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Knowledge and skills that are no longer consider useful are lost all the time, there's nothing particularly special about it
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No, we wouldn't. Those blue prints are still around.
The myth that "rocket making" ability has been lost, or is in danger of perishing is a lie that Boeing and Lockheed use to fleece the taxpayer and nothing more.
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blue prints are only like 5% of what it takes to make a complex machine.
A blue print merely says "here you need a 10 feet wide 0.0001 inch thick piece of wafer, manufactured to tolerances of +/-0.00001 inches, inserted exactly in this spot, with a tolerance of +/-0.0001 inches" and it tells you NOTHING about how you are supposed to manufacture such a wafer, how to move it without breaking it, or how to get it exactly to the spot specified in the blueprint. It also tells you nothing about the tricks needed to cure the wafer material so that it fulfills its function (or, sometimes, what the function of some obscure little part in the machine actually *is*. Is it just a counterweight? Did they need it for lifting the machine up with a crane? Or does it have a more important role?)
I'm not saying they couldn't build a new Saturn V rocket if they really wanted, only that blueprints are not the solution if you need to reproduce a piece of technology that is old enough that it or similar devices haven't been manufactured in a long time.
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The video editing software used for the original moon landings was irrecoverably lost when Microsoft auto-updated NASA's system to windows 10 without asking and it's not sufficiently backwards compatible. Greek fire can't melt Carolingian steel beams.
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"Rocket making" hasn't been lost from a blueprint perspective, but the generation of engineers who developed them are mostly retired now, or deceased. The new generation has a different technological background, with different strong and weak points. The next major design will still incorporate elements of the old technology, but will also use completely new systems to replace them in some functions, since in many cases the engineers are more familiar with newer concepts, and haven't been introduced to the older ones.
As JodelDiplom points out, the blueprints without the technical knowledge and experience to understand them fall into the category of meaningless tradition: "we do it because that's what the book says", without understanding WHY, or in some cases, even HOW. Sure, we can probably still build a Saturn V rocket today, but it would take a bit of re-learning in the process, and possibly calling on a few retired engineers as consultants to get it right without a few painful "trial and error" events along the way. 50 years from now, that won't be an option, and it would likely be easier to design a new rocket from scratch than to attempt to duplicate a vintage 1960s-'70s rocket from the existing blueprints.
As JodelDiplom points out, the blueprints without the technical knowledge and experience to understand them fall into the category of meaningless tradition: "we do it because that's what the book says", without understanding WHY, or in some cases, even HOW. Sure, we can probably still build a Saturn V rocket today, but it would take a bit of re-learning in the process, and possibly calling on a few retired engineers as consultants to get it right without a few painful "trial and error" events along the way. 50 years from now, that won't be an option, and it would likely be easier to design a new rocket from scratch than to attempt to duplicate a vintage 1960s-'70s rocket from the existing blueprints.
We'd probably want to design a new rocket from scratch anyhow. I'm sure we could figure out how to build a better one with the best materials of today, than we could have 50 years ago, anyhow.
As the forum introduces new avatars, discussions become more and more bizarre. In this thread, ostensibly about why medieval battles were small, we have a rat king, a giant roach, and a reptillian engaging in a comparison of Roman and Caroliginian civilizations in regards to technology, architecture and time travel. They then segway into a contemplation on whether various civilizations made significant contributions to philosophy.
I am not ignoring the contributions of keynes2.0 per se. She is just far too normal to contribute to the bizarreness of the spectacle.
I am not ignoring the contributions of keynes2.0 per se. She is just far too normal to contribute to the bizarreness of the spectacle.
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The battles were simply smaller because of the nature of warfare. There were a ton of minor fortifications, but less infrastructure and less central authority. What is an army of a hundred thousand going to do? Feed themselves? No. Storm every castle? Not even in eastern Europe with a fraction of the castles/forts of the west did that work out. At best you can hope it won't turn on you.
Chevauchee style fighting allowed a counter to the castle style military structure by pillaging the supplies and ignoring the difficult part. Elite-only armies restricted to the nobility and sometimes supplemented with mercenaries provided a counter to the possibility for feudal authority to be undermined or for upstart peasants to seize power. Pulling every able bodied men and probably some women sounds great when your enemy is threatening your very way of life and loss could mean the extermination of your city. It's a terrible idea when you all share a common religion and are squabbling for power and influence, and losing the war is FAR preferable to losing control of power to your army. A massive army would be scarier to its controller than its foe.
That's before you even get into the very dubious recording of ancient and classical army force numbers.
