Maiorianus took on : if Rome never fell, would we be industrialised earlier? Even if his title was more general

How would the world look if Rome never fell?
Maiorianus, 23.II.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZKgMBZR65k

If Rome never fell?

Like Europe would have had lots lesser states, if the Czarist and Austrian avatars of Rome hadn't fallen in 1918 ... (Prussian semi-avatar would not change much in terms of European states in their number) ... and the Orient would have had less states if the Turkish semi-avatar of Rome hadn't fallen then too.

0:55 "stuck in a pre-industrial world"

Sounds like you consider that kind of sth bad ...?

1:42 "the thousand years of Middle Ages, which was, technologically speaking basically lost time"

You sound sober while speaking, but did you redact this with friends on a party with maybe just a little too much Schnaps?

Or are you really this ignorant of the Middle Ages?

Since I presume you are fluent in German, as I am too, may I recommend Geschichtsfenster to get a correction or two on your misconceptions?

Here is this marvellous channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@Geschichtsfenster

Zeno

Yeah this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He just knows about the ancient world* and nothing else (and even there he's not that well informed). Also he's really based against christianity for some reasons.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Zeno It would seem so.

@Zeno He is however pretty knowledgeable about Rome as such.

Silly Puppy

Agreed, there's lots of medieval technology that was needed as a precursor to the industrial revolution. I would say that the "shock" of the Roman empire might cause a delay of 2-3 generations at most. The bigger problem might have been the plague of Justinian. But after that, Europe started assembling nation-states and off we go.

1:52 Travelling to stars multiple light years away, supposing the cosmos really looks like that, isn't a question of technology.

Voyager 1 and 2 are less than 1 light day away. And they were launched in the 70's ... the reason they were feasible is that they are unmanned. People on them would have died pretty quickly otherwise.

45.5 years.

45.5 * 365 * 4 = 66,430 years, IF Voyager 1 had already been 24 lighthours up. I fact, Voyager 1 is 22 light hours 5 light minutes and 10 light seconds up. And I even shortened the year by 0.2425 days ...

If the cosmos looks like that, travelling to other stars is a question of simply not feasible.**

PaulZyCZ

Nobody sane would consider chemical propulsion to get even a mere probe to nearby stars. Any serious proposal mentions nuclear or laser (sail) propulsion. The problem is we (humanity) either don't have the technology yet, even if it's around the corner (fusion torch) or we don't have the sheer space infrastructure required (Enzmann Starships).

We may need the latter anyway to send a human crew anywhere further than Jupiter. It may not be feasible sending anything less than repurposed O'Neill cylinder, which could take a thousand years to happen.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@PaulZyCZ Even for nuke propulsion, it's not feasible.

@PaulZyCZ Plus, nuke propulsion is an added danger, like for people on earth.

PaulZyCZ

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Nuclear, not nuke propulsion. Enzmann Starship would use deuterium to create 2 kt blasts, but it wouldn't come anywhere close to Earth.

Besides NASA wants to use nuclear propulsion to reach Mars with human crew in 45 days. No nukes, just reactor heating the propelant. There's already a company claiming they are close to having fusion propulsion based on a linear fusion reactor. I'm not sure how that turns out, but working fusion torch can send a probe to Alfa Centauri in 20 years of a travel time.

It's like talking about going to the Moon while building Stonehenge. I think it will be feasible for Humans to collonize (some) exoplanets one day far in the future, but currently it's not even clear if getting electricity from GEO is worth it yet.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@PaulZyCZ "Sources conflict about the projected speed, perhaps 30% of the speed of light, c, but 9% may be more likely."

From the wiki on Enzmann starship.

If alpha Centauri is 4 light years away, that means over 40 years.

"It's like talking about going to the Moon while building Stonehenge."

How do you know they didn't?

I think they talked of going past the Moon when building Göbekli Tepe (see Genesis 11:1 - 9).

10:35 There was a very inherent problem in the Roman Republic, the cursus honorum. Or perhaps more properly speaking the honour culture involved in it.

Along with widespread proletarisation and prevalence of ultra-rich, this was the reason why Caesar defied and defeated the senate.

Only Christianity could change that. And that's how Christianity preserved Rome in some form up to 1918. Rome fell due to de-Christianisation.

11:38 "The English science historian James Burke examines Roman watermill technology such as that of the Barbegal aqueduct and mill, concluding that it influenced the Cistercians and their waterpower, which in turn influenced the Industrial Revolution, in the fourth of his ten-part Connections, called "Faith in Numbers"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mills

That said, Barbegal is an archaeological find. I'd like to know how the property was, from some written source. There are some from other places. The Cistercian water mills were obviously common property of the monasteries. I don't know if the ancient water mills were so of cities. In private hands, Barbegal would have enunciated a great inequality of property ...

12:55 We do not know that it is feasible to build a colony on Moon or Mars in the first place.

14:15 "not quite as brutal as in our timeline"

Where do you get your info about the Middle Ages from? Terra-X?

14:25 "since some form of the old technology was better preserved"

Roman technology didn't go away.

Doing away with aquaeducts was not technology loss (except for the particular technology of aquaeducts), it was safety for cities against invaders, and also a question of wells giving better water. When St. Isidore of Seville discusses concrete, he notes a certain other technology (rubble held in place by outer walls of presumably brick or normal stonework) was even better than concrete. Plus Pozzolana was too rare to generalise the use of concrete.

15:51 The states that trace the line back to the Western Roman Empire are Britain and Carolingian Empire. There was not all that much of a break there.

Dialogue - among the lines of my first comment:

Vitor Pereira 🇺🇦

It is a fact that all empires will eventually fall but can we say that Rome really did fall? Roman institutions like the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church preserved the culture of the Romans. In fact, these institutions would also be responsible for preserving the knowledge of the Romans though the cathedral schools and monastic schools (scholae monasticae), in which monks and nuns taught classes; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the 6th century.

Alex Zero

Are you [...] kidding? Christians destroyed old Roman temples and statues, banned old beliefs, etc. They replaced Roman culture with Christianity.

Atherdain

Every credible historian has rejected the narrativ of the fall of empires/ civilisations, it's rather a form of continuity. After the Byzantine Empire fell f.e. the imperial legacy lived on in many forms that are the Greek orthodox church, the ottoman palace/ empire, the Russian empire and so on.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Alex Zero We banned one level of the old culture.

Not most of it.

Yes, we did ban sacrificing to Venus. But we didn't ban the peristyle. My most direct experience of how the peristyle functioned is from a monastery, in Le Barroux.

Notes:

* I think this is a change suggested by my second response.

** A spin off of this research is on my main blog:

New blog on the kid : If the Fix Stars are 1 Light Day Up, Will Voyager Be Able to Verify?
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2023/02/if-fix-stars-are-1-light-day-up-will.html