WI the Gallic reaper and Chinese seed drill became ubiquituous rather than vanishing and remaining in China? The reaper was more manpower efficent than hand harvesting, and the seed drill improved yeilds.
IOTL the English agricultural revolution provided the food for population growth and freed up people for the industrial revolution. Would a less dramatic version of this happen as a result of these two machines being standard equipment on farms throughout Eurasia from 500AD? Would centralised empires like Byzantium, Persia, China etc benefit more from these machines than the fragmented polities prevalent in Europe and India? Would warfare be much different if the harvest was not gathered by masses of people?
IOTL the English agricultural revolution provided the food for population growth and freed up people for the industrial revolution. Would a less dramatic version of this happen as a result of these two machines being standard equipment on farms throughout Eurasia from 500AD? Would centralised empires like Byzantium, Persia, China etc benefit more from these machines than the fragmented polities prevalent in Europe and India? Would warfare be much different if the harvest was not gathered by masses of people?