Chevauchee style fighting allowed a counter to the castle style military structure by pillaging the supplies and ignoring the difficult part. Elite-only armies restricted to the nobility and sometimes supplemented with mercenaries provided a counter to the possibility for feudal authority to be undermined or for upstart peasants to seize power. Pulling every able bodied men and probably some women sounds great when your enemy is threatening your very way of life and loss could mean the extermination of your city. It's a terrible idea when you all share a common religion and are squabbling for power and influence, and losing the war is FAR preferable to losing control of power to your army. A massive army would be scarier to its controller than its foe.
That's before you even get into the very dubious recording of ancient and classical army force numbers.
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It's also worth noting that even in early modern times the massive mercenary armies that European powers fielded at the time would melt away within a year or two, and devastate the local countryside as a side effect, so maybe the "huge army" approach just wasn't viable logistically until developments in infrastructure in the 18th and 19th century made Napoleon-size armies viable.
Yerm points out the lack of organization and bureaucracy to implement a workable system of resupply, post-Rome. I pointed out the origins of Rome's excellent logistical focus about 2 pages back, which essentially covers many of the same points.
While Rome built roads and bridges, sent ships, and garrisoned forts along its major avenues of resupply, the typical medieval army carried a pitifully small number of wagons and pack animals directly in its train, rather than a constant flow back and forth to centralized depots, and relied on forage and occasional purchases or confiscations along the way to feed the army for more than a few days. It takes a lot of administrators and clerks to manage the collection of hundreds of tons of food, store it until needed, and deliver it a thousand miles away to wherever it's required. Rome could do that, the various smaller feudal kingdoms couldn't.
When you can only feed a few thousand men for a relatively short timespan, that's what you send as an army. When the food runs out, you leave.
Previous barbarian armies before Romanization relied on mass levies of the various tribes' male population; essentially every able-bodied man was a part-time warrior. In post-Roman feudal society, the peasants were only allowed to farm, and the warriors were only allowed to fight, so only the warriors (and a few retainers) were sent, the rest were forbidden to leave their land, and only levied for local defense, if at all.
While Rome built roads and bridges, sent ships, and garrisoned forts along its major avenues of resupply, the typical medieval army carried a pitifully small number of wagons and pack animals directly in its train, rather than a constant flow back and forth to centralized depots, and relied on forage and occasional purchases or confiscations along the way to feed the army for more than a few days. It takes a lot of administrators and clerks to manage the collection of hundreds of tons of food, store it until needed, and deliver it a thousand miles away to wherever it's required. Rome could do that, the various smaller feudal kingdoms couldn't.
When you can only feed a few thousand men for a relatively short timespan, that's what you send as an army. When the food runs out, you leave.
Previous barbarian armies before Romanization relied on mass levies of the various tribes' male population; essentially every able-bodied man was a part-time warrior. In post-Roman feudal society, the peasants were only allowed to farm, and the warriors were only allowed to fight, so only the warriors (and a few retainers) were sent, the rest were forbidden to leave their land, and only levied for local defense, if at all.
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Yes, all of those details are covered in documents called specifications and standards. I have strong doubts that all those just got lost. American industry fell in love with those kinds of documents at the beginning of the 20th century and, especially at the level of large scale or high tech manufacturing, became absolutely obsessed by the 1960's when the Saturn V's were being built.
It would probably be pretty hard to put everything together in one place again and a lot of the equipment used to manufacture those parts according to the relevant standards and specifications probably doesn't exist anymore, but what we've got today is incomparably better anyway. While old machine tools are really, really cool in a whole bunch of ways, for high tech, precision manufacturing, CNC > beefy old black iron stuff. No matter how cool it is to find something on a shelf that still works as well as the day it was made....a century ago.
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I can think of several reasons:
We will likely not know the correctness of the numbers during battle, it may be so that some of the large battles was just genocides made by the romans in which they counted everyone as soldiers just to make it sound impressive for propaganda purpose.
Mercenaries was common during medieval era and was more or less full time soldiers similiar to the legionaries with some of them earned alot of fame. It is true that permament fortifications (castles) may had a huge effect as a large army won't help in taking a castle, romans did also build similiar structures but I guess they was much less common then as they may have been very good at keeping unwanted people from building them.
- Italy was the richest place in europe during the medieval era, then think about how rich it was during the roman era.
- Romans used mainly cheap infantry, I think a legion of about 5500 men had about 120 horse-borne soldiers that mainly was used as scouts. Yes they did auxiliaries as cavalry but these only recived like a 1/3 of the legionary's salary and I guess they stood for alot of the expensive training of the horses so the roman state did get its cavalry for a bargin.
