Rome vs Han China

RedBrigade · Oct 28, 2005

probably some of ppl think Rome Total War is part of real history? :roll:

trkl · Oct 28, 2005

I know Rome did not have all of the Middle East, but Rome did have MOST of the middle east including present day Israel, Palestein, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and parts of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The point is, Rome was more than just a European country.

rommel · Oct 28, 2005

PiSigma said:
rome was never able to truly conquer the middle east due to unrest and lack of troops to garrison it. and slaves shouldn't be counted into the population. once the slaves were removed, rome's numbers will go down a lot.

and who needs the roman concrete which is not very strong compared to modern concrete when china mass produce bricks that almost as strong as modern concrete (which means the bricks china produce is stronger than roman concrete). the arch is not used in military buildings.

romans had excellent seige weapons, so you are saying han china didn't?? because they also had great seige weapons, considering how obsessed with building city walls chinese people are. seige weapons are very important.

having a empire that covers large area of land means nothing in terms of military size, rome can't men from newly conquered areas, because they are not loyal to rome. the bulk of roman forces still comes from europe (italy, spain, greece, france) during the height of its power.

rome might of had better armor, but china had way better weapons, the materials for chinese swords are superior. han china was able to mass produce swords with pearlite interior with martinsite edges, giving it the flexibility and hardness/sharpness needed. and no matter how well the troops are armored, 1 guy can't take on 10 guys at the same time.

I can't agree with you on the concrete thing, the father of one of my friend work in the engineering section of Hydro-Quebec which is the only provider of electricity in the Province of Quebec, he worked in concrete research and he told me that the roman concrete was better than most of our modern concrete and some dam in Quebec was built with a modified version of this concrete and also, his team elaboretad a new kind of concrete on the roman concrete basis, but this new kind is extremely costy but is much harder, well it get harder with the time and water... but Hydro-Quebec cannot afford to use it now...

PiSigma · Oct 28, 2005

i spend 2 month of summer researching concret. roman concret is a bit harder than modern concret, but much more brittle. and that's not something you want. that means a large force applied to a small area, and it will crack and break. should ask gollevainen about this, he's a civil engg right?

Gollevainen · Oct 28, 2005

should ask gollevainen about this, he's a civil engg right?

Well i haven't taken my concrete-class yeat but this i can say (and propaply all know it already), the most important factor whit concrete is that it's very fragile. It cannot whitstand strech so therefor steelsticks must blend inside to compensate this. Did romans knew this?

PiSigma · Oct 28, 2005

they might have known it, the roman did use concrete for construction and often part of city walls. don't think they'll use it if they feel it's not very strong. but the rebars' (reinforce bars) properties in the concrete is also very important, concrete is corrosive, so some materials don't work as well in concrete and might actually corrode faster within concrete, and rome didn't exactly have very good steel producing technology, so i don't know what rebars they used.

JZXT · Oct 28, 2005

There were some periods where Chinese technology was much more advanced than anywhere else in the world, but I don't think the Han dynasty is one of them. The Romans inherited the Greek knowledge of science and mathematics, which was the best in the world at the time. They also made some of their own inventions like concrete and the arch, which were not available in China until much later. The Romans had excellent seige weapons, and the average Roman legionare had much better armor than the average chinese soldier.

No, I don't think so.
You need to know high degree of math to build houses, structures, such as geometry, trigonometry, etc. Look at all the big buildings/palaces in existed in Han. China built arch bridges w/out any column support, and the Westerner tried and wanted to learn about its construction techniques.

As far as the armor goes, there is nothing stronger than silk.
If an arrow is penetrated the skin deep into the muscle, and if the silk is worn, then silk cloth will not tear and can be expand to extract the arrow without tearing away the flesh. Silk is light and very strong. The metal armor worned by roman soldiers are heavy and impede his movement and agility.

trkl · Oct 28, 2005

JZXT said:
No, I don't think so.
You need to know high degree of math to build houses, structures, such as geometry, trigonometry, etc. Look at all the big buildings/palaces in existed in Han. China built arch bridges w/out any column support, and the Westerner tried and wanted to learn about its construction techniques.

As far as I know, China has only been building arch bridges starting with the Song dynesty. You can't use technology developed in the Tang and Song dynesties to sho that Han dynesty technology was good.

RedBrigade · Oct 28, 2005

There was a TV special long ago talking about Chinese structures. One amazed me was that many Chinese ancient building was built with no nails. It was chopped and perfectly fitted into each wooden gaps. And the houses lastest thousand of years without any problem. Even today you can't match that technology. BTW I am talking about huge palace built on no single nail.

FriedRiceNSpice · Oct 28, 2005

RedBrigade said:
There was a TV special long ago talking about Chinese structures. One amazed me was that many Chinese ancient building was built with no nails. It was chopped and perfectly fitted into each wooden gaps. And the houses lastest thousand of years without any problem. Even today you can't match that technology. BTW I am talking about huge palace built on no single nail.

I am sure we can match that technology today. After all, we have superglue

Rome vs Han China

RedBrigade

New Member

trkl

New Member

rommel

Bow Seat

PiSigma

"the engineer"

Gollevainen

Colonel

PiSigma

"the engineer"

JZXT

New Member

trkl

New Member

RedBrigade

New Member

FriedRiceNSpice

Captain