2. The Chinese had better economy. Let's just look at the most important aspect of the economy for the ancient times: agriculture. The Chinese by then had already planted their crops by rows. This prevent the plants from "fighting each other" (root uptake). The Chinese had also pushed the seeds deeper into the ground, which prevented the birds from eating the seeds. All of these factors increased the output of farming greatly. Row by row planting did not appear in Europe until Great Britain. Until then, the Europeans farmed by scattering seeds onto the ground, exposing them to the birds. I'm not sure about India though.

That is just about the most silly and one dimensional analysis of agriculture I have read - sorry...

Broadcast seeding can be very nearly as effective as drilling especially when broadcast into the crop residual of a diffrent crop (usually at least in the modern studies I've seen). The trick is timing you broadcast so as to get say leaf fall from beans to cover the seed and in close proximity to rainfall.

'Fighting' is a potential issue but rows are an open invitation for weeds that need to be weeded a successful broadcast may crowd itself but it also crowds weeds.

More generally since the Babylonians demonstrably developed a seed drill like device that died out I'm not sure you can instantly claim that the Han era seed drill is profoundly superior to broadcast agriculture all the time and everywhere.

Besides the Romes had a mechanical harvester so big deal that din't show up for another 1500 years or so...

First thing first: using your very argument, then I can infer that the only root problems would be the weeds. The solution to this problem is thus very easy: destroy the single enemy; destroy the weeds.

The Romans, on the other hand, have an entirely different problem. If you do not want to interfere with with the crop-growth, then some of the crops would have to die from the root problems. If you want to save the plants, then you have to do one of these things: plant the crops in rows or dig up the crops and plant them somewhere else.
BTW, if you choose the second option, then do realize that you would need a larger land area and that this is more additional work.

Let me put this in a simple way. You have 4 things that you don't want to destroy. These 4 things do not fight each other because of the way you set things up. However, there is 1 outsider who would like to destroy these 4 things. The solution to this problem is very simple: destroy the outsider (weeds), for killing it would not affect you.
In the end, one died from the usual defect
The Result: 3 of 4 survived

Now, suppose you just don't like to set things up. Because of that, the outsider don't like to get in, but the 4 things that you want ended up fighting each other. And this is where things differ from the first problem. If you leave them alone, then 1 will die; if you interfere and kill 1 of them, then the the result would obviously be the same.
In the end, 1 died of the usual defect, while the other one died from "sibling rivalry".
The Result: 2 of 4 survived


Finally, it's not a big deal because no Europeans invented these tools until 1500 years later; it's because only the Europeans with these technologies have significant population boost. The boost was significant enough to be called something in history: the British Agricultural Revolution. Population boosts had been observed before, but the countries before the Agricultural Revolution could not continuously sustain this level of population. On the other hand, the British could continue to support this amount of people.



As for the disappearance of seed-drills from Babylonians, there are many explanations.
The more unlikely one is the fact that even advantageous things can disappear through the lack of proper transfer of knowledge. This is quite true in the ancient times, but I'll admit that it is still unlikely.
The better explanation would be the low quality of Babylonian metallurgy. Due to the inefficiency created by bad metal, this technology would have been reasonably dropped from usage. The Chinese counterpart, due to better metal, would have ended up with more advantage than disadvantage. Thus this could explain why the Chinese had kept it ( I will try to look for sources).

However, even without the second explanation, the advantage of the seed drill is undisputed. The example of this would again be the British. The English people had prior knowledge scattering seeds. Yet, the use of the new technology and method is prevalent until the arrival of the 20th century technologies

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Seeing as even the wiki page note about a dozen factors leading to the BAR (and one could then add dozens more for the longer arc western development of modern mechanized Ag.) I don't see the seed drill by itself in a fairly early form as profound. As a key part of a whole matrix of ideals that coalesced in one place and time sure - but the trick is plugging it into other times and places.

In case if I remember Needham’s discussion well enough the Han use of the seed drill was not ubiquitous, Southern China retained broadcast seeding. Nor was the seed drill universally appropriate for all seeds even where it was in wide use in Northern China.

Again I imagined this kind of argument that’s why I mentioned the Roman harvester – in isolation it had only a limited use and costs of its own (loss of straw) but does not by itself make a mechanical revolution if agriculture.

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And let me put it another way a completely artificial example or two is unconvincing.

A better way of thinking might be to imagine a final agricultural productivity A as the product of any number of factors A= X+Y+Z +T etc.

In this case using a seed drill requires another period of oxen/draft animal use. It also implies a larger labor input in weeding in return for proposed loss of crowding, and potentially better seed placement (although presumably bad handling of your dill negates that). Broadcasting allows labor minimization – i.e. faster application, less draft animal uses and if successful a dense field that minimizes weeding. The day a farmer spends seed drilling might also have been used to say rent his oxen out and raise cash to buy manure etc and thus improve yield in that manor. The time his family spent weeding rows might conceivably be spent weeding a much smaller plot of vegetables or Vines or tending animals, or doing something else that is a net positive on yield.

