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If you look at any global data in the scale of the past 2500 years, be it gases released to the atmosphere from human smelting, be it number of digits of pi tha

If you look at any global data in the scale of the past 2500 years, be it gases released to the atmosphere from human smelting, be it number of digits of pi that was known, a pattern emerges: There was an uptick during the Roman Empire, then the activity went down, and by the year 1400 the human activity was actually larger than the peak that was achieved during the Roman Empire. Something happened in the 1400s where all the human knowledge became global on a planetary scale instead of just the realm of an empire. Knowledge from the Americas and from Asia flooded into Europe and left the groundwork for more innovation. Humanity wasn’t there yet 2000 years ago, but it was there from the 1400s on. Europe, as we know it, started in the 1400s. Humanism and the printing press and global scale shipping started in the 1400s.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> There was an uptick during the Roman Empire, then the activity went down, and by the year 1400 the human actually was larger than the peak that was achieved during the Roman Empire. It's extremely easy to verify that this is not actually true. For your idea to hold, you have to entirely ignore how islam spread to South East Asia through the trade routes of the succeeding caliphates and the trade infrastructure put in place between the Eastern Romain Empire and China. Same for digits of pi, the approximation was improved significantly both in China and Persia during the medieval era. You can check the work of Al Khwarizmi or Zu Chongzhi. Regarding smelting, Rome did very little. Meanwhile, China had discovered cast iron in 513BC and by the fall of Rome was probably doing more metallurgy than the Roman ever did.
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- lynguist 4y ago
  Digits of pi: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-100-trillion-digits-of-pi-on-google-cloud https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-1... It shows the boom from 1400. The boom is actually the rediscovery of methods that were discovered in India. Lead deposits in 1100 BC until 800: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721818115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721818115 It shows the Roman Empire peak. Lead deposits in 0-1900: https://abload.de/img/8f70e5bd-bc6e-4756-8dbfzt.jpeg https://abload.de/img/8f70e5bd-bc6e-4756-8dbfzt.jpeg It shows the peak of the Roman Empire and the boom from the end of the 1400s on.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

> There was an uptick during the Roman Empire, then the activity went down, and by the year 1400 the human actually was larger than the peak that was achieved during the Roman Empire. It's extremely easy to verify that this is not actually true. For your idea to hold, you have to entirely ignore how islam spread to South East Asia through the trade routes of the succeeding caliphates and the trade infrastructure put in place between the Eastern Romain Empire and China. Same for digits of pi, the approximation was improved significantly both in China and Persia during the medieval era. You can check the work of Al Khwarizmi or Zu Chongzhi. Regarding smelting, Rome did very little. Meanwhile, China had discovered cast iron in 513BC and by the fall of Rome was probably doing more metallurgy than the Roman ever did.

deleted 4y ago
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lynguist 4y ago
Digits of pi: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-100-trillion-digits-of-pi-on-google-cloud https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-1... It shows the boom from 1400. The boom is actually the rediscovery of methods that were discovered in India. Lead deposits in 1100 BC until 800: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721818115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1721818115 It shows the Roman Empire peak. Lead deposits in 0-1900: https://abload.de/img/8f70e5bd-bc6e-4756-8dbfzt.jpeg https://abload.de/img/8f70e5bd-bc6e-4756-8dbfzt.jpeg It shows the peak of the Roman Empire and the boom from the end of the 1400s on.