How quickly does technology spread?

Many AHs are built on the premise of a technological advancement ( gunpowder, printing, stirrups, etc) being developed earlier than historically.

But do we have any particular research on how quickly new technologies (we’ll define tech as broadly as suits the discussion, so everything from intangible ideas to new machines) spread? In particular, prior to the printing press, which kicks everything into a higher gear. I did some half hearted searching, but sadly, most of the hits were either about Crusader Kings 2 or modern technology - hardly applicable to prior eras.
 

Vuu

Banned
Depends. Peoples on trade routes ought to get it fast. If they're literate, even easier
 
It depends on such a wide variety of things you can't measure it. There are no constants. What exactly are you looking for?

"Iron weapons advanced at the rate of one town per year in this era.."?
 
It depends fro various things : @Vuu mentioned trade roads, and that's true, but that's not all.µ
There's the necessity or opportunities for new technologies to be adopted : we know heavy plough was used in Britain and Germanic provinces since the Ist century within the Roman Empire, but never really get widespread because it didn't that fit the latifundar productive model.
Stirrups were known by Carolingian's neighbours but didn't get used by Franks before the late IXth at best, because cavalry wasn't that of an important military device.

You really need the technology (material or immaterial) to fit or to beneficy the social-economical structures or at least a rising social-class to be quickly adopted (even if it doesn't, it would probably be adopted, but slowly)
 
There's the necessity or opportunities for new technologies to be adopted : we know heavy plough was used in Britain and Germanic provinces since the Ist century within the Roman Empire, but never really get widespread because it didn't that fit the latifundar productive model.
Was it the same kind of heavy plough used during the Middle Ages?
 
Was it the same kind of heavy plough used during the Middle Ages?
Fowler, notably, argues about an use of assymetrical shares and coulters (altough without finds of moulders) in late Roman Britain. It was, for a time, more speculative than prooved but recent discoveries (altough for the 7th century) were consistent with the general datation. He does argues, tough, that bow ards remained the "generic" plough until the latter part of the millenium. Manning (but it's an earlier argumentation) himself said that while heavy plough use evidence in Rhineland, Britain and Italy, it didn't really get a widespread use.
Probably not the heavy plough used from the classical Middle-Ages, but its close (enough?) relative.

http://www.ehes.org/EHES_70.pdf
 
It’s one of those “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” situations.

The classic case is the Norse and Greenlandic Inuit. After living on the same island for 400 years, the Inuit did not adopt iron, farming, animal husbandry, woollen fabrics, writing. After the Norse abandoned their settlements their livestock ran feral with no one to take them. The Norse didn’t adopt Inuit technology like harpoon, kayak, skin anorak, and probably not snow shoes and sleeping bags either.

People don’t like to change unless they face existential threats and have knowledge of technology that offers obvious advantage for such threats. What’s obvious in hindsight may not be the case at the time. It helps a great deal if the two interacting societies are on the same wavelength. Medieval agriculturalists and Stone Age hunter gathers are not terribly compatible. Having an organized state with educated ruling elite is essential when it comes to pulling Meijis.
 
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It depends on such a wide variety of things you can't measure it. There are no constants. What exactly are you looking for?

"Iron weapons advanced at the rate of one town per year in this era.."?

I'm sure that's just Crusader Kings II. :p

As for people being really stubborn in the face of obvious-in-retrospect improvements: some Russian peasants used sokha instead of a plough into the 19th c. despite their neighbours (say, German settlers) using actual ploughs for centuries. And of course their neighbours kept using oxen into the 19th c. despite the Russians heavily favouring the horse, which was a much stronger and more efficient animal for the purpose. And these weren't particularly different or even antagonistic cultures.
 
As for people being really stubborn in the face of obvious-in-retrospect improvements: some Russian peasants used sokha instead of a plough into the 19th c. despite their neighbours (say, German settlers) using actual ploughs for centuries. And of course their neighbours kept using oxen into the 19th c. despite the Russians heavily favouring the horse, which was a much stronger and more efficient animal for the purpose. And these weren't particularly different or even antagonistic cultures.
To expand on this point, here are some relevant bits from Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (1971) by Jerome Blum:

"In the great steppes that reached to the south and east [of European Russia], field grass husbandry was in general use until the end of the eighteenth century. This wasteful technique, in which a field was cropped continuously for several harvests and then left untilled for as much as seven years or more before being worked again, was possible as long as these regions were thinly populated. As they filled up, field grass husbandry gave way steadily to the less wasteful -- albeit still inefficient -- three-field system." (p. 337)

"Because of its weight and inefficient design [the sokha] could only cut a shallow furrow, and could not turn over large clods nor thoroughly tear up weed roots. It was a poor tool at best, and it was particularly unsuited for working the heavy chernozem. Yet it continued to be used because it was cheap and easy to make and, most important, because the usual peasant lacked the animals needed to pull a heavier and more efficient plow. A somewhat better implement called the kosulia, midway in design between the sokha and true plow, was employed to a limited extent in the north and non-black earth center. Heavier than the sokha, but still able to be drawn by one horse, it cut deeper and was more effective in turning and breaking new land. In Little Russia (Kharkov, Poltava, Chernigov) the peasants used a heavy wheeled plow, called the saban, drawn by two or four horses, or four, six, and even eight oxen. In light soils, however, the Little Russians used the sokha, including a two-wheeled version of that implement. Heavier plows were also used in districts bordering Little Russia, and in New Russia and along the Middle Volga, where, probably, they had been introduced by the German colonists." (p. 339)
Blum, J. (1971). Lord and peasant in Russia: From the ninth to the nineteenth century. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
 
Some interesting thoughts. It seems to me that military tech is the quickest to spread - since it literally is ‘adapt or die.’ In that case, I would think that gunpowder would be a pretty good case study.

