Why do you guys worship ancient Rome when it was really a sh

>Ben Thomas
>Professional geek.

stopped there

>The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in many respects: heritage, population density, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you get the idea. During the Roman period, the Asian continent was by far the wealthiest, most advanced, most culturally diverse place on earth.

>Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison.

oh ok

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>Who can say what went through the heads of those Chinese travelers—whoever they were—as they left the light and life of the civilized world behind, setting off on their journey into the savage West?

>How can we guess what they felt at the end of their lives, realizing they would die in Roman Britain, a wilderness at the far end of the world—or what drove them there in the first place?

>If you’d grown up in one of the great Asian cities, would you have been brave enough to depart for the darkness?

>Or would you, like so many millions of others, have thanked the heavens that you were born into the light?

>>1781972
Because the west and "europe" is based on rome and greeks

Germanics and slav took Everything from them, their script, architecture, religion, laws, etc

That is why they loved even when they were the ones that destroyed

Germanics the roman empire and slavs the byzantine empire

>>1781972
Gr8 b8 m8 r8 8/8

>We wuz enlighteners n shiet while swarthy Mediterraneans were living in caves

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>"""Chinese""" skeletons found in Britain
>lol the Romans were all barbarians compared to enlightened China

ching chong ning nong

>>1781972
Jesus Christ how blue-pilled do you even have to be to write such an article?
I bet he multitasks cuckolding porn all day while doing """""research"""""

>>1781972
Rome never reached to denmark wtf

>>1782299
this explains denmark t b h

>>1782055
>diversity is a measure of greatness
What a fucking retard

>>1781972
does he ever give any examples why the east was better?

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>>1781972
>Who can say what went through the heads of those Chinese travelers—whoever they were—as they left the light and life of the civilized world behind, setting off on their journey into the savage West?
>Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison.
It's funny because we have, in writing, the Chinese opinion of rome: the Han Dynasty thought that the Romans were a very civilized people and always sought to reach them via embassy and with the later Byzantines being China's westernmost penpals.

China did see itself as the most civilized place on the planet, but not everyone was a fucking oogaboog barbarian to them. It was mostly just their neighbors and tiny countries.

>>1782421
They saw Rome as a rich and advanced realm, but they still saw China as the hegemon of the world and the relations with Rome as tribute to the emperor of China.

>>1782421
I'm surprised I've not seen that mentioned anywhere, didn't an embassy reach Rome during Augustus' reign?

>>1781972
*tips katana*

>>1781972
He doesn't seem to understand that Rome was a continuation of the ancient Mesopotamian culture as well.

>>1782531
I believe one did. Also Roman goods such as glassware and Sea Silk were highly sought in Han China

>>1781972
>Muh Sassykids wuz Chaldeans and sheeit

>>1781972
>it's a the Chinese thought everyone else was barbarians episode

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>>1781972
>medium.com

>>1783237
>wuz Chaldeans and sheeit
What did his shitpost mean by this?

>>1782513
Not true. Han cosmology held that there were nine continents, each with nine regions, and Han controlled only one region of one continent.

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>>1781972
Roman population for about 25 BC 56.8 million Han dynasty for 2 AD 57.7 million. Looks rather close does it not? Not really because the Han dynasty population took a nose dive short after words and the Roman empire did not stop growing. It peaked during the reign of Trajan at around 80 to 120 million.

How about how long did it last as a measure. To keep it fair I will only measure from the start of each party being a major regional power rather then its start. I will also go to the effective end of its power. For Rome that is 272 BC (end of the Pyrrhic War) to 461 ( Battle of Cartagena), for a total of 732 years. The Han dynasty goes from 202 BC ( Battle of Gaixia ) to 208 AD (Battle of Red Cliffs ), for a total of 409 years.

What a economic measurement which should get a indirect feel of influence past their borders? How metal production. Rome was the largest preindustrial producer of copper and lead, and produced 16 1/2 the volume of iron that the Han, around 80% more gold, and about 20% more silver then the Han did on a per year basis.

You may be asking why and how for that one. The Han made a large number of central government monopolies in order to break up internal power block that were viewed as a threat to themselves. They crippled their own economy to try to keep control. They ended up having stop trade with some of their neighbor for long periods of time because those much smaller neighbors ended up having far to much influence inside the Han dynasty's borders. Because they had things like surplus iron and liquor that the Chinese markets needed very badly.

>>1781972
oy vey goyim remember europe never did anything important

contrarianism is fucking cancer

>>1783918
What did they think were the other nine regions? China, Rome, India and Persia I assume? Plus a few more?

>>1785970
The Han Dynasty is but a house of the Chinese empire. It's like calling "the Julian Dynasty" a separate country from Rome.

By the time of the T'ang, there's no big Roman empire anymore save for its eastern surviving half.

>>1782531
I believe they were deceived and turned away by the Persians who wanted to remain the middleman between Rome and the far east.

>>1781972
jesus christ that is just laughable
most of the article is just him posting wikipedia tier snippets on various asian cultures, many of whom were known to rome

>>1782531
We literally had one big thread on Ancient People's describing distant lands and a big chunk of those were Chinese accounts of Rome/Byzantium. AFATWC the Romans werent benighted niggers.

>>1783260
>Ben Thomas
>Professional Geek
Couldn't keep reading anymore, the autism had already reached unbearable levels.

