Roman windmills?

Its like... comparing apples to nuclear weapons.
Okay, you missed my point. I'll made it more clearer.

It's not because you have few watermills present on all a defined region( there the Roman Empire) they were widespread. Widespread would mean "present an all the provinces, all the regions" and not "having some exemples present from time to time".

From my reading of history, the problems were not so much agricultural or climatological, but economic; the debasement of currency, disruption of trade, constant warfare
And, where the debasement of currency, the disruption of trade are coming of?

If it's not the sole explanation, the agricultural decline of Rome certainly is one of the major causes.

Nothing is clear. Other than, statistically speaking, the Romans likely had more watermills than we've uncovered
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And archeologically speaking and sources speaking they didn't. Statistics are really helping, except when they don't fit what we have.

Comparing the number of Roman watermills to Roman gunpowder is apples and oranges; we know that the Romans had watermills, the question is how many. Thats a very different question than whether or not they had gunpowder.

Not really. You assure me they had more mills than found or acknowledged because "hey, you COULD have some that we don't know". In the same set of mind some actually said "Hey, you COULD have gunpowder in Ancient Rome. After all we loose many mentions".

So, yes, maybe you had more watermills. But, basing ourself on what we actually found and have as mentions, you have only few.

Free for you to say "hey, maybe it was far more than we have". Why not?
But it's not fitting what we have for now.
 
Watermills were known in Roman Antiquity but underused and only worth of mention between the II and III century. Mainly because romans did it for a more centralized repartition of food, and that it meant many mills put in the same place when no other one on the whole region.

You know, I wonder about this. We know that by the 3rd and 4th century they were becoming increasingly complex. How many remains have we found of medieval windmills? Without the Domesday book, how common would they be in 11th century England?

Plus, they were common enough to get a mention in the edict of Diocletian.

Hrm. Here's an interesting article on this: http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/oxrep/index.php?t=10&pg=23
 
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You know, I wonder about this. We know that by the 3rd and 4th century they were becoming increasingly complex. How many remains have we found of medieval windmills? Without the Domesday book, how common would they be in 11th century England?

They'll be known by contracts, feudal rights mention, etc. So, the crushing majority would be still known. Without the search made directly on the existing mills of course.

I'm disappointed that the article you linked (and that was really interesting, really, thank you for this) didn't show the non-archeological mention of watermill in the roman era (well, maybe it would have necessited an higher graph)

This went complex, sure, but when almost all the known roman windmills ceased to function at this period, it's safe to say "at the end of III century, complex watermills ceased to function" even if I made the mistake to see (and belive) of none watermill in the V century.

Plus, they were common enough to get a mention in the edict of Diocletian.

Hrm. Here's an interesting article on this: http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/oxrep/index.php?t=10&pg=23[/QUOTE]

I think there's a little exageration to say this. Dictoletian talks indeed of water-mills but as he talk of many features. I would make a comparison with the goods that were listed on medieval "peages" that could mention as well things that were frequent than things that came once in 10 years.

What the edict proove is that Dictolecian wanted to regule every part of the productive society, as other sources prooved.

So yes the romans knewn the watermills, and they used it in the big centers of agricultural production. I think that this wasn't disuputed.
Still, compared to the medieval era where the watermill was common and not only ponctually used, the Romans underused it and many of the archeological traces of watermills were about complexes of them rather than one.

Yes we know more roman watermill than let's say 30 years before. Still, they were few. By exemple for the whole Italy, the numbers are around 40. Compared to the possibilities shown in MA, this is few and underused (as their short spawn of life I mean period of use, regardless of the date of build seems to indicate)

There's a document (unfortunatly, in french), that is interesting regarding the use of hydraulic energy in Rome
http://graduateschool.paristech.fr/Files/001_136.pdf
 
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Okay, you missed my point. I'll made it more clearer.

It's not because you have few watermills present on all a defined region( there the Roman Empire) they were widespread. Widespread would mean "present an all the provinces, all the regions" and not "having some exemples present from time to time".

Except that we have evidence of water wheels in most of the provinces and even supposedly uncivilized areas outside of the Empire. There were water wheels in Anglian Denmark (hardly a stable and peaceful region, from what we know) of the 1st century BC (not big ones like at Barbegal, but they still existed). We see a wide variety of different types of water wheels - horizontal, verticle, overshot, undershot, turbines - we see a variety of uses, grinding, trip hammers, crank saws. From the diverse area from which we find direct evidence (across the entire Empire), the diversity of forms of water wheels of which we have direct evidence (virtually every form known), the diversity of uses of which we have direct evidence (basically, the three mechanical uses for a water wheel), I say that it is safe to infer that the civilizations of antiquity had more knowledge and use of water wheels than those of which we have direct evidence.

To assume otherwise is to assume that what we know arose pretty much out of whole cloth, without any intermediate steps or other functions. I would liken it to our understanding of dinosaurs; while we usually don't have fossils of all the intermediate species in the evolutionary tree, we can infer the path on which various species evolved and, in general, which evolved from which. We don't assume, for example, that the fossil record we have is complete.

And, where the debasement of currency, the disruption of trade are coming of?

If it's not the sole explanation, the agricultural decline of Rome certainly is one of the major causes.

Ultimately, I would say the cause is political; the stereotypical Roman tradition of ambitious generals fighting over the Empire led to a near century of warfare, which obviously disrupted trade, as well as production. The barracks Emperors also frequently were induced to debase the currency in order to pay for their wars (and, of course, to pay for the legions not to revolt), which further weakened the economic foundations of the empire.
 
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