- Naturally the strong roman army would make people band togther to fight them as alone they would naturally have no chance against the romans.
We will likely not know the correctness of the numbers during battle, it may be so that some of the large battles was just genocides made by the romans in which they counted everyone as soldiers just to make it sound impressive for propaganda purpose.
Mercenaries was common during medieval era and was more or less full time soldiers similiar to the legionaries with some of them earned alot of fame. It is true that permament fortifications (castles) may had a huge effect as a large army won't help in taking a castle, romans did also build similiar structures but I guess they was much less common then as they may have been very good at keeping unwanted people from building them.
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Rome built fortifications (usually wooden palisades) at every overnight stop along the way, so the old Roman roads were generally lined with a continuous string of forts a day's march apart. The more important ones were reinforced with or gradually replaced by stone, and many of Europe's cities grew up around those Roman forts, which were eventually replaced by city walls or torn down as they rotted or crumbled. Note that very little remains of the massive Hadrian's Wall, which cut the British Isles in two, because it was "mined" for stone after the Romans abandoned the province. Many cities and towns along the old line of the walls include large amounts of that stone. Similar fates likely befell the Roman forts: burned for firewood or dismantled for the stones.
Large battles were extremely rare before the Early Modern era. The big changes are collectively known as the Military Revolution. I recommend Geoffrey Parker's book of that name. Some of the minor stuff isn't supported by current historiography, but overall, it's pretty good.
Summary:
The spread of black powder made small powers unable to afford effective armies or fortifications. Therefore, militaries became more centralized, with kings and emperors leading large armies instead of dukes leading small armies.
Summary:
The spread of black powder made small powers unable to afford effective armies or fortifications. Therefore, militaries became more centralized, with kings and emperors leading large armies instead of dukes leading small armies.
40 years ago, this little gem was published:
Znachko-Iavorskii, I.L., New Methods for the Study and Contemporary Aspects of the History of Cementing Materials. Technology and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1977.
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/3103203?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
In Soviet Russia, contemporary academia ignores you! But eventually it was read in the west, and both before and since then, archaeologists and architectural historians have noticed that both ancient and medieval cement was, in the first case, not as standardized and one previously believed and, in the second case, was used both as a binder and with an aggregate in a concrete-style substance. It wasn't the type of cement used in hellenistic(and roman) construction, and it was not used nearly as extensively in monumental architecture, being (with a few odd exceptions like the floor of a 7th century longhouse at Lyminge, if I recall correctly) mostly used in canals, bridges and harbors, as well as some fortresses. But it was known, and used.
Znachko-Iavorskii, I.L., New Methods for the Study and Contemporary Aspects of the History of Cementing Materials. Technology and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1977.
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/3103203?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
In Soviet Russia, contemporary academia ignores you! But eventually it was read in the west, and both before and since then, archaeologists and architectural historians have noticed that both ancient and medieval cement was, in the first case, not as standardized and one previously believed and, in the second case, was used both as a binder and with an aggregate in a concrete-style substance. It wasn't the type of cement used in hellenistic(and roman) construction, and it was not used nearly as extensively in monumental architecture, being (with a few odd exceptions like the floor of a 7th century longhouse at Lyminge, if I recall correctly) mostly used in canals, bridges and harbors, as well as some fortresses. But it was known, and used.
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Once again the knowledge of fellow History forumists knows no bounds! Thank you for posting this!
Wrong. Already before the Black Death there were more cities and larger ones than in Roman times, except Rome itself, of course.
Note i wrote "urbanization" not "size of selected cities". Provincial capitals in Roman times had something like 20,000 people. That would make them major cities in the medieval times. There were many provinces. Most major cities during the middle ages did not come close to 20,000 people - heck that's what Paris amounted to during the 14th century. And some parts of Italy aside, there were tons more cities (capitals as well as other cities) during Roman times than during medieval times. How can one even dispute this.
With the exception of Italy, west-European population increased twofold between 3rd century and the Black Death.
My resources say that Paris reached 200 thousands inhabitants in 14th century. Admittedly, that was by far more than any other city in Europe.
Urbanization... do you mean the percentage of population living in cities? I'm not sure. The centralized Roman administration followed certain pattern in provinces. City-building was organized, intended to create an administrative centre, and a base for spreading superior Roman civiliztion and way of life. Nothing like that existed in medieval Europe, that's clear. I rather believe that instead relatively few regional centres in Roman times, there were more numerous smaller townships scattered everywhere in medieval Europe.