>>1781972
The few ancient Chinese records regarding Ancient Rome reveal that, although direct contact was more or less nonexistent, they nevertheless had an immense respect for the Roman Empire, and viewed it as their western counterpart. The name they gave to the Roman Empire, Daqin (great China) is an indicator of the immense respect they had for Rome.

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>this triggers the sinoboo

>>1782299
The romans established outposts tgroughoht germany up to the elbe river from 0-9AD

After tuetoberg forest the romans pulled back to the rhine. If u see maps going that far into germany they are based on those brief 10 years of exploration

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>>1781972
https://twitter.com/writingben
>this guy

>>1782055
>Qin China was more culturally diverse than the Roman Empire

How stupid do you have to be?

>>1785970
The fact that you define the Han dynasty by the battles of Gaixia and Chibi is a clear sign you know nothing about Han China.

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>>1781972
>The new age """"""""historians"""""" are now going to say European civilizations and Empires were backwaters and bad placed to live

Social Liberalism and Euro-Republican ideas are going to destroy the very history of the world so to make KANGS and Chink Kings seem superior.

>>1786234
link please, that thread sounds interesrting

>>1786295
Why do people still post this meme chart?

I'll just quote my old post

If you scrutinize Needham/Wagner's estimate it doesn't match up with their own assumptions/data. They assume that a furnace has a annual output of 100 tons(Wagner believes that 245 tons is one the low side for annual output per furnace), one furnace per ironwork and one ironwork per iron office.

There's a rough idea of where the 46 or so iron offices recorded in the Book of Han(Treatise of Geography) are located. The Treatise of Geography is an incomplete list of the Western Han,the Eastern Han repealed the Iron monopoly.

Large iron offices(Hedong commandery etc.) were known to have multiple ironworks(of which there may be multiple furnaces),textual evidence shows that Nanyang commandery has more than 8 ironwork sites. Li Jinghua believes that large iron offices with 3 or 4 ironworks may have 5 or 6 instead.

The Roman estimate is extrapolating a random number based on the whims of the authors.

>>1786902
Here you go my negric friend
>>>1755535

ITT: /pol/acks butthurt that someone non-white talked shit about Rome.

Rome is overrated desu. They developed the groundwork for a modern state but otherwise didn't contribute much to science and culture compared to, say, the Greeks.

China is underrated on the other hand. We see how shit they were when Europe reached its peak but they did develop both a strong state and very sophisticated culture before their own arrogance led them to stagnate and turn into shit

>>1787026
Persians had the first empire

What's happening currently is modern historians are looking at history without lenses of bias that was present in older historians due lack of proper knowledge about civilisations outside of west. What can you say English in 1800s thought Chinese to be Barbarians while simultaneously forcing them to buy opium?

>>1787026
Nobody was being /pol/ until you came along.

Nobody was shitting on Chinks either, but this GEEK :DDDD faggot is insufferable.

>>1782055
>rome
>not diverse

pick one.

>>1786827
I am not defining the start and end of the Han dynasty by those battles. I am defining their rise to power and the effective loss of power by those battles.

>>1782104

Slavs didn't destroy the empire, you can thank the eternal Venitian, T*rk and the Byzantines themselves for that. The Bulgars were a threat but they were pacified, and the Russians had very good relations with the Byzantines.

>>1781972

Why do lefties still base their ideas about historiography on 1950's public school strawmen?

I doubt most Western students have been taught that "Europe was the greatest and most advanced civilization in all times ever" in at least two generations. If anything he's doing the kind of stuff that's been in vogue since the 1960's: an overreaction to Western chauvinism and dominance that's turned into a tendency to constantly make non-Europeans both morally and "societally" more advanced when the historical record doesn't really warrant it. This is especially true when it comes to making connections between desirable 1960's New Left social values (sexual liberation, equality, peace, tolerance, multiculturalism, etc.) and some non-European society that supposedly embodied it. You can tell based on the snarky barbs he constantly throws in (which is a widespread liberal/progressive trait) about the supposed backwardness of the Romans and medieval Europeans.

In turn that's fueled a reaction among a lot of 4chan types to turn to European/white chauvinism because it seems like taboo knowledge and is considered edgy. I'm actually sympathetic to this because I enjoy the memes and I'm fairly right-wing but even I can see how it swings the pendulum too far back in the other direction.

>>1788937
To be fair other civilizations are underrepresented in history curricula. I didn't learn a damn thing about China beyond the basics.

>>1789180
Why would you? Is it not obvious you would learn more about the history that relates more to you and the place you live?

>>1786853
>those europeans were nothing until they invaded us, pacified us, stole our technology, suppressed our culture, destroyed our history and removed the memory of this from our heads.
Look, I'm all for a accepting the fact that historians and academics educated in the west have a eurocentric worldview and it can inhibit a proper understanding of events, but intentionally attempting to undermine European history just makes the peoples that Europe ended up dominating seem completely idiotic.

>>1787041
Being immoral for profit =/= being a barbarian.

>>1781972
>india isn't named
lol
>upper egypt is marked, but axum isn't marked
lolol
>no marking north and east of the black sea
lololol

>>1782299
I'm more confused at why Britannia isn't included as part of rome.

>>1790759
The Mauryan Empire was short lived and collapsed during the heydeys of the Roman and Ancient Chinese Empires.

>>1790765
Because the map is of 1 AD.

>>1786419
>Digital nomad
T-triggered