Re: Anachronisms in LOTR

"Robert J. Kolker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>
> Hasdrubal Hamilcar wrote:
> > seeds of their science fell on the stony ground of Roman schoolchildren,
> > and they never bore any fruit again there.  They did eventually bear
> > fruit in the Middle East when the Arabs took their learning to heart,
> > but that was a millenium later.
>
> Moslem scholar brought Greek learning back to Europe in the 12-th and
> 13-th centuries. It was the foredawning of the Renaissance.
>
> By the end of the 17-th century Europe had outrun Greek learning and the
> rest is history.
>
> Bob Kolker


Oh, and let us not forget Heiro of alexandria who formulated the principles
of the steam engine and even invented a early model.
However, it was never taken much further, although there is evidence of some
steam powered garden ornaments in the Roman world, where the steam turned a
wheel device; but it was only ever admired for its curiosity value.
There has been some interesting debate on this recently by scholars, as it
appears that technology-wise, everything was in place for an industrial
revolution in the Roman world but it never happened.
There has been several reasons put forward for this.
The most widely received one at present is that because the Roman world was
slave driven, there was simply no incentive to invent labour saving
machinery; if you wanted something done quicker, you simply threw in extra
slaves to get the job done. So there was no real interest in macinery.

A pity, can you imagine what an industrialised Roman empire would be like?
Or at what level of technological development we would be at now, with an
industiral revolution 2000 years ago, rather than a mere 200 years ago???

Douglas


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