Carrier Mulling on Mills Again

[ignorantianescia]

Richard Carrier is playing his usual fiddle on the history of science, singing the praises of Greco-Roman science, or actually practical technology, and downplaying achievements in the Middle Ages. Of course, this involves a waterfall of words that doesn't address the central point he seeks to rebut and also plenty of pretending that statements and facts mean what they don't. Not to mention a fair deal of misleadingness and misconstruction. He is attempting to attack a view on the early Middle Ages taken by James this time.

www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14660

Christians like to deny the Dark Ages existed, and instead reimagine them as a glorious age of knowledge and progress. That’s just not true. I document the material and textual evidence against that in my chapter on the subject in Christianity Is Not Great, for anyone who really wants to explore why that novel thesis doesn’t fly. But one piece of that new mythology is the claim that Christians alone invented or deployed automation and industrial machinery. I’ve written on this myth before (in Flynn’s Pile of Boners, Lynn White on Horse Stuff, and Did the Environment Kill Rome?). But here I’ll focus on one particular matter I’ve been reflecting on lately: industrial automation.

I am no expert on any of this, but stating later in the post that "I have marked red part of the line indicating this statistic for the Netherlands, measures for which begin from the 16th century, showing about 15% urbanization, rising to ancient levels again by the 17th century before surpassing them" is typically misleading, because the level of urbanisation would have been unprecedented for the Netherlands at the time.

But of course the main problem is that Carrier seeks to prove that Roman times had a higher level of technological advancement than the (early) Middle Ages, while James simply noted the advances in the early Middle Ages after the fall of the West Roman empire.

He did indulge less in extolling his own intelligence than he used to do, though, despite his self-promotion.

[humphreyfmclarke]

Carrier does throw out the odd interesting blog post once in a while. I'm hesitant to dismiss it just because he is a very odd chap.

I think using lead atmospheric pollution as a measure of development is a little problematic though. For example the peak lead production in the first century CE seems to have co-coincided with the peak production of silver coins used to finance the century's frequent civil wars. Secondly ancient smelting was very inefficient - perhaps more so than medieval smelting so some of the difference may be accounted for by that.

I'm not sure that Mediterranean shipwrecks is a good measure either - surely Medieval ships were somewhat more advanced / navigation techniques better etc..

Urbanization - well medieval Europe was an agrarian society so surely overall population is a better measure?

Be interested to see everyone's thoughts.

[himself]

Early Medieval Europe was largely confined to the West, so comparisons should be made to the Western Empire only. Otherwise, "Byzantium" needs to be included with the medieval. Not sure why anyone would suppose a world of Gothic, Frankish, Saxon burning and sacking, followed by Viking, Saracen, and Magyar burning and sacking would be prosperous, or that a great deal of Roman engineering would not have been wrecked is as mad as those who suppose this could not be turned around.

[ignorantianescia]

Oct 16, 2018 15:54:49 GMT humphreyfmclarke said:

Carrier does throw out the odd interesting blog post once in a while. I'm hesitant to dismiss it just because he is a very odd chap.

Odd and a wee bit eccentric (if not worse), isn't he?

But I agree that dismissing the article wholesale, with all its arguments and evidence, goes too far. I do think that he is at least doing his usual trick with misrepresenting his piece as a rebuttal of James, despite it not even addressing the same case, and with misstating the meaning of his evidence about urbanisation in the Netherlands. But other than that, the evidence he has gathered might well be valid, though his interpretation could easily be dodgy, and his general point about population and engineering prowess might be true, but as it stands it seems hardly persuasive. And the warfare thesis nonsense thrown in here and there does not instil confidence.

Oct 16, 2018 15:54:49 GMT humphreyfmclarke said:

I'm not sure that Mediterranean shipwrecks is a good measure either - surely Medieval ships were somewhat more advanced / navigation techniques better etc..

Oct 17, 2018 20:46:22 GMT himself said:

Early Medieval Europe was largely confined to the West, so comparisons should be made to the Western Empire only. Otherwise, "Byzantium" needs to be included with the medieval. Not sure why anyone would suppose a world of Gothic, Frankish, Saxon burning and sacking, followed by Viking, Saracen, and Magyar burning and sacking would be prosperous, or that a great deal of Roman engineering would not have been wrecked is as mad as those who suppose this could not be turned around.

In addition, since the Roman Empire more or less controlled the Mediterranean Sea until the fifth century and Rome was dependent on grain brought in from overseas, a high volume of trade compared to a period where the Mediterranean was a contested region would not be strange. Perhaps the volume of trade was higher in Roman times but the value of trade was higher in the later Middle Ages, who knows?

[James Hannam]

Thanks all,

I'm in two minds about whether to address this article. Tim kindly pointed it out to me a few days ago and now you have all helpfully commented here.

Firstly, despite the hook, it isn't really aimed at me. My objection to the use of the term 'dark ages' is that it writes off the people who lived in it but I have never seen much point in denying that there was an economic collapse from the fifth century, and that it took until about 800 some balance to be restored. Even then, Europe never achieved the stability of the Roman Empire, a massive military despotism. I could even add some examples Carrier missed, like the loss of pot throwing technology in Britain and the olive oil trade between Spain and Rome (giving us the Testaccio containing about 50 million old amphorae). But of course, all of this was a result of the Empire controlling vast amounts of land and keeping the peace. The trading of bulky items like grain and olive oil certainly did end once the Med was no longer being policed by a single hegemonic power.

The west was overrun but Angles, Saxons, Goths, Vandals, Franks and the rest from the fifth century. The plague of Justinian winnowed the east which them suffered the invasion of the Persians and Arabs. Later, from the north, the Vikings got as far as Sicily. Or Palestine, if you count the Crusades as being primarily a Norman adventure. I don't think the mid-millennium economic collapse needs another explanation. Certainly not one based on religion.

Questions of whether a particular technology was known to the Romans and then readopted or reinvented in the Middle Ages is fascinating, but the traditional view that plenty of ideas crossed the steppes (such as the horse collar and stirrups) still seems likely to me. As for Domesday watermills, living in southeast England where we still have more mills per square inch than you would ever believe, it never seemed unlikely to me. The idea that all of England had about 5,000 hand querns is just daft as each family would need one of these just to deal with their own crop. One watermill per village makes a huge amount of sense. After all, there is no doubt watermills existed in England for at least three centuries before the Domesday Book: htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/herefordshires-past/the-anglo-saxon-period/herefordshire-sites/wellington-mill/

As for the lead in the ice cores, a lot has happened since 1994. The latest analysis (see chart here: www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/scientists-reclaim-the-long-lost-economic-history-of-rome/560339/) shows lead levels returned to Roman peaks in c. 800AD. It actually gives a year by year breakdown and is fascinating stuff.

Best wishes

James