Grand Historian
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You don't seem to realize both "stats" are guesstimates in which Needham severely underestimated Chinese production while the stat given for the Romans is derived off an area known producing metals.But this is what you did. In this exact thread, quoted some figures (we'll get to this figure in a moment, how you got it and how reliable it is) from some forum for a Chinese region, then used that figure to extrapolate the total Chinese output.
So basically you're comparing wrong time periods while giving the less than the bare minimum for the Han while giving Romans a large estimate.
Then why bother posting a half assed wiki link and expect people to believe it out of ignorance.No need to talk about Needham anymore or flawed equations, as you are no stranger to them, i gave my position on this earlier, 5000t is too low, rather concentrate on definitively proving your points on how iron production was larger.
There's nothing enlightening you can offer you have no command of written vernacular or classical Chinese.(ie your computer renders the text as squares).What primary sources are you offering? All i see as your source are a bunch of squares, not even a link.
You need to stop with condecension ASAP. I am very friendly for now as i am still giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not a 50 center (although im leaning that you are and Grand Historian is just a handle meant to intimidate, as we will see below) who gets paid to glorify the middle kingdom. This can change very soon, and i can be very nasty. Accompanied with links which you seem to be missing. A sneak preview is below.
Mate, let's not forget, you picked the equations from which you deduced output tonnage from a "rough look at Wagner's numbers". He even admits he hasn't really counted all that well and adds "I made no pretense that this was anything more than just an estimate." It hasn't escaped my attention that there was no such disclaimer when you were refering the same numbers.
ancient industry - Page 4 - Historum - History Forums post #36, dated 2012, a full year from the recycled wisdom you decided to distribute from the Chinese history forum.
Smoke and mirrors so far mate, eerily reminiscent of 50 centers. Do better, use less words like incompetent, fail to realize. And then to be caught using some rough cut numbers presenting it as gospel, tsk tsk, extrapolating them to cover the whole of China while screaming about extrapolations of Roman Britain output covering whole empire, tsk, tsk, tsk being named Grand Historian in light of all that fixing of data presented tsk tsk tsk.....i'd say you're the only one here who fails to realize something.
Next up, dismantling the myth of 100.000 workers per furnace/office. Although, if you take a read on the forum i quoted, in that thread you will find it's already done, by the same sinophile that came up with those equations.
I'll enlighten you in my next post about this. If needed, we'll see if you come to your senses in your next reply. As a hint, i will know about the numbers of employed (not really, slaves and convicts) through records of rebellions at various iron offices.
If I was a Sinophile there's far worse I can say unfortunately for you I don't glean my information from wikis.
Unfortunately I'm not paid for refuting poorly written wiki articles,if you don't have an argument then don't bother with ad hominems.
If the quote from the Hanshu I posted is incorrect then it is incorrect I'm not going to beat a dead horse for the sake of continuing the argument.
You don't have any respect for China,you engage in asinine trolling not much better than either TheTruth or MarkusS.I have great respect for ancient Chinese, when i was a kid i had a couple of books from Asia, folk tales, a Chinese, Japanese and a Korean one, full of lovely stories with life lessons.
However, the modern Chinese, at least the ones here with an exception here and there...LOL! I understand they need to eat and that's why they post such easily debunked stories, but still.....a little less history revision would be nice.
The problem here is they actually think (and have been instructed to disseminate this opinion) they were once this awesome civilization above all rest and nothing like it ever existed before and that now they are returning to that status. I bet they also have wet dreams how they will replace the vassal attitude of neighbouring states vis a vis ancient China with a vassal attitude of much of the countries in the world.
How is it historical revisionism to question the methodology of deriving Han dynasty iron production?
Both the Eastern Han and the Roman empire were superpowers in their relative location,there's no need to diminish one over the other in order to stroke your ego.