17 ms·

When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment

224 points by diodorus 10y ago

diodorus 10y ago
Disclaimer: yes, there is some annoying, borderline clickbait-y language in this article, including in the title. And yes, it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" to Asia. That said, lots of interesting information and imagery here that seemed worth a share.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > a philosopher and statesman known as Kung Fuzi (“Master Kung,” known in the West as “Confucius”) codified the heavenly rules into a series of texts that would form the backbone of Chinese culture for the next two thousand years. Master Kung’s intricate philosophy, known as kung fu, utterly permeated every area of Chinese existence, from statecraft to family life, from etiquette to martial arts. (emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original) This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was (and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not "kung fu".
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    It sounds so cool, it's almost worth the fake etymology. Who could deny that Jackie Chan is a worthy successor to Confucius?
    - wojcech 10y ago
      I'm going to be that guy: me, their philosophies are almost completely incompatible^^
    - huahaiy 10y ago
      I would. You must be joking.
  - zardo 10y ago
    Isn't Kung Fu is closely related to Taoism? It's the Yin to Confusionism's Yang.
    - wangyounonce 10y ago
      That is actually another debate in itself. One origin story is that kungfu was taught to the chinese by Bodhidharma an indian who is also taken as the first patriarch of Zen. This claim is of course rubbished by many. https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3o2y7u/kung_fu_came_from_india_no_it_didnt/ https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3o2y7u/kung_fu_came_fr... Confucianism/Confucius was more of a target of jokes for daoists.
- tome 10y ago
  > it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" I think you mean "it is overstating to claim Rome was a dim backwater".
  - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    Especially given that Rome was the largest city in the world from maybe 100 BCE to in the neighborhood of 400 CE.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  So Kung Fu isn't from Kong Fuzi (WP has no relationship between the two, and since Kung Fu was Gong Fu I guess it's not surprising). I had to stop reading because I felt something weird in it. Maybe too much hyperbole. Or the non academic sources. But it did make me want to broaden my knowledge of history outside the western nationalized scope we're fed.
danblick 10y ago
I've been enjoying the "History of the Ancient World" lecture series on Amazon streaming. (I also really enjoyed the "Decisive Battles" series by the same professor Greg Aldrete.) The article claims that China dwarfed Rome, but the course actually claims that Rome and China under the Han dynasty were about equal in many ways (geographic size and population). There are several lectures comparing the two. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancient-world-a-global-perspective.html http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancien...
kmicklas 10y ago
> Imagine if you could visit Rome today, and find it still populated by Latin-speaking, toga-wearing Romans. Maybe no more togas, but isn't this basically true? While for example Spanish is Basquified and French is Germanicified, modern Italian is basically the direct descendant of classical Latin just as Mandarin is a direct descendant of classical Chinese.
- kafkaesque 10y ago
  Uh, no? The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way, classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less influences by other world languages such as Arabic. My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    There is also no way to understand classical Chinese if you speak any modern Chinese language. > The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. This is certainly not the case in the US. That sounds more like studying church Latin, which will be mocked if you're studying Latin outside an explicit religious context. Where are you?
    - huahaiy 10y ago
      Not really. Ancient Chinese poems as far back as 3000 years ago are still required materials for recitation by Chinese school children. Any educated modern Chinese can read and understand ancient Chinese text.
vacri 10y ago
> During the Roman period, the Asian continent was by far the wealthiest, most advanced, most culturally diverse place on earth. 'The Asian continent' is not a nation, and as a bonus, it also includes Rome. How much does it include Rome? Well, the last thousand-odd years of Rome's run were basically in Asia (who we call the Byzantines, they called themselves Romans). It's also weird to proclaim 'cultural diversity' as a symbol of power in that period, when it was those who could spread their core culture that were the most powerful. Weirdly, the article later expounds on the cultural homogeneity of the Chinese as their strength. So Rome is weak because of lack of cultural diversity, and China is strong because of lack of cultural diversity? Ultimately the article doesn't even discuss what it suggests in the title - it expounds upon those wonderous exotic peoples, and then sadly shakes its head on how two travelers must have felt dying in the 'backwater' of the Roman empire (of course, we'll neatly ignore that they were also found in a Roman backwater to begin with - Britannia wasn't exactly paved with marble). No real discussion on the meeting of the cultures. China's historical culture and power is often overlooked by us westerners, sure, but the article is too much "gosh, those exotics!" for me.
jordanlev 10y ago
Dear Medium engineers (if any of you happen to see this): why must localStorage and/or cookies be enabled in my browser for images to be displayed on your site?
Retric 10y ago
This really overstates things, there was regular contact between Europe and China back several thousand years before Rome. It's not actually that far on foot, and rumor can easially travel both ways even if few people make the trip.
bhritchie 10y ago
> Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… > it’s always made me sad to think of the Romans being largely cut off from the main action on the world stage. This is incorrect because the Romans knew about Greece - in fact they ran the place. The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy (sadly little known because not very accessible) than Rome, so sure, "Asia" had better philosophy than Rome (really India specifically). But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Rome wasn't cut off from the best of philosophy - they were just too practical to care much about it - and they knew it and said as much. Philosophy I know something about - I dropped out of the PhD program at Harvard after studying quite a bit of it. But some of the other parts seem dubious or of questionable importance. Architecture? The Romans look pretty good to me there, and I mean they even used concrete. Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Population? So what?
- duaneb 10y ago
  > The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. This is definitely the case. Barbarian was a greek term centered around greece; while romans managed to avoid the label most of the time, they definitely fell into the category at points, e.g. in their worship of the Lares during the Republic. > But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Definitely. I will say that the philosophies in the original vedic texts are possibly the oldest things we can call "philosophy", even though the more popular hindu/buddhist derived philosophies were heavily hellenized by the fall of the roman empire. I also think that development of a koan, the "simultaneous truths", would have been vehemently rejected by the greek philosophers of which I am aware. Though they still had "middle road" type thoughts, it was not based around the acceptance of two contrary truths, even though you can form such a dialectic that way. Does this match up with your understanding? Do you know of anything framing vedic-derived philosophy in greek-derived terms? I often get swamped in the details when attempting to read through the material directly; doubly so for the ridiculously archaic older texts. > Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Not quite true; Galen was an excellent surgeon, covered basic sanitation (e.g wash the wound and then bathe it in vinegar), and was THE reference until our knowledge of anatomy improved starting around the renaissance. But in this respect, the Romans certainly dominated the greeks, and their ability to treat soldiers on the field with the "state of the art technology" was absolutely crucial for the maintenance of a standing army, especially during periods of expansion (e.g. the tail end of the republic). However, they had lost their edge by the fall of the empire to neighboring powers. That goes for nearly everything but IIRC engineering secrets, which were simply lost.
