WI: The monks that smuggled silk into the Byzantine Empire also brought Chinese agricultural texts?

The earliest reference would be 142 and then 300. Also the repeating crossbow would be very valuable
All before 600. China has been the source of manyinnovations, scientific discoveries andinventions.[1] This includes the Four Great Inventions: papermaking, the compass,gunpowder, and printing (both woodblock andmovable type). The list below contains these and other inventions in China attested by archaeology or history. From food would be soybeans.

The repeating crossbow was known in the west, such as the polybolos. I'm inclined to think that such weapons were very niche devices, and not game changers at all, other than as great practice for more useful machines.

As for the four great inventions, again, we can't really attribute gunpowder until the Song Dynasty.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