Roman innovation.

[Sior]

I would say water-mill and all the technological applications that could be made, as, for example, water driven looms etc.

Compass could be a boost to navigation, as early and crude telescopes.

In agriculture, besides the heavy plough, I would consider the three-field rotation that could enhance production.

The Romans were known to use waterwheels extensively in mining projects, with enormous Roman-era waterwheels found in places like modern-day Spain. They were reverse overshot water-wheels designed for dewatering mines. A series of overshot mills existed at Barbegal near Arles in southern France where corn was milled for the production of bread. The Roman poet Ausonius mentions a mill for cutting marble on the Moselle. Floating mills were also known from the later Empire, where a wheel was attached to a boat moored in a fast flowing river.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel

 

[Jaded_Railman]

Gunpowder wouldn't really make an appreciable difference, IMO, for a really long time (OTL people didn't use it for their main weapons until hundreds of years after it was invented), except in terms of siege warfare.

Are you kidding me? Forget warfare, the very existence of gunpowder allows for the invention of blasting powder. With blasting powder...well, see for yourself:

 

[Valdemar II]

How do we know the Romans were lactose-intolerant?

Anywa, I'm not sure that letting them eat milk helps them. It' seasier to eat the grain you feed a cow, no?

Not really milk was often also from goats, and they mostly eat foodstuf which humans ciouldn't. But the vast majority of Romans was lactose-tolerant, and evolutionary pressure and intermarriage would ensure it wasn't a problem in North Europe.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

Well goat milk is drinkable by the lactose intolerant. Modern Italians are significantly more lactose intolerant thatn northern europeans. We can expect pre-migration era Romans to be even more so. We know the Germans drank horse milk, yet the Romans used this super high lactose milk as laxative.

Milk cows eat grass, something totally useless otherwise.

 

[KingMississippi]

The development of gunpower and its usage during the Empire would probably have been significant change in history. With gunpowder the more industrialized Roman Empire could have held off the barbarians. The reasons muskets take over for the longbow is due to the amount of training. The Romans had enough skill at metalworking to build equivalents of early arquebuses and maybe even muskets. A horde attacking could be matched by troops that fought with the discipline of the Roman legions yet was even more flexible due to being armed with muskets and no longer requiring armor. Musket armed soldiers could devastate cavalry and even in its infancy could have joined with pikeman to control the battlefield. The well developed road system would have served even better as cannon and supplies could rapidly move to the armies.

 

[Valdemar II]

Well goat milk is drinkable by the lactose intolerant. Modern Italians are significantly more lactose intolerant thatn northern europeans. We can expect pre-migration era Romans to be even more so. We know the Germans drank horse milk, yet the Romans used this super high lactose milk as laxative.

Of course they are, I haven't met a lactose intolerant Dane in my entire life, everything other than that is significant.

Milk cows eat grass, something totally useless otherwise.

Yes

 

[newsmancharnley]

Romans invent/discover the seed drill

Better methods of planting gives better yields - which improves Roman agriculture and allows more people to be "non-farmers".

 

[Spike Torch]

What about if they took the steam engine, already invented by the greeks more seriously? What if they married the steam engine to the cart-train things they used to connect docks to mines and the like? We could have seen Roman steam trains!

 

[Michael Busch]

What about if they took the steam engine, already invented by the greeks more seriously? What if they married the steam engine to the cart-train things they used to connect docks to mines and the like? We could have seen Roman steam trains!

The normal argument against the steam engine is that slaves are cheaper. Now, if we add in the blast furnace and make manufacturing metal much less expensive, there might be something ...

Optics and better glasswork are intriguing too - especially if someone does a Pasteur and figures out the germ theory of disease.

 

[Atom]

I really think the statistics ideas and the moldboard plow would be very very useful. However I have a soft spot for ancient hot air balloons. fairly cheap and easy to build once you get the idea, and could be quite useful, or at least fun and cool.

 

[Mark-ITSOT]

Combined with half decent spyglasses balloons would add a whole new dimension to battlefield C&C.

 

[Bill Cameron]

Combined with half decent spyglasses balloons would add a whole new dimension to battlefield C&C.