arcanus 10y ago
> The Palace of Versailles is, in its way, one of the last dim shadows of the Han court Lots of arguments are a pretty big stretch in this article.
- AvenueIngres 10y ago
  Yeah, this article is garbage. The only reason it got on the front page is because of the clickbait title.
- bnolsen 10y ago
  wow...i've seen some ancient architecture in china and in no way does any of it stand up to what the romans were producing. not in quality and especially not longevity. And the western cathedrals are marvels themselves.
woodruffw 10y ago
I greatly enjoyed reading this, although the author takes (more than) a few liberties when comparing the Roman and the various Asian empires: > Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison This is a slippery claim, especially when you consider how long the Roman Empire lasted and how widely its relevance and regional dominance swayed over its lifetime. During its peak, Rome spanned dozens of cultures on two separate continents and liberally imported other peoples and norms into their own. That's not to say that the contemporaneous Chinese empires didn't do the same, only that the distinction between the two in this aspect is less stark than the author would have us believe. > Rome’s legions were fighting fiercely for control of Gaul (modern France and Germany), Britain, Egypt, and various parts of the Balkans; while a succession of (often unfairly maligned) emperors scrambled to hold Rome together through an endless series of famines, wars with the East, coups d’état, refugee crises, and revolts. This is not strictly false, but it's again muddied by the extreme duration of the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana lasted for two centuries, spanned three major political dynasties, and is generally the period people think of when they think of the Roman Empire (or Rome in general). By the time the Chinese Empire(s) had begun trading silk with the Roman Empire, peace was already the norm in the Roman world. The author is correct in his characterization of Rome as less artistically and creatively inclined than it perhaps ought to have been, considering its size and wealth during its peak. That being said, Rome's accomplishments in architecture and culture are visible (and audible) everywhere in the Western world. I don't think that any one Eastern power of the same period can claim such cultural permanence to any comparable degree.
- Red_Tarsius 10y ago
  I flagged the article. The author exploited clickbait titles and western guilt to craft his own narrative. People are going to read this poor cluster of pop history and get a very wrong idea of the Roman Empire. The second part of the article was quite fascinating but how can I possibly trust the author after statements such as Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison. The premise of the article is flawed too, we don't know enough about the 'chinese' skeletons yet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/09/23/chinese-skeletons-in-roman-britain-not-so-fast/&refURL=https://www.google.it/&referrer=https://www.google.it/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe... "The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you get the idea." Read this article with a grain of salt.
gmarx 10y ago
Many of the items the author claims China dwarfed Rome on seem pretty subjective. Philosophy and poetry? I didn't read very far past this. I am under the impression that Rome was pretty technologically sophisticated, even beyond what we normally picture. Does the author go on to compare tech sophistication with examples?
- jcranmer 10y ago
  Nope. Well, there's a claim that the Asian empires had the most advanced weaponry of their age. But no examples. Such a claim is probably false, given that China historically lagged the Mediterranean in terms of adopting technologies like swords, iron-age weaponry, chariotry, Greek fire. The main exception to this rule (gunpowder) isn't really an exception, since the development of weapons that made effective use of gunpowder (namely, the arquebus) did not occur in China but in Western Europe. The author also conveniently ignores that many of the large European powers tried to claim the right to be the successor to the Roman Empire--the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire (which always called themselves the Roman Empire), the Russian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. And the fact that Latin and Greek was the mark of learned scholars, that classical works like Aristotle and Euclid were the textbooks of learning, all the way through the 1800s is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Confucius' teachings were considered the mark of proper learning in China. It can be argued that viewing Chinese history through the lens of the Mandate of Heaven hurts understanding, not helps, since it downplays the (sometimes significant) periods of disunity in China.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    It's worth keeping in mind that China's needs for military capability differed from the various Western empires. Rome fought with Persia to the East, the Gauls and Vandals to the north, and Carthage to the south, as well as the colonised peoples of its own empire, pretty much constantly. As I understand history, China was buffered by land (north, west, and south), and sea (west) from any significant challengers. Most of its threats were internal, the notable exception being the Mongol invasions, but that wasn't until the 1200s BCE. On the other hand, what China did have in absolute spades and wheelbarrows full was technology (including, for the record, wheelbarrows). I've only learnt of the major study of this myself in the past year, British biochemist Joseph Needham's absolutely epic Science and Civilisation in China. Needham conceived of the work whilst in China on behalf of the British government during WWII, and proposed a 5-6 volume treatment in the 1950s. Seven decades later the work continues, with the total volume count approaching 30. Author Simon Winchester tells the story of Needham in The Man who Loved China (a single volume, should you fear to ask -- not a foregone conclusion as several digests of S&CIC run to multiple volumes themselves). The breadth, scope, and precociousness of China's explorations in science, maths, and technology are staggering. The volume listing of the work itself gives some sense of the scope and scale, this is given at Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_... Scientific thought. Maths, astronomy, & geology. Physics. Mechanical engineering. Civil and nautical engineering. Paper and printing. Spagyrical discovery (alchemy and immortality). Military technology. Textiles. Ferrous metallurgy. Ceramics. Mining. Botany. Agriculture. Agroindustry & Forestry. Biology & botany. Fermentation & food science. Medicine. Language and logic. Two volumes, topics unspecified, are given as "work in progress", I suspect these would concern military and weaving technologies respectively. http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html
huahaiy 10y ago
Don't know why this is down voted. Why is it so hard to learn some fact that may be contrary to your imagination?
- kafkaesque 10y ago
  I don't know if what you said is right, but I have been basically relaying what my Latin professors have taught me and what I, as an A-student in Latin, have learnt, yet I am being downvoted. A similar thing happened to me when I started talking about Latin American literature and history. I'm assuming most people here have gotten their information off the Web and have a very one-sided view of whatever they have decided they have attained "knowledge" on.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    I downvoted you for this line: > The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. You're on solid ground to say that in the classical period there were several registers of Latin, that the lower registers gave rise to vulgar and late latin, and that those gave rise to church latin. (I can only really interpret "medieval Latin" as referring to church latin.) You're certainly on solid ground to say that speaking Italian won't let you understand Latin. But the Latin you study in a normal Latin course is the high register of the classical period, Classical Latin. It doesn't derive from medieval Latin, it predates it by many hundreds of years.
