Lack of technological progress in late Roman Empire

[Carlton Bach]

Oh, oh, I have just finished reading an article on the medieval use of water power which deals a s-e-r-i-o-u-s blow to the notion of a medieval 'industrialization' through extensive use watermills. I do not know how much the article by Adam Lucas has been reveiced, but it looks like that medievalists in future will have to cover their own backs, instead of making bold assumptions about the Roman technological level. The author really did a major survey of the complete 20th century findings on medieval mills and categorized them according to type, date of first appeerance and location.

The article is:

Lucas, Adam Robert "Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe"
Technology and Culture - Volume 46, Number 1, January 2005, pp. 1-30

For anyone interested, let me know, I have a pdf.

Just his major points in brief:

1. The medieval mill technology was not particularly inventive. In fact, the major inventions had already been done by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Chinese.

2. Mills were not as widespread as some medievalists have suggested. In fact, today only exist evidence for 400 industrials mills concerning a time span of 700 years and one whole fourth of the cited mills in the literature have actually no documentary. The vast majority of medieval mills have been according to Lucas conventional grinding mills.

3. Mill technology in Europe was not nearly as widespread as medievalists talking about a European industrialization like to think of. In fact, over 80% of all European medieval mills are found in England, France and Italy.

4. Mill technology in England was not that developed as raw numbers may indicate. In fact, England is just the best researched area, nevertheless all major mill innovations came from France.

I have to admit to not being terribly surprised. The medieval 'industrial revolution' has been overhyped to a ridiculous extent lately, just like Islamic medieval medicine was in the 80s or Inka agriculture in the 90s. THat kind of treatment does it no good at all. We have to remember that initially, nobody was talking about an 'industrial revolution'. The impressive thing (and it is impressive) is medieval 'machine culture'. Academics (or Dioscovery Channel sriptwriters) building up expectations of a water-driven 12th century proto-Manchester are just inviting disappointmet.

Regarding the details:

- I don't recall eer reading the claiom that industrial mills were a widespread phenomenon prior to the 15th century. So I'm not really surprised to hear they were not.

- Milling technmology is not something that *can* be particularly inventive once it exists. Again, I'm not sure anyone was talking about an invention boom. It is nearly impossible to find out when and where anything was, in fact, invented prior to 1700, so such statements need tzo be taken with a grain of salt anyway.

- Grain milling was the one thing that mills were universally needed for. Everything else was a localised application. Not really surpriosing - today, I would think far more than 80% of our internal combustion engines are used for propulsion. It just makes sense.

- Italy, France and England are also by far the best-researched countries in terms of technological archeology, so - no surprise?

I don't think this is a huge blow to received wisdom, though it is certainly a welcome dose of reality and hopefully will receive wide dissemination before more silly books make the bestseller lists.