In fact, scholars argue since at least the end of the 19th Century on the causes of Antiquity lack of an Industrial Revolution. My bet is that it has more to do with skilled scientist/technologist shortage in the Medterranean after the turmoil in the Hellenistic world from 150BCE to 30 BCE. For xample, the Alexandria’s Museum suffered a big blow in 146 BCE due to the Greek population repression by one of the Tolomees (the elite was nearly exterminated). There is a very beatiful work by Lucio Russo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Russo (not coincidently working in Naples in the same University of Cesare Rossi) which has bee translated in English, too (a rara avis for an Italian scientific work, I beg to notice). Find it here, if you are interested: http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Revolution-Science-Born-Reborn/dp/3540203966/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
BTW, it was Luico Ruso who ponted to the “steam cannon” theory of Archimede’s invention. It is found cited in a Leonardo da Vinci’s work , but it refers to its use by a Spanish city tyrant against his enemies. It has long been suspected that Leonardo had access to some ancient work that is no more available today (maybe buried in some monastic library, like the recently discovered work by Archimedes). For this, read the Russo’s book.
There does seem to be something that needs explaining — Europeans weren’t particularly clever, or technological, or philosophical, yet something happened there that set off a revolution which let them extend influence over most of the planet.
I think part of the mix is coffee.
Unlikely: Othman Turks used coffee as a recreational beverage BEFORE Europeans did, with no much avail on the side on scientific achievements (and before you say it, tobacco, too) Moreover, caffeine content of tea leaves can be VERY substantial… Speaking of stimulants, in this vein Incas would have to be in possess of armoured vehicles and Stukas by the eve Spaniards invaded…
As far as I know, the only drug-like substance European used in a significant larger way than other people in the XVIII century or before is… cocoa.
“Next: An article explaining how the International Jewish Conspiracy keeps us from having flying cars and rocket belts.”
45 seconds flying time…45 seconds flying time and then the rocket belt falls down with you in it, and a mother loses a son that she spent so much effort raising to have a happy future.
So who’s going to take care of her in her old age once your father goes?
Nobody, that’s who.
She’ll sit rotting away in a Jewish senior citizen’s center, while all the other old people’s children come to see them…but no one for her, as her son had to have a rocket belt.
I think Pat’s tied it all together. I just hope the kid left some notes.
It has always appeared to me that technological innovation depends on having a type of person who has the leisure to explore. Agricultural or monolithic autocratic cultures never have enough persons or enough spare time to do much beyond incremental changes to their situation.
Well, this is the exact description of the elite in every culture… besides, truly monolithic autocratic cultures are a modern invention, simply because before the powerful lacked the technology and bureaucratic techniques to do that. And, if agricultural societies were so impervious to technological innovations, whence the Industrial Revolution ?
The idea of progress itself led to the idea of progress. Not trying to be facetious. It took the emergence of the consciousness of the idea that things could be improved, that change was an imperative, to make change a goal. Previously — and this is what explains the “dark ages” IMO — the understanding was that the world was a steady-state thing. Rise of population probably drove this among other things.
“but keep in mind that during the Hellenistic and Roman Empire slaves were not used to propel the oared ships. Slaves were started using during the late Middle Ages and during all the Modern Eras (i.s., until oared warships went out of fashion).”
One reason for that is that as soon as you got above one horizontal row of oars on the side of a ship, it took a lot of training for the rowers not to interfere with the other vertical rows as they rowed; they found that out the hard way when they built the replica trireme “Olympias”.
Even the other way of doing a trireme – three rowers sitting side-by-side on the same bench, each with a separate oar – used by the Venetians in their wars against the Ottoman Empire was not easy to get proficient at:
http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/a-sasano/english/e-galleyphoto.htm
On a lark, they actually built one with _five_ oarsmen on each bench, each with a separate oar, assuming that was the way the Romans had done their quinqueremes.
This actually worked pretty well, and they might have gone further with the concept…if the ship’s crew hadn’t come down with the plague and made the whole thing look ill-starred. Actually, that’s not the way the Romans did it at all; their quinqueremes probably had three oarsmen on the upper oar and two oarsmen on the row below that.
“why China did not conquer the world during the European Dark Ages”
They actually had this huge fleet sent out around 1000 AD, but when the fleet came back, the then-emperor decided there would be no more exploration. Echoing Scott’s theme that absolute monarchies suck, this meant that there really was no maritime exploration outside China once this order was given. In Europe, OTOH, when Columbus was turned down by Portugal for his trans-Atlantic voyage, he was able to ask Spain, who eventually said yes.