From an intangible tech perspective, arabic numerals would also be a perfect case study - as they exist entirely in writing, we should be able to track their spread through, say, Europe, with relative ease.
 
From an intangible tech perspective, arabic numerals would also be a perfect case study - as they exist entirely in writing, we should be able to track their spread through, say, Europe, with relative ease.

The concept of "zero" appeared in India around 700 AD. Several major books on this new numbering system were published in the Arabic world between 825 and 830. The oldest mentions of Arabic numerals in Europe is the "Codex Vigilanus" written in Spain in 976 and Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) promoted their use in the 980's. The old Roman numerals remained in use in Europe for several centuries after that probably because the average person didn't have to do a ton of complicated math (and we still use them a bit today even).

So in the Middle Ages an advanced abstract scientific concept spread through multiple cultures from India to Europe in less than 300 years.

I also think iron working is an interesting example and while the archaeology is a bit sketchy there's some evidence that widespread adoption across Eurasia occurred within a few hundred years.
 
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Some interesting thoughts. It seems to me that military tech is the quickest to spread - since it literally is ‘adapt or die.’ In that case, I would think that gunpowder would be a pretty good case study.
It's not systematical, tough : Avars introduced stirrups in the early VIth, it didn't became widely used by Byzantines until later in the century, and western Europe not before the VIIIth n Germany, the IXth for Francia and its periphery.
Gunpowder is an interesting exemple, because gunpowder artillery (while not that efficient between its introduction by Mongols and the XVth century)

From an intangible tech perspective, arabic numerals would also be a perfect case study - as they exist entirely in writing, we should be able to track their spread through, say, Europe, with relative ease.
You're entierely right, as @Escape Zeppelin described. On this regard, while Indo-Arabic numerals catched a scholarly interest (especially in zones of contact with Arabo-Islamic civilization) it was essentially a curiosity before being significantly used more since the Renaissance of the XIIth century and expansion of long-range trade and an important early financial capitalism in cities and their immediate countryside.
Giving that mathematics weren't an university's teaching but rather a common "art", its propagation in common and widespread use isn't, that said, as easy to follow that we'd want especially as merchants and financials kept using excheckers (hence the name of the Ministery of Budget in UK) for calculs instead or in complement of written calculus until the XVIth. Habits, would they be technological, aren't dying easily.
 
As for people being really stubborn in the face of obvious-in-retrospect improvements: some Russian peasants used sokha instead of a plough into the 19th c. despite their neighbours (say, German settlers) using actual ploughs for centuries. And of course their neighbours kept using oxen into the 19th c. despite the Russians heavily favouring the horse, which was a much stronger and more efficient animal for the purpose. And these weren't particularly different or even antagonistic cultures.

Not only the German settlers, the Ukrainians had been using oxen as well so we are talking about very similar cultures. As for plough vs. sokha, quite often there was "cultural stubbornness": there were cases when the peasants refused to use the ploughs bought for them by the estate owners. Or look at the thing as, seemingly, obviously useful as potato. It is difficult to imagine Russian village without it but attempts to introduce it had been failing from the time of Catherine II and all the way to the reign of Nicholas I who, in his typical style, ordered growing potato on state-owned lands (without proper explanation on how to grow and store it). There were "potato revolts" in 1834 and 1840 - 44 involving more than half million people. Army troops had been deployed, there were casualties and severe punishments but eventually government figured out a more productive way: financial stimulus for the voluntary growers.
 
There were "potato revolts" in 1834 and 1840 - 44 involving more than half million people. Army troops had been deployed, there were casualties and severe punishments but eventually government figured out a more productive way: financial stimulus for the voluntary growers.

Prussia also had to mandate potato cultivation from above, only a little earlier and with a bit less violence than Russia (as you'd expect really). I think this wasn't an uncommon situation, really.
 

longsword14

Banned
It's not systematical, tough : Avars introduced stirrups in the early VIth, it didn't became widely used by Byzantines until later in the century, and western Europe not before the VIIIth n Germany, the IXth for Francia and its periphery.
Stirrups in particular are not as useful as some have believed, other authors have pointed out that other than making long rides easier and perhaps simplifying training they had marginal effect on charging.

Back to the main question, having an extensive commercial culture that is actively supported by local rulers combined with peaceful conditions should do it.
 
Stirrups in particular are not as useful as some have believed, other authors have pointed out that other than making long rides easier and perhaps simplifying training they had marginal effect on charging.
I entierly agree : my point was, no matter a technology looks important or a precise advantage, even this alone isn't enough.
You really need either social structures for it to blossom (either dominant structures or raising ones) or a full-fledged cultural enforcement.

In short, no historical technology is as useful as some have believed : it's rather part IMO from a scientism/positivism born out of some modernist tought.
 
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