Randall Moffett wrote: |
Mark,
Good point. Several technologies never advance much because of this same factor. RPM |
the book 'the renaissance at war' when discussing the rise of gunpowder and the social implications of its adoption in Europe, (discussing the idea that gunpowder overturned the social order somewhat or something similar, and ultimately refuted it) uses the Romans as an example o prove the fact that a new technology on its own doesn't automatically mean your going to get a sudden societal reshuffle as is popularly believed in popular culture, by noting that that the Romans had the knowledge and even constructed machines utilizing both steam and vacuum technology, but never experienced a mini industrial evolution, with this knowledge being relegated simply to making toys like a fancy way to open a temple door, since, as was noted, Rome had a massive supply of slave labor.
but as jean suggested as well, the romans DID have some industrial capacity, and if there is one concept that seems to best descrivbe a LOT of roman ways of doing things, i would say i would use the term 'mass produced'. there was a hight regulation for the legions you couldnt be either too short or too tall. (as one friend of mine demonstrated with he group of us who were talking 'your ok, your ok, your too tall to go in the testudo, your too short to go in the testudo" )
THis, i imagine, would also help make standardizing and mass producing the kits for legionaries, a lot easier. If everyone's roughly the same height, generally you wont need to have as many different sizes of clothing etc.
the roman forts, both the marching camps and more permanent forts were made to the same design plan pretty much the world over.
(its worth noting that macdonalds uses the exact same concept in the making of their resteraunts, the process for assembling and making food is very production line like.
in a documentary i saw on the Colosseum on national geographic, it was suggested that the romans formed a sort of production line system to produce the huge number of bricks needed to build the Colosseum.
it seems VERY sensible to me that you had a similar situation i.e a group of slaves winding wire around a mandrel, one group making rivets, another taking the rings and flattening he ends, he next group putting the riveted and solid rings together to make set shaped pieces tha could be by another team, 2'sewn together' with more links to make the hamata.
the Romans as a whole seemed to develop, that rat race, time is money mentality, we normally associate with life for westerners in the decades after WW2.
I mean the Romans had ancient equivalent to the modern take away shop, and had high rise apartments, they had mass lavatories with lots of toilets serviced by a single drain
As im describing the Romans like that makes me feel like im describing, not Rome in the 1st cenury AD, but modern cities like New York, Sydney, London, Tokyo etc, in the 21st century AD. :eek: :eek:
Going back to the topic or armor. In Dan's article, 'maile, unchained' he notes that the black plague was instrumental in helping encourage the popularity of plate armor by reducing the available workforce, and since maile requires a lot more man hours to produce than plate armor, plate armor became a much more attractive option for people.
And going back to the topic of roman armor in particular, Dan, plus a few others, noted in the thread comparing hamata to segmentata, that one advantage lorica segmentata had over lorica hamata was that the initial cost and man hours needed to produce LS was much lower.