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12639603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12639603 and marked it off-topic.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Ericson2314 10y ago
I would have enjoyed this more had it more nuance. Even if you don't know squat about history, its important to get of this single-dimension "who was greatest" + Western self-loathing (and ironic combo too). ======== From what I learned in school and remember off the top of my head: - Rome was an ugly place, but they kind of knew it hence upper classes went Greek and the eastern empire became more prominent. Romans were great for trade, but their empire could only be held together by growth (plunder) and that's not sustainable - Greeks were more civilized, but clearly sucked at empire building (Alexander is Macedon). Hellenization shows that even if he messed up Persia, the culture was influential. - China couldn't really expand because it is so isolated geographically, so it is harder to for it to influence other places. But this had an effect that arguably they were less interested in conquest and influence (outside of uniting accessible areas) - Confucianism raggin' on merchants, artisans, and whatever else might form a middle class - Ming treasure fleet might have reached Africa, but no fucks given. - Mesopotamia did do great things back in the day, but by 1000 was past its peak (as was the Levant). Interesting how ethnic identity, especially among Semitic groups, seems quiet fluid, though invading armies + Islam explains a lot of that. - Persions were not at all taught (before college). Seriously wtf, we covered everybody else said to be skipped in American education. But I later learned in college that perhaps they were more rural/feudal than eastern Mediterranean, (the article says more Urban than Rome, but then makes a bunch of medieval comparisons, so who knows?) - While we didn't cover it. I read about Kush/Bactria on Wikipedia (and the other Kush hah (south of Egypt not what you were thinking hah)). I can kind of understand that as an influenCED rather than influencING kingdom it was easy to gloss over (oh we talked about the silk road, but usually in the abstract). But I do like covering it as concrete evidence that those things which were said to be influential actually were. Basically, even in fairly leftist history curricula, it was all about who does the most trade, most urbanization, and most interaction with neighbors. Any overly courtly civilization was suspect. Arguably then the same things that made China so dominant early on and steady thereafter also lead to its eventual falling behind. Central Eurasia might have become the dominant world culture except the Europeans got a huge steroid injection with easiest access a humongous place you could depopulate by coughing. ========== Author asked in a caption about better timelines. I inherited some company's Hammond's "Graphic History of Mankind" from the 1950s. Some things there should definitely be revised (though they kept on extending and publishing the timeline until at least 2000) but the concept is great. Somebody should make some crazy SVG thing where as you zoom in more details would appear. Make it procedural generated and open source so non-technical history buffs can send you PRs (or figure out how to scrape Wikipedia). I'll be forever grateful.
Chathamization 10y ago
As others have pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. To give just one example, the picture he posts of a supposed "temple of the Qin dynasty, circa 200 BCE" appears to actually be the Nanqiao (south bridge) in Chengdu, which seems to have been built in 1878 AD. I can give a list of some of the other errors I noticed if anyone likes (and there are probably many I missed); either way, I wouldn't recommend anyone take any of this as fact. Beyond the factual errors, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims. I don't know how one would come up with an objective way to measure philosophy and poetry. How much philosophy and poetry from (for example) the Kushan Empire has survived? What's the background for the claim that its philosophy and poetry dwarfed the Roman Empire's? The idea that we should pay more attention to many of the other polities in history is a valid one. But I don't think an article filled with errors and baseless claims is terribly useful.
- Red_Tarsius 10y ago
  The worst part is the Medium comment section. Users are shaming anyone who dares to call out the author on his gross generalizations.
- cconroy 10y ago
  I just read a few paragraphs and gave up when it said Rome was left out of the civilized world (referring to the middle east blocking china). I guess he forgot the greeks and hellenization. Oh but the greeks were barbarians too. The tone also angered me.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    When Rome ascended Hellenic civilization was in descend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period Greece became pretty much part of Rome.
  - 1474295912 10y ago
    > The tone also angered me I Read the article and I understand that it's flawed in some parts. However, that's exactly how the non-western major world civilisations are called. Barbarians, mysticals and unscientific etc are the words used to describe them. I would urge you to look past the eurocenticism as I did and you'll discover that there's truth in the facts. If we leave out the mislabeling of images, the fact remains that the eastern world was in fact more connected, advanced and globalised compared to Rome.
jond3k 10y ago
I'm suspicious of any article that's widely slated by a community yet still trending. I feel there's a market need for a browser plugin that lets you filter out clickbait factories like his employers and all the dirty tricks they use to hijack our attention. There's no way we can keep up with them without computer assistance.
platz 10y ago
Author admits he wrote a spin-piece "So why, then, would I write such an anti-Roman article? Because I’m trying to give people who’ve received a eurocentric education a different set of goggles to try on: the lenses of Roma’s Asian contemporaries, some of whom genuinely did believe the Romans were “primitive” and “unclean.” This is a perspective we almost never hear about in the West, and I think it’s an interesting one to ponder. I do my best to keep my facts straight — but all the historical stories I write are colored heavily by my own interpretations and blind spots. My favorite history writers are Will Durant and Pierre Briant. I realize that this kind of “interpretive” historical writing is now considered obsolete — maybe even dangerously slanted and over-simplistic — but it’s the stuff I enjoy reading, so it’s what I write."
- vacri 10y ago
  Most prominent cultures think that their contemporaries are lagging behind them.
- serge2k 10y ago
  So long as the author doesn't get upset when people call him out for being > slanted and over-simplistic
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  In other words, he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group, making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world because of their ethnicity. "Dear White People, Since You Are Racist, So Here's How You Ought To Think About This Subject" kind of thing.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    > he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group I think you should re-read the paragraph you're re-stating -- you don't seem to have understood the author's meaning, because you're replying to a straw man. In fact, IMO, almost all of the comments here seem to have missed the actual point of the article, which I don't think was at all intended to be taken on face value... Giving people "a different set of goggles to try on" is about as far as you can get from "inflict[ing] an ideology". The entire purpose of the former is to explicitly recognize the contingency of a particular (or even any particular) ideology. > making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world I don't think the assumption that most formal education in the west is pretty Eurocentric is anything less than accurate. E.g. look at the amount of time spent on various cultures in history courses and look at how they are discussed (in their own terms vs. comparatively.) There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, either, because it's easier to learn about things that are familiar to you, and easier to learn about new things when they are compared to things you're already familiar with. However, it does motivate the need for popular writing that points out the ways in which such an education can lead you astray. In that respect, all of the strongly negative reactions to this article were exactly the point the author was making. The flaws in Asia-centric thinking are obvious to us, and the step that the author is hoping an educated reader will be able to make on their own (perhaps with the help of a footnote) is to realize that these same flaws are also manifest in Euro-centric thinking. (Or, you know, just get pissed off and miss the point.)