“There does seem to be something that needs explaining — Europeans weren’t particularly clever, or technological, or philosophical, yet something happened there that set off a revolution which let them extend influence over most of the planet. ”
Europe was very lucky when it came to certain environmental factors, and once they invented modern science and had the enlightenment, they had the best ideas as well. Anyone whose interested in exploring the question in depth should read “Guns Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond.
er, the Great Chinese Fleet is from the XV century…. It is true that they had big ships even during the XIII century (Marco Polo saw them and used them for coming back from China, he went as far as Hormuz, that was part of the kingdom of one of the cousins of Qubilay). The Chinese was very advanced in a score of sectors but apparently trailed the Greeks in maths and geometry. When during the XVII century the Jesuits entered the Imperial Court (under the Ming dinasty, the same of the Grand Fleet) they dressed like Buddhist monks and presented themselves as Euclide’s followers.
As for Columbus, it must be stated that the great oceanic voyages had started almost 80 years before…. the Portuguese refuted Columbus’ offer because they had their hands already full.
The question I would like to pose is this: could the Greeks have kept slavery with advanced technology, and how far could that have lasted before gunpowder became widespread?
I’ve got a whole book on the Chinese treasure fleet (When China Ruled The Seas) and what doomed it was something that may hold resonance for manned space exploration.
The concept was to load it up with trade goods, and sail the Indian Ocean and east coast of Africa, setting up trade with the peoples and cultures they would find there and bringing back riches that China didn’t posses.
They tried this, but found out that the places they visited didn’t have anything worth trading for that would make up the cost of the trade goods, especially after the cost of upkeep of the fleet was taken into account.
Outside of some gold and ivory, East Africa was pretty much void of things China either wanted or needed…although bringing back some live giraffes made a temporary hit, as they bore a resemblance to a “Qilin”, a divine creature that was supposed to appear in times of harmony and good governance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin
This gave the Emperor the opportunity to show the creature off as proof that he was doing a great job, although after the fleet kept bringing more and more damned Qilins back instead of the expected wondrous treasures, the concept began to lose its luster. 🙂
Unlike Europe, China could get spices from the Indian Ocean area via direct trade to its ports and land routes, so that wasn’t much of a draw either.
(Europe could only get them via purchasing them from the hated Islamic middlemen whose empire stood between Europe and the Orient)
If there’s a lesson for manned space exploration, it’s make sure you don’t spend more than what you are going to get as a possible return on your investment.
China spent a fortune on their exploration/treasure fleet and it was all an economic bust in the end…Spain spent almost nothing on the Columbus expedition by comparison, and that did have long term results for them; although one wonders if Spain had known Columbus was going to run into a pair of unknown continents – rather than set up a direct sea route to the Orient for trade – if he even would have gotten the small amount of funding that he did from the Spanish monarchy.
“The question I would like to pose is this: could the Greeks have kept slavery with advanced technology, and how far could that have lasted before gunpowder became widespread?”
I don’t exactly see the slavery/gunpowder connection, but “Greek Fire” was a stepping stone on the way to explosives, as it apparently incorporated sulfur, and possibly nitrates as well, so if they kept messing around with compositions like that, they would have probably come up with true gunpowder long before it showed up from China.
The big problem with Greek science is that they would come up with pretty sophisticated developments, and never see the potential uses for them beyond novelty.
Consider Hero’s Aeolipile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
All you have to do is tie a thread around it that winds up as it rotates, and you have a prototype of a steam-driven winch.
But they never did that – it was just a novelty.
Whole pile of old Greek machinery here, BTW:
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?219450-Heron-of-Alexandria
“er, the Great Chinese Fleet is from the XV century”
My bad; haven’t checked the facts in a while. But my basic point still stands.
That was really some fleet too; their biggest ships were at _least_ twice the length of the Santa Maria, and they had built several smaller types for specific functions – like fresh water transport, food transport, and horse transport.
It wasn’t like a exploratory expedition would show up somewhere, it was like a whole naval flotilla would show up somewhere.
Church bashing is a favourite past-time, but the reality is that the learning of the Greeks was preserved by the Greek half of the Roman Empire, aka the Byzantines, and was kept faithfully up until the Medievals eventually superseded it. What the Muslims did was make communication between East & West so difficult that sailing to that part of the Mediterranean was essentially a non-option because of piracy. What Greek learning they “preserved” was essentially looted from their Christian subjects as they slowly swallowed up the old Empire. Much of the scribal work was done by the Christians under the Muslim thumb.
So why is there a distinct lack of acknowledgement and knowledge of the role played by Christianity in preserving (and extending) that knowledge? For that we have 17th Century anti-Catholic, 18th Century Deist, and 19th Century Atheist propaganda to thank for muddying history. All of the supposed “Dark Age” regression is an invention of those successive rewritings of history.
> a distinct lack of acknowledgement and knowledge of the role played by Christianity in preserving (and extending) that knowledge
What “extensions?”
> All of the supposed “Dark Age” regression is an invention of those successive rewritings of history.
Uh… sure. It was a glittering period of free expression, religious tolerance and scientific advancement