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Scouring trade route history is a two-edged sword: which way did influence run? I’m sure ideological archeology can solve that though. That path also has a lo

by gumby 2y ago

Scouring trade route history is a two-edged sword: which way did influence run? I’m sure ideological archeology can solve that though. That path also has a lot of history.

cs702 2y ago
> ideological archeology A short, memorable, oxymoronic, and yet accurate description of these efforts. I like the term so much that I'm going to start using "ideological [scientific field]" to refer to similar pseudo-scientific efforts in other fields.
coldtea 2y ago
>which way did influence run? Usually the way of the site of higher riches and more advanced technically, organizationally, etc, to the less one?
- mistrial9 2y ago
  imagine a way of the sword and a way of the cloth. The cloth ways prosper while the sword ways train to fight. The sword way group then kills or threatens to kill the cloth way group, demanding payment. So it begins. Later, roving hordes on horseback arrive without warning from far away, and simply take everything, breaking any balance. The horse masters are the new rulers. Later, the horse masters lose. etc
  - SiempreViernes 2y ago
    You leave out the bit where the sword way freeze to death because they have no technology to deal with the harsh weather (which obviously is present because there's a need for cloth in the first place).
- Spivak 2y ago
  The West really isn't winning this one if that's your standard. The Mongol empire which amassed all the wealth, technology and military prowess of China during their expansion destroyed the Arabic world (arguably the most advanced civilization at the time), Russia, and the West they encountered like a bulldozer through wet cardboard. And did so with armies 1/3-1/5 the size of their opponents. We don't really acknowledge in history class just how lucky the west got with Temüjin dying and stopping the expansion that was literally right at our door. Edit: The sibling comment is grossly misleading, the west barely won against a scouting battalion that we had time to prepare for that was frozen and starving because the greatest wingman in history tricked the army into taking the long dangerous way through the mountains and sent us a heads-up. The Mongol army wasn't primitive, it's that their purposeful strategy (and what made them so dangerous so far from home) required they plunder food and supplies regularly along the way. It made it so they didn't need huge supply lines and could outmaneuver armies that did.
  - bugbuddy 2y ago
    In an alternate timeline, the whole world population look like some mixture of Chinese.
    - soufron 2y ago
      Well the mongols weren't "chinese" to begin with. So...
      - bugbuddy 2y ago
        They became Chinese pretty quickly…
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
    There were structural, geographic, and ecological, reasons for why mongol invasions stopped before they reached western Europe (aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe). The same reasons were present for Arab "invasions" up from Iberia. Walter Scheidel has written a fascinating book that takes a very hard historical look at possible historical counterfactuals comparing post-roman Europe to imperial China and finds the chances of Mongol success in Europe to have been very small despite their incredible string successes leading up to that point. Europe's greatest benefit was an incredible political polycentrism; Europe was hard to invade while China wasn't. That pushed China into sustained imperial centralization like many other empires with close steppe proximity. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/escape-from-rome https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/es...
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe Hm? The Golden Horde seems to have lasted for a fairly respectable period of time as far as empires go. Mongol rule in Russia outlasted Mongol rule in China by more than a century.
      - 2y ago
singularity2001 2y ago
I read a book with a collection of papers about the history of bronze in China and it was eye-opening how aggressively Chinese scientists fight the idea of bronze technology being introduced together with horses and chariots from the west.

by gumby 2y ago

Scouring trade route history is a two-edged sword: which way did influence run? I’m sure ideological archeology can solve that though. That path also has a lot of history.

cs702 2y ago

> ideological archeology A short, memorable, oxymoronic, and yet accurate description of these efforts. I like the term so much that I'm going to start using "ideological [scientific field]" to refer to similar pseudo-scientific efforts in other fields.

coldtea 2y ago

>which way did influence run? Usually the way of the site of higher riches and more advanced technically, organizationally, etc, to the less one?

mistrial9 2y ago
imagine a way of the sword and a way of the cloth. The cloth ways prosper while the sword ways train to fight. The sword way group then kills or threatens to kill the cloth way group, demanding payment. So it begins. Later, roving hordes on horseback arrive without warning from far away, and simply take everything, breaking any balance. The horse masters are the new rulers. Later, the horse masters lose. etc
- SiempreViernes 2y ago
  You leave out the bit where the sword way freeze to death because they have no technology to deal with the harsh weather (which obviously is present because there's a need for cloth in the first place).
Spivak 2y ago
The West really isn't winning this one if that's your standard. The Mongol empire which amassed all the wealth, technology and military prowess of China during their expansion destroyed the Arabic world (arguably the most advanced civilization at the time), Russia, and the West they encountered like a bulldozer through wet cardboard. And did so with armies 1/3-1/5 the size of their opponents. We don't really acknowledge in history class just how lucky the west got with Temüjin dying and stopping the expansion that was literally right at our door. Edit: The sibling comment is grossly misleading, the west barely won against a scouting battalion that we had time to prepare for that was frozen and starving because the greatest wingman in history tricked the army into taking the long dangerous way through the mountains and sent us a heads-up. The Mongol army wasn't primitive, it's that their purposeful strategy (and what made them so dangerous so far from home) required they plunder food and supplies regularly along the way. It made it so they didn't need huge supply lines and could outmaneuver armies that did.
- bugbuddy 2y ago
  In an alternate timeline, the whole world population look like some mixture of Chinese.
  - soufron 2y ago
    Well the mongols weren't "chinese" to begin with. So...
    - bugbuddy 2y ago
      They became Chinese pretty quickly…
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  There were structural, geographic, and ecological, reasons for why mongol invasions stopped before they reached western Europe (aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe). The same reasons were present for Arab "invasions" up from Iberia. Walter Scheidel has written a fascinating book that takes a very hard historical look at possible historical counterfactuals comparing post-roman Europe to imperial China and finds the chances of Mongol success in Europe to have been very small despite their incredible string successes leading up to that point. Europe's greatest benefit was an incredible political polycentrism; Europe was hard to invade while China wasn't. That pushed China into sustained imperial centralization like many other empires with close steppe proximity. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/escape-from-rome https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/es...
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe Hm? The Golden Horde seems to have lasted for a fairly respectable period of time as far as empires go. Mongol rule in Russia outlasted Mongol rule in China by more than a century.
    - 2y ago

singularity2001 2y ago

I read a book with a collection of papers about the history of bronze in China and it was eye-opening how aggressively Chinese scientists fight the idea of bronze technology being introduced together with horses and chariots from the west.