soufron 10y ago
This article does not get the main difference between the Roman Empire and all these other great states. Most notably, the fact that we are still living in the Roman Empire. Property Law? Check. Marriage and Divorce? Check. Democracy and Public Life processes? Check. Well it evolved of course. But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.
- FlyingSnake 10y ago
  > But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever. Is HN really a place for such uneducated snarky comments? The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past. There were democracies in Ancient East too, and if you read the laws of Ashoka/Gupta etc, you'll find they were much more advanced than most of their contemporaries. We don't need to stoop so low to discredit other cultures just because we can't overcome our bias.
  - endisukaj 10y ago
    > The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past. The amount of self-loathing in the West is reaching critical levels.
- srean 10y ago
  It gets a tad inconvenient to compute with a numerical system that goes XVII... Computation and algorithms are sorta important. Vaishali was a republic a long time before. > Property Law? check. Marriage and Divorce? check Are you really saying that these ideas originated in Roman empire ? I think expanding your reading repertoire will help get a more informed perspective. All I can say is that your comment does not come off as particularly knowledgeable or educated.
soufron 10y ago
If you want a serious update on the current level of research on Roman and antiquities studies - including the place of the roman empire in the world, you'd better go there: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-inheritance-of-rome https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-inheritance-...
mrtree 10y ago
Medium is becoming a pamphlet...
wangyounonce 10y ago
One interesting bit from the article "But we don’t still identify as “citizens of the Roman Empire,” and we certainly aren’t ruled by emperors who derive their authority from the gods of Mt. Olympus." Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire leading to things like having american "Senators" meeting in the "Senate". Also possibly why some of the commentators here seem so put off by the article.
- endisukaj 10y ago
  > Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire I'm sorry, what? I'm not an American so this is the first time I'm hearing this. Can someone recommend some reading on this topic? Seems pretty interesting.
dredmorbius 10y ago
As many have noted, this piece does plenty of axe-grinding, conclusion-stretching, and fact-spinning, as well as simply getting a fair bit wrong. But for all of that it does convey a fundamental truth: there was a hell of a lot of established civilisation going on outside the general scope of Western History -- principally the Mediterranian basin. In particular, China was home to a huge, advanced, and highly active culture. I'm only slowly becoming aware of this myself through recent reading. As I've just commented, I only discovered in the past year the work of British biochemist-turned-sinologist Joseph Needham. His Science and Civilisation in China, proposed as a brief 5-6 volume work in the early 1950s, continues to be developed to this day. Just reading the titles of the 24 completed volumes gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at least two more volumes forthcoming. http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China gives the background for this story, and is highly recommended. Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't: there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the time of the Roman empire, and it easily rivalled, and quite possibly surpassed, Rome.
kafkaesq 10y ago
Not sure about the historical narrative. But the work of the visual artist, Dmitry Zaviyalov, featured at the top is quite impressive, at least.
jbmorgado 10y ago
Medium is becoming the Social Justice Warrior de facto pamphlet. With absolutely no regard to facts as long as it fits their narrative. Like many already pointed this "article" is totally fantasious.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
The reading of history of ancient civilisations in the article is kinda cool, if a bit naive. I would not mind reading a historical novel based on it (I understand that's what the article is really a plug for). I would certainly welcome a game based on the historical periods and geographic areas covered. It's a bit sad that so many games are set in the European middle ages when there are so many more colourful periods of history to conquer or loot in (hey- you can play the Sassanids in Rome: Total War, at least; and yeah, cataphracts do tear a new one to legionnaires). The big problem of the article however, and one that puts an obvious hole smack in the middle of its claim that "westerners were the true barbarians" is, as others have pointed out, that it avoids pretty much any discussion of the intellectual activity that went on between the shores of the Middle East and the Adriatic Sea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece Not to mention: everything started in Babylon, and ancient Sumer, and Aegypt, but then it got carried over to the western world through the Greeks and lives on to this day. So it's a bit silly to separate the achievements of different peoples according to geography when they obviously and clearly were smart enough to learn from each other. It's much better to speak of a human civilisation that covered the globe and survives to this day, thank the gods. A barbarian, in the end, is just a person who can't see beyond the borders of his or her own country.
restalis 10y ago
What irks me it that the article makes its comparison by picking the best aspects of non-Roman civilizations spread all over Asia and from there draws the conclusion that those "born into the light" Chinese who ended up in Britannia must have felt like being in wilderness. It actively ignored the aspects that people outside the Roman empire would most likely considered impressive compared to other Asian empires. For one, the civilizations around Mediterranean were sea-faring types, and even more so for the Roman Empire which relied on sea transport for much of its normal functioning. That is not something one could see in any of the Asian empires, not nowhere near that scale. Law. Rome had a law system that was so good that it was willingly adopted by most of the civilizations coming after, regardless of the fact that the said civilizations might have had their own distinct cultural heritage that included law. The individual liberties and the personal property rights seem to be timeless attractions, going back since the Roman era. (By the way, the Chinese really appreciate that to this day, Vancouver real estate prices speak for themselves.) Constructions. Although concrete was older than Romans, they were the ones to take it seriously and made extensive research on it. That allowed them to build things that were simply impossible without concrete. There's only so much complexity you can get just by piling up blocks of stone, or there can be only so much heightened weight using just softer binders. Don't get me started on jewelry and complex works like ones that involved developing glass with layers of metal inside it, or other such things that weren't developed nowhere else. Yeah, that must have been underwhelming, that is how darkness must have been perceived like!