Mark-ITSOT,

Why? The same combination had next to no effect on the battlefield in the OTL.

Balloons only played significant military role during one campaign in one war, the Western Front in WW1, and then only as artillery observers. Unless you're also going to give the Romans long range artillery and mire them in trench warfare along hundreds of miles of front, balloons aren't going to do a blessed thing.

As usual with these threads, the more outre suggestions will not have anywhere near the impact inventions with everyday uses will. Positional arithmetic, empirical deduction, better plows, seed drills, the printing press, and others will impact Rome to a far greater extent than gunpowder, balloons, and other fantasies.


Bill

 

[Polish Eagle]

Are you kidding me? Forget warfare, the very existence of gunpowder allows for the invention of blasting powder. With blasting powder...well, see for yourself:

Rhine to Danube canal, huh?

It's possible. If the Persians could connect the Red Sea to the Nile, the Romans can connect two rivers.

 

[Jaded_Railman]

They could have, and it would have entirely revolutionized commerce in the Roman Empire. While the road system helped significantly, being able to ship thing directly from one side of the Empire to the other would have a very significant impact. This is actually an idea that's been in my head searching for a TL for a long time. A Roman Empire which goes on a canal building binge worthy of the Dutch or post-colonial Americans. Connect up the Danube-Rhine line, the eastern Mediterranean-Euphrates line, the Sinai-Red Sea line, the Garonne-Rhone line, so many possibilities to truly connect the Empire. And these are only the macro-scale projects, there's tons of opportunity for small-scale canals to improve commerce within regions of the Empire.

 

[Polish Eagle]

They could have, and it would have entirely revolutionized commerce in the Roman Empire. While the road system helped significantly, being able to ship thing directly from one side of the Empire to the other would have a very significant impact. This is actually an idea that's been in my head searching for a TL for a long time. A Roman Empire which goes on a canal building binge worthy of the Dutch or post-colonial Americans. Connect up the Danube-Rhine line, the eastern Mediterranean-Euphrates line, the Sinai-Red Sea line, the Garonne-Rhone line, so many possibilities to truly connect the Empire. And these are only the macro-scale projects, there's tons of opportunity for small-scale canals to improve commerce within regions of the Empire.

Hmmm. Would be interesting. Perhaps they would discover gunpowder, but not realize its military applications ITTL.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

Canals aren't built using gunpowder. It's a matter of money, engineering, and available human labour.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Canals aren't built using gunpowder. It's a matter of money, engineering, and available human labour.

Canals are also hideously expensive. If you could get a mania going that resulted in a wave of these being constructed (like in N America/Europe in the early 19th century) you would also no doubt need sophisticated investment markets or central government ability to fund.

 

[carlton_bach]

The normal argument against the steam engine is that slaves are cheaper.

That is actually very hard to see, given that steam engines can do things that slaves can not do. It is of no account how many slaves you put on the road from Ostia to Rome, they won't be able to move a freight train.

Not to mention slaves were actually pretty expensive by comparison. I rather suspect the steam engine would be hideously more expensive, because of all the highly specialised labour that would go into one.

 

[ryackov]

Canals are also hideously expensive. If you could get a mania going that resulted in a wave of these being constructed (like in N America/Europe in the early 19th century) you would also no doubt need sophisticated investment markets or central government ability to fund.

Towards the later days of the Roman Empire, instead of wealthy landowners being patrons, it was the government itself. And what do you think commissioned aqueducts throughout Roman history?

 

[Michael Busch]

That is actually very hard to see, given that steam engines can do things that slaves can not do. It is of no account how many slaves you put on the road from Ostia to Rome, they won't be able to move a freight train.

Not to mention slaves were actually pretty expensive by comparison. I rather suspect the steam engine would be hideously more expensive, because of all the highly specialised labour that would go into one.

OTL, steam engines started out strictly as stationary power sources (water pumps and factory engines) and stayed that way for a long time. An early steam engine isn't going to power a train.

You're correct that skilled labor factors into the cost of an engine, but there's also a scale argument. If the price of good metal is high, then the engineer can only make a small engine which is less useful than a laborer. If we drop the price of metal far enough, the same cost of engine out-competes a human and is economically attractive.