Note also harrowing would minimize your bird eating difficulty…and appears in classical agricultural texts.

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I am lost it here can you restate this point.

Again even in a modern setting the difference in broadcast and drilling is not staggering. Note the study referenced here (bottom table):

http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0105.html

Again I would note you allow (seemingly in your examples) a 75% germination rate not much worse than an expected 80%+ rate for a modern seed and certainly likely to high for even last years reserved seed. More so still for second and third years saved seed which would have much lower germination rates.

Overall my point is that while it is true a seed drill certainly has the potential to improve one particular aspect total agricultural productivity, it also has a cost in animal and manpower labor and is still just one factor. To say its effect is so large as to obviously overshadow all other aspects of production, let alone storage, transport, the nutrition of the nominal grain mix consumed, of other health factors (medicine, sanitation, etc), pests, climate, economic structure of agriculture, property laws, transport costs etc when considering the final sustainable population of either Han or Rome is silly.

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Or just as viable for an argument from silence is that it was less efficient, didn’t work that good etc. People often retain less advantageous ideals in the face of better ones as often as they reject bad ones for better. More importantly maybe the impact of the seed drill in a simple form was not sufficient as to out weight other positive technologies or techniques such that the its cost were prohibitive.

The key point is the comparison is limited in time so one needs to be careful about retro-asserting the eventual development of the seed drill into what at the time was a limited application device of the Han in both crops and geography – similarly the Roman harvester was a exceptional item and not a argument for profoundly better agriculture.

In aggregate seeing as Rome and Han had more or less the same population on the same land mass I don’t see the macro evidence to sustain your argument.

edit: also in passing seeing as one of the effects of the BAR is noted as women (and presumably children as well) being pushed out of agriculture do to the need to be strong enough to manhandle oxen and equipment one might even suggest a negative manpower (for military usage) effect in Han if more male man hours were required to make the seed drill system work...

But Connan, I am not just giving you "one" example of how the Han Chinese would be better than farming. It's the combination of seed drill and row-by-row planting that would have given the Chinese an advantage. But you were right: I need to show more than a few examples. Like the British, the Chinese used the iron plow, which was lacking in Rome. Some would also argue that China had better hydraulic technologies for farming than Rome (yes, I will look for sources).

The Chinese definitely did not have the nice technologies that the British had during the BAR. Thus, the Chinese did not industrialized. But here's the interesting thing: the Chinese were quite near Pre-Industrialization. There are some examples of this: I believe that someone has stated that Chinese weapons of the same type had only 2 cm of difference; while the Romans were using bloomery furnace, the use of the blast furnace was already standard in China; the free peasant economy of Han China. The Chinese partly followed the British, and thus they were partly Industrialized. I do not believe that this is mere coincidence.

Finally, llet me be certain of one thing. You are claiming that the Chinese needed more labor for farming than the Romans, right? I might be wrong, but it seems like the evidence is waaaaaay to the contrary. Someone in CHF stated this quite nicely:

"Roman economy is extremely fragile. One of the constant problems that the Roman government had to face was land. The growing professionalization of the army, meant that in large parts of Italy, small private farms were being abandoned by small freeholders, and were gobbled up by large estates. Furthermore, the victories Rome had over its neighbors saw the importation of a large amount of slaves to work on the large estate farms. In times of peace, however, that meant that retiring veterans had little prospect of establishing themselves as farmers again since the slaves working under large estates were cheaper. This caused considerable amount of unemployment and resentment on the part of the poorer people towards the rich. Growing social inequality was now causing serious unrest. Even worse, Romans never successfully harnessed the use of physical energy; slaves were used as farm animals until they are replaced when they can work no more. They are literally treated as animals. When slaves makes up something like a third of your country’s population, this is extremely dangerous, and dangerous it was, for slave rebellions flared up constantly in different parts of Rome throughout the late Republic and the Imperial period. The Roman economy has to be just well balanced for it to survive. For the slaves were worked like farm animals to their full efficiency to create surplus for public services. Too small of a population meant the army and state projects could not be sustained, yet too much population meant that the primitive slave economy cannot support the large population, especially when Rome failed to draw new supplies of slave labor in its later days due to the lack of new conquests, hence the decline of the empire.