224 points by diodorus 10y ago

Disclaimer: yes, there is some annoying, borderline clickbait-y language in this article, including in the title. And yes, it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" to Asia. That said, lots of interesting information and imagery here that seemed worth a share.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
> a philosopher and statesman known as Kung Fuzi (“Master Kung,” known in the West as “Confucius”) codified the heavenly rules into a series of texts that would form the backbone of Chinese culture for the next two thousand years. Master Kung’s intricate philosophy, known as kung fu, utterly permeated every area of Chinese existence, from statecraft to family life, from etiquette to martial arts. (emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original) This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was (and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not "kung fu".
- jessaustin 10y ago
  It sounds so cool, it's almost worth the fake etymology. Who could deny that Jackie Chan is a worthy successor to Confucius?
  - wojcech 10y ago
    I'm going to be that guy: me, their philosophies are almost completely incompatible^^
  - huahaiy 10y ago
    I would. You must be joking.
- zardo 10y ago
  Isn't Kung Fu is closely related to Taoism? It's the Yin to Confusionism's Yang.
  - wangyounonce 10y ago
    That is actually another debate in itself. One origin story is that kungfu was taught to the chinese by Bodhidharma an indian who is also taken as the first patriarch of Zen. This claim is of course rubbished by many. https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3o2y7u/kung_fu_came_from_india_no_it_didnt/ https://np.reddit.com/r/CIWO/comments/3o2y7u/kung_fu_came_fr... Confucianism/Confucius was more of a target of jokes for daoists.
tome 10y ago
> it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" I think you mean "it is overstating to claim Rome was a dim backwater".
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  Especially given that Rome was the largest city in the world from maybe 100 BCE to in the neighborhood of 400 CE.
agumonkey 10y ago
So Kung Fu isn't from Kong Fuzi (WP has no relationship between the two, and since Kung Fu was Gong Fu I guess it's not surprising). I had to stop reading because I felt something weird in it. Maybe too much hyperbole. Or the non academic sources. But it did make me want to broaden my knowledge of history outside the western nationalized scope we're fed.

danblick 10y ago

I've been enjoying the "History of the Ancient World" lecture series on Amazon streaming. (I also really enjoyed the "Decisive Battles" series by the same professor Greg Aldrete.) The article claims that China dwarfed Rome, but the course actually claims that Rome and China under the Han dynasty were about equal in many ways (geographic size and population). There are several lectures comparing the two. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancient-world-a-global-perspective.html http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancien...

kmicklas 10y ago

> Imagine if you could visit Rome today, and find it still populated by Latin-speaking, toga-wearing Romans. Maybe no more togas, but isn't this basically true? While for example Spanish is Basquified and French is Germanicified, modern Italian is basically the direct descendant of classical Latin just as Mandarin is a direct descendant of classical Chinese.

kafkaesque 10y ago
Uh, no? The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way, classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less influences by other world languages such as Arabic. My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  There is also no way to understand classical Chinese if you speak any modern Chinese language. > The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. This is certainly not the case in the US. That sounds more like studying church Latin, which will be mocked if you're studying Latin outside an explicit religious context. Where are you?
  - huahaiy 10y ago
    Not really. Ancient Chinese poems as far back as 3000 years ago are still required materials for recitation by Chinese school children. Any educated modern Chinese can read and understand ancient Chinese text.

vacri 10y ago

> During the Roman period, the Asian continent was by far the wealthiest, most advanced, most culturally diverse place on earth. 'The Asian continent' is not a nation, and as a bonus, it also includes Rome. How much does it include Rome? Well, the last thousand-odd years of Rome's run were basically in Asia (who we call the Byzantines, they called themselves Romans). It's also weird to proclaim 'cultural diversity' as a symbol of power in that period, when it was those who could spread their core culture that were the most powerful. Weirdly, the article later expounds on the cultural homogeneity of the Chinese as their strength. So Rome is weak because of lack of cultural diversity, and China is strong because of lack of cultural diversity? Ultimately the article doesn't even discuss what it suggests in the title - it expounds upon those wonderous exotic peoples, and then sadly shakes its head on how two travelers must have felt dying in the 'backwater' of the Roman empire (of course, we'll neatly ignore that they were also found in a Roman backwater to begin with - Britannia wasn't exactly paved with marble). No real discussion on the meeting of the cultures. China's historical culture and power is often overlooked by us westerners, sure, but the article is too much "gosh, those exotics!" for me.

jordanlev 10y ago

Dear Medium engineers (if any of you happen to see this): why must localStorage and/or cookies be enabled in my browser for images to be displayed on your site?

Retric 10y ago

This really overstates things, there was regular contact between Europe and China back several thousand years before Rome. It's not actually that far on foot, and rumor can easially travel both ways even if few people make the trip.

bhritchie 10y ago

> Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… > it’s always made me sad to think of the Romans being largely cut off from the main action on the world stage. This is incorrect because the Romans knew about Greece - in fact they ran the place. The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy (sadly little known because not very accessible) than Rome, so sure, "Asia" had better philosophy than Rome (really India specifically). But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Rome wasn't cut off from the best of philosophy - they were just too practical to care much about it - and they knew it and said as much. Philosophy I know something about - I dropped out of the PhD program at Harvard after studying quite a bit of it. But some of the other parts seem dubious or of questionable importance. Architecture? The Romans look pretty good to me there, and I mean they even used concrete. Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Population? So what?

duaneb 10y ago
> The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. This is definitely the case. Barbarian was a greek term centered around greece; while romans managed to avoid the label most of the time, they definitely fell into the category at points, e.g. in their worship of the Lares during the Republic. > But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Definitely. I will say that the philosophies in the original vedic texts are possibly the oldest things we can call "philosophy", even though the more popular hindu/buddhist derived philosophies were heavily hellenized by the fall of the roman empire. I also think that development of a koan, the "simultaneous truths", would have been vehemently rejected by the greek philosophers of which I am aware. Though they still had "middle road" type thoughts, it was not based around the acceptance of two contrary truths, even though you can form such a dialectic that way. Does this match up with your understanding? Do you know of anything framing vedic-derived philosophy in greek-derived terms? I often get swamped in the details when attempting to read through the material directly; doubly so for the ridiculously archaic older texts. > Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Not quite true; Galen was an excellent surgeon, covered basic sanitation (e.g wash the wound and then bathe it in vinegar), and was THE reference until our knowledge of anatomy improved starting around the renaissance. But in this respect, the Romans certainly dominated the greeks, and their ability to treat soldiers on the field with the "state of the art technology" was absolutely crucial for the maintenance of a standing army, especially during periods of expansion (e.g. the tail end of the republic). However, they had lost their edge by the fall of the empire to neighboring powers. That goes for nearly everything but IIRC engineering secrets, which were simply lost.

arcanus 10y ago

> The Palace of Versailles is, in its way, one of the last dim shadows of the Han court Lots of arguments are a pretty big stretch in this article.