On the contrast, the Han economy is much healthier; it is a system of free peasants. Every single peasant is self sufficient as a unit. They can sell their own lands at will and change fields. The ability for these small farms to survive is extremely high; they are almost immune to devastation of war since the peasants do not rely on a single bureaucratic structure to keep the economy distributed just above subsistence level (as in Rome). Every peasant family can support themselves. This is perhaps one of the most important reason why the Roman infrastructure collapsed, while the Han system survived. China had a much more advanced way of harnessing energy through horsepower because they had the horse collar. Horse is twice as productive as Oxen(used in Rome), but requires a more expensive economy of food. But the result is a far greater amount of production. Most importantly however, China had a greater extensive use of hydraulic power over any civilization, the canal projects taken during the Qin and the Han and their scope was unseen in the west. This coupled with the greater productivity of millet over wheat gives China a lead in at least 4 to 1 over the west for the same area of land. These can support larger populations and create additional surpluses that are well above subsistence level. Han Shu mentions that during the period of Jin Di, there was so much surplus of grain in the imperial granary that they started to rot. People are all well fed and nourished, the political structure of the Han was much more stable. Additional surplus create a more diversity of available jobs and a larger budget for large construction projects and military spending. (Contemporary Roman reports had nothing approaching this, Varro and Columella’s writing on agriculture always the agricultural system well, the fact is Roman economy can’t possibly achieve something even close to general prosperity for all since slavery is essential to its economic well been, people might criticized the wrong doing of slavery, but there isn’t a single proposal to ban slavery in Roman history.)"


How do we know who has better machines? The answer is quite simple: the ones with the better machines require less labor force. By the time that we are talking about, China had already at least technically rid itself of slavery. Meanwhile, the Romans, despite knowing the dangers, continued to use slaves as the workforce. The Romans weren't stupid; it just means that this was the best option for Rome. Why was this the only option for Rome? It was because the Roman Empire had not seen good technologies yet.

BTW, in case anyone wants to put words into my mouth, I am not claiming that the Chinese did not use labor for farming. Quite obviously they did, and a lot of it too. But they probably did not use it as much as the Romans.

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I have checked with some sources. It turns out that the Babylonian seed drills were indeed not as efficient. The Babylonians used only a single tube while the Chinese used multiple tubes. Now why hadn't the Babylonians figure out this new innovation? It must be noted that, especially during the ancient times, a very simple idea could simply never had been thought of, even when that idea could have helped out a lot.

Then, it must be realized that the Mesopotamia did not have the Iron Age until 1300 B.C.E, which was after the seed drill had been dropped out (1500 B.C.E.). The Chinese, on the other hand, began using the seed drill after at least 300 years of experiment with iron usage. The difference here is quite large.

Now, you could still be right that the seed drills were inefficient, but the fact is that the Chinese seed drills were at least more effective than that of the Babylonians

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Huh???

The Romans had heavy ploughs and iron ones. They did not use them where they were not needed however. For example in thin soil with dry land farming you would be silly to use a heavy iron plow you just aggravate erosion and moisture loss.

This site (http://www.humanist.de/rome/rts/) has a nice review of Roman plows (and also addresses supposed problems with Roman harness arrangments) its also well documented but if your concerned about a web source you can find much the same evidence presented in

The Archeology of the Roman Economy by Kevin Green

and also see the Plough in Roman Britain by W H Manning

In any case the point is where needed the Romans used diffrent Ploughs and certainly iron.


edit:

OK this is going to be a more detailed discussion that I was planning but I simply cannot agree about this:

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Not really - slaves are a labor input not a machine input retaining slavery or not has little to due with mechanized efficiency, but with the cost and availability of labor. China did rid itself of slavery - it retained slaves in the industrial sector, and I thought the peasants owed a labor tax/duty

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No China was no more pre-industrialized than Roma was.

So China had potentially some better Iron technology, Rome bested them in Cement and glass... This is kind of rat race in a circle.

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A third of the population - please. I suggest you first consult the all too neglected article by Starr - 'An Overdose of Slavery'.

Second you are pointing to a problem that was very condensed in both time and space to the late Republic and its new land capture in Italy and assumed dislocations that occurred after the Punic wars. The Empire is a diffrent kettle of fish, the breadbasket of the Med, Egypt was worked by peasants not slaves (slaves and freed-men in rural Egypt in Rome census data amount to maybe 1-5%).

edit some more:

I won't claim to have read more than couple articles on Han slavery. But it does seem to have existed and convict labor and revolts seem common as does cuvee drafts of labor from peasants. As such to me this is a game of semantics. The Romans did not generally have convict labor simply slaves who suffered from sentencing, nor did real Roman peasants face a cuvee draft. Moreover Rome certainly seems to have a more enlightened attitude toward it merchant and capitalist classes.

Also you cite the late Republic land crises but what about the Yellow Turban revolt in the late Han period? Moreover it worth noting that in other parts of the empire free small farmers more or less faced no tax at all (at least not direct ones).