AvenueIngres 10y ago
Yeah, this article is garbage. The only reason it got on the front page is because of the clickbait title.
bnolsen 10y ago
wow...i've seen some ancient architecture in china and in no way does any of it stand up to what the romans were producing. not in quality and especially not longevity. And the western cathedrals are marvels themselves.

woodruffw 10y ago

I greatly enjoyed reading this, although the author takes (more than) a few liberties when comparing the Roman and the various Asian empires: > Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison This is a slippery claim, especially when you consider how long the Roman Empire lasted and how widely its relevance and regional dominance swayed over its lifetime. During its peak, Rome spanned dozens of cultures on two separate continents and liberally imported other peoples and norms into their own. That's not to say that the contemporaneous Chinese empires didn't do the same, only that the distinction between the two in this aspect is less stark than the author would have us believe. > Rome’s legions were fighting fiercely for control of Gaul (modern France and Germany), Britain, Egypt, and various parts of the Balkans; while a succession of (often unfairly maligned) emperors scrambled to hold Rome together through an endless series of famines, wars with the East, coups d’état, refugee crises, and revolts. This is not strictly false, but it's again muddied by the extreme duration of the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana lasted for two centuries, spanned three major political dynasties, and is generally the period people think of when they think of the Roman Empire (or Rome in general). By the time the Chinese Empire(s) had begun trading silk with the Roman Empire, peace was already the norm in the Roman world. The author is correct in his characterization of Rome as less artistically and creatively inclined than it perhaps ought to have been, considering its size and wealth during its peak. That being said, Rome's accomplishments in architecture and culture are visible (and audible) everywhere in the Western world. I don't think that any one Eastern power of the same period can claim such cultural permanence to any comparable degree.

Red_Tarsius 10y ago
I flagged the article. The author exploited clickbait titles and western guilt to craft his own narrative. People are going to read this poor cluster of pop history and get a very wrong idea of the Roman Empire. The second part of the article was quite fascinating but how can I possibly trust the author after statements such as Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison. The premise of the article is flawed too, we don't know enough about the 'chinese' skeletons yet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/09/23/chinese-skeletons-in-roman-britain-not-so-fast/&refURL=https://www.google.it/&referrer=https://www.google.it/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe... "The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you get the idea." Read this article with a grain of salt.

gmarx 10y ago

Many of the items the author claims China dwarfed Rome on seem pretty subjective. Philosophy and poetry? I didn't read very far past this. I am under the impression that Rome was pretty technologically sophisticated, even beyond what we normally picture. Does the author go on to compare tech sophistication with examples?

jcranmer 10y ago
Nope. Well, there's a claim that the Asian empires had the most advanced weaponry of their age. But no examples. Such a claim is probably false, given that China historically lagged the Mediterranean in terms of adopting technologies like swords, iron-age weaponry, chariotry, Greek fire. The main exception to this rule (gunpowder) isn't really an exception, since the development of weapons that made effective use of gunpowder (namely, the arquebus) did not occur in China but in Western Europe. The author also conveniently ignores that many of the large European powers tried to claim the right to be the successor to the Roman Empire--the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire (which always called themselves the Roman Empire), the Russian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. And the fact that Latin and Greek was the mark of learned scholars, that classical works like Aristotle and Euclid were the textbooks of learning, all the way through the 1800s is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Confucius' teachings were considered the mark of proper learning in China. It can be argued that viewing Chinese history through the lens of the Mandate of Heaven hurts understanding, not helps, since it downplays the (sometimes significant) periods of disunity in China.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  It's worth keeping in mind that China's needs for military capability differed from the various Western empires. Rome fought with Persia to the East, the Gauls and Vandals to the north, and Carthage to the south, as well as the colonised peoples of its own empire, pretty much constantly. As I understand history, China was buffered by land (north, west, and south), and sea (west) from any significant challengers. Most of its threats were internal, the notable exception being the Mongol invasions, but that wasn't until the 1200s BCE. On the other hand, what China did have in absolute spades and wheelbarrows full was technology (including, for the record, wheelbarrows). I've only learnt of the major study of this myself in the past year, British biochemist Joseph Needham's absolutely epic Science and Civilisation in China. Needham conceived of the work whilst in China on behalf of the British government during WWII, and proposed a 5-6 volume treatment in the 1950s. Seven decades later the work continues, with the total volume count approaching 30. Author Simon Winchester tells the story of Needham in The Man who Loved China (a single volume, should you fear to ask -- not a foregone conclusion as several digests of S&CIC run to multiple volumes themselves). The breadth, scope, and precociousness of China's explorations in science, maths, and technology are staggering. The volume listing of the work itself gives some sense of the scope and scale, this is given at Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_... Scientific thought. Maths, astronomy, & geology. Physics. Mechanical engineering. Civil and nautical engineering. Paper and printing. Spagyrical discovery (alchemy and immortality). Military technology. Textiles. Ferrous metallurgy. Ceramics. Mining. Botany. Agriculture. Agroindustry & Forestry. Biology & botany. Fermentation & food science. Medicine. Language and logic. Two volumes, topics unspecified, are given as "work in progress", I suspect these would concern military and weaving technologies respectively. http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html

huahaiy 10y ago

Don't know why this is down voted. Why is it so hard to learn some fact that may be contrary to your imagination?

kafkaesque 10y ago
I don't know if what you said is right, but I have been basically relaying what my Latin professors have taught me and what I, as an A-student in Latin, have learnt, yet I am being downvoted. A similar thing happened to me when I started talking about Latin American literature and history. I'm assuming most people here have gotten their information off the Web and have a very one-sided view of whatever they have decided they have attained "knowledge" on.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  I downvoted you for this line: > The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form. You're on solid ground to say that in the classical period there were several registers of Latin, that the lower registers gave rise to vulgar and late latin, and that those gave rise to church latin. (I can only really interpret "medieval Latin" as referring to church latin.) You're certainly on solid ground to say that speaking Italian won't let you understand Latin. But the Latin you study in a normal Latin course is the high register of the classical period, Classical Latin. It doesn't derive from medieval Latin, it predates it by many hundreds of years.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12639603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12639603 and marked it off-topic.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Ericson2314 10y ago

I would have enjoyed this more had it more nuance. Even if you don't know squat about history, its important to get of this single-dimension "who was greatest" + Western self-loathing (and ironic combo too). ======== From what I learned in school and remember off the top of my head: - Rome was an ugly place, but they kind of knew it hence upper classes went Greek and the eastern empire became more prominent. Romans were great for trade, but their empire could only be held together by growth (plunder) and that's not sustainable - Greeks were more civilized, but clearly sucked at empire building (Alexander is Macedon). Hellenization shows that even if he messed up Persia, the culture was influential. - China couldn't really expand because it is so isolated geographically, so it is harder to for it to influence other places. But this had an effect that arguably they were less interested in conquest and influence (outside of uniting accessible areas) - Confucianism raggin' on merchants, artisans, and whatever else might form a middle class - Ming treasure fleet might have reached Africa, but no fucks given. - Mesopotamia did do great things back in the day, but by 1000 was past its peak (as was the Levant). Interesting how ethnic identity, especially among Semitic groups, seems quiet fluid, though invading armies + Islam explains a lot of that. - Persions were not at all taught (before college). Seriously wtf, we covered everybody else said to be skipped in American education. But I later learned in college that perhaps they were more rural/feudal than eastern Mediterranean, (the article says more Urban than Rome, but then makes a bunch of medieval comparisons, so who knows?) - While we didn't cover it. I read about Kush/Bactria on Wikipedia (and the other Kush hah (south of Egypt not what you were thinking hah)). I can kind of understand that as an influenCED rather than influencING kingdom it was easy to gloss over (oh we talked about the silk road, but usually in the abstract). But I do like covering it as concrete evidence that those things which were said to be influential actually were. Basically, even in fairly leftist history curricula, it was all about who does the most trade, most urbanization, and most interaction with neighbors. Any overly courtly civilization was suspect. Arguably then the same things that made China so dominant early on and steady thereafter also lead to its eventual falling behind. Central Eurasia might have become the dominant world culture except the Europeans got a huge steroid injection with easiest access a humongous place you could depopulate by coughing. ========== Author asked in a caption about better timelines. I inherited some company's Hammond's "Graphic History of Mankind" from the 1950s. Some things there should definitely be revised (though they kept on extending and publishing the timeline until at least 2000) but the concept is great. Somebody should make some crazy SVG thing where as you zoom in more details would appear. Make it procedural generated and open source so non-technical history buffs can send you PRs (or figure out how to scrape Wikipedia). I'll be forever grateful.

Chathamization 10y ago

As others have pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. To give just one example, the picture he posts of a supposed "temple of the Qin dynasty, circa 200 BCE" appears to actually be the Nanqiao (south bridge) in Chengdu, which seems to have been built in 1878 AD. I can give a list of some of the other errors I noticed if anyone likes (and there are probably many I missed); either way, I wouldn't recommend anyone take any of this as fact. Beyond the factual errors, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims. I don't know how one would come up with an objective way to measure philosophy and poetry. How much philosophy and poetry from (for example) the Kushan Empire has survived? What's the background for the claim that its philosophy and poetry dwarfed the Roman Empire's? The idea that we should pay more attention to many of the other polities in history is a valid one. But I don't think an article filled with errors and baseless claims is terribly useful.

Red_Tarsius 10y ago
The worst part is the Medium comment section. Users are shaming anyone who dares to call out the author on his gross generalizations.
cconroy 10y ago
I just read a few paragraphs and gave up when it said Rome was left out of the civilized world (referring to the middle east blocking china). I guess he forgot the greeks and hellenization. Oh but the greeks were barbarians too. The tone also angered me.
- fsloth 10y ago
  When Rome ascended Hellenic civilization was in descend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period Greece became pretty much part of Rome.
- 1474295912 10y ago
  > The tone also angered me I Read the article and I understand that it's flawed in some parts. However, that's exactly how the non-western major world civilisations are called. Barbarians, mysticals and unscientific etc are the words used to describe them. I would urge you to look past the eurocenticism as I did and you'll discover that there's truth in the facts. If we leave out the mislabeling of images, the fact remains that the eastern world was in fact more connected, advanced and globalised compared to Rome.

jond3k 10y ago

I'm suspicious of any article that's widely slated by a community yet still trending. I feel there's a market need for a browser plugin that lets you filter out clickbait factories like his employers and all the dirty tricks they use to hijack our attention. There's no way we can keep up with them without computer assistance.

platz 10y ago

Author admits he wrote a spin-piece "So why, then, would I write such an anti-Roman article? Because I’m trying to give people who’ve received a eurocentric education a different set of goggles to try on: the lenses of Roma’s Asian contemporaries, some of whom genuinely did believe the Romans were “primitive” and “unclean.” This is a perspective we almost never hear about in the West, and I think it’s an interesting one to ponder. I do my best to keep my facts straight — but all the historical stories I write are colored heavily by my own interpretations and blind spots. My favorite history writers are Will Durant and Pierre Briant. I realize that this kind of “interpretive” historical writing is now considered obsolete — maybe even dangerously slanted and over-simplistic — but it’s the stuff I enjoy reading, so it’s what I write."

vacri 10y ago
Most prominent cultures think that their contemporaries are lagging behind them.
serge2k 10y ago
So long as the author doesn't get upset when people call him out for being > slanted and over-simplistic
jomamaxx 10y ago
In other words, he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group, making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world because of their ethnicity. "Dear White People, Since You Are Racist, So Here's How You Ought To Think About This Subject" kind of thing.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group I think you should re-read the paragraph you're re-stating -- you don't seem to have understood the author's meaning, because you're replying to a straw man. In fact, IMO, almost all of the comments here seem to have missed the actual point of the article, which I don't think was at all intended to be taken on face value... Giving people "a different set of goggles to try on" is about as far as you can get from "inflict[ing] an ideology". The entire purpose of the former is to explicitly recognize the contingency of a particular (or even any particular) ideology. > making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world I don't think the assumption that most formal education in the west is pretty Eurocentric is anything less than accurate. E.g. look at the amount of time spent on various cultures in history courses and look at how they are discussed (in their own terms vs. comparatively.) There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, either, because it's easier to learn about things that are familiar to you, and easier to learn about new things when they are compared to things you're already familiar with. However, it does motivate the need for popular writing that points out the ways in which such an education can lead you astray. In that respect, all of the strongly negative reactions to this article were exactly the point the author was making. The flaws in Asia-centric thinking are obvious to us, and the step that the author is hoping an educated reader will be able to make on their own (perhaps with the help of a footnote) is to realize that these same flaws are also manifest in Euro-centric thinking. (Or, you know, just get pissed off and miss the point.)

soufron 10y ago

This article does not get the main difference between the Roman Empire and all these other great states. Most notably, the fact that we are still living in the Roman Empire. Property Law? Check. Marriage and Divorce? Check. Democracy and Public Life processes? Check. Well it evolved of course. But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.

FlyingSnake 10y ago
> But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever. Is HN really a place for such uneducated snarky comments? The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past. There were democracies in Ancient East too, and if you read the laws of Ashoka/Gupta etc, you'll find they were much more advanced than most of their contemporaries. We don't need to stoop so low to discredit other cultures just because we can't overcome our bias.
- endisukaj 10y ago
  > The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past. The amount of self-loathing in the West is reaching critical levels.
srean 10y ago
It gets a tad inconvenient to compute with a numerical system that goes XVII... Computation and algorithms are sorta important. Vaishali was a republic a long time before. > Property Law? check. Marriage and Divorce? check Are you really saying that these ideas originated in Roman empire ? I think expanding your reading repertoire will help get a more informed perspective. All I can say is that your comment does not come off as particularly knowledgeable or educated.

soufron 10y ago

If you want a serious update on the current level of research on Roman and antiquities studies - including the place of the roman empire in the world, you'd better go there: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-inheritance-of-rome https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6297739-the-inheritance-...

mrtree 10y ago

Medium is becoming a pamphlet...

wangyounonce 10y ago

One interesting bit from the article "But we don’t still identify as “citizens of the Roman Empire,” and we certainly aren’t ruled by emperors who derive their authority from the gods of Mt. Olympus." Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire leading to things like having american "Senators" meeting in the "Senate". Also possibly why some of the commentators here seem so put off by the article.

endisukaj 10y ago
> Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire I'm sorry, what? I'm not an American so this is the first time I'm hearing this. Can someone recommend some reading on this topic? Seems pretty interesting.

dredmorbius 10y ago

As many have noted, this piece does plenty of axe-grinding, conclusion-stretching, and fact-spinning, as well as simply getting a fair bit wrong. But for all of that it does convey a fundamental truth: there was a hell of a lot of established civilisation going on outside the general scope of Western History -- principally the Mediterranian basin. In particular, China was home to a huge, advanced, and highly active culture. I'm only slowly becoming aware of this myself through recent reading. As I've just commented, I only discovered in the past year the work of British biochemist-turned-sinologist Joseph Needham. His Science and Civilisation in China, proposed as a brief 5-6 volume work in the early 1950s, continues to be developed to this day. Just reading the titles of the 24 completed volumes gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at least two more volumes forthcoming. http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China gives the background for this story, and is highly recommended. Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't: there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the time of the Roman empire, and it easily rivalled, and quite possibly surpassed, Rome.

kafkaesq 10y ago

Not sure about the historical narrative. But the work of the visual artist, Dmitry Zaviyalov, featured at the top is quite impressive, at least.

jbmorgado 10y ago

Medium is becoming the Social Justice Warrior de facto pamphlet. With absolutely no regard to facts as long as it fits their narrative. Like many already pointed this "article" is totally fantasious.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

The reading of history of ancient civilisations in the article is kinda cool, if a bit naive. I would not mind reading a historical novel based on it (I understand that's what the article is really a plug for). I would certainly welcome a game based on the historical periods and geographic areas covered. It's a bit sad that so many games are set in the European middle ages when there are so many more colourful periods of history to conquer or loot in (hey- you can play the Sassanids in Rome: Total War, at least; and yeah, cataphracts do tear a new one to legionnaires). The big problem of the article however, and one that puts an obvious hole smack in the middle of its claim that "westerners were the true barbarians" is, as others have pointed out, that it avoids pretty much any discussion of the intellectual activity that went on between the shores of the Middle East and the Adriatic Sea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece Not to mention: everything started in Babylon, and ancient Sumer, and Aegypt, but then it got carried over to the western world through the Greeks and lives on to this day. So it's a bit silly to separate the achievements of different peoples according to geography when they obviously and clearly were smart enough to learn from each other. It's much better to speak of a human civilisation that covered the globe and survives to this day, thank the gods. A barbarian, in the end, is just a person who can't see beyond the borders of his or her own country.

restalis 10y ago

What irks me it that the article makes its comparison by picking the best aspects of non-Roman civilizations spread all over Asia and from there draws the conclusion that those "born into the light" Chinese who ended up in Britannia must have felt like being in wilderness. It actively ignored the aspects that people outside the Roman empire would most likely considered impressive compared to other Asian empires. For one, the civilizations around Mediterranean were sea-faring types, and even more so for the Roman Empire which relied on sea transport for much of its normal functioning. That is not something one could see in any of the Asian empires, not nowhere near that scale. Law. Rome had a law system that was so good that it was willingly adopted by most of the civilizations coming after, regardless of the fact that the said civilizations might have had their own distinct cultural heritage that included law. The individual liberties and the personal property rights seem to be timeless attractions, going back since the Roman era. (By the way, the Chinese really appreciate that to this day, Vancouver real estate prices speak for themselves.) Constructions. Although concrete was older than Romans, they were the ones to take it seriously and made extensive research on it. That allowed them to build things that were simply impossible without concrete. There's only so much complexity you can get just by piling up blocks of stone, or there can be only so much heightened weight using just softer binders. Don't get me started on jewelry and complex works like ones that involved developing glass with layers of metal inside it, or other such things that weren't developed nowhere else. Yeah, that must have been underwhelming, that is how darkness must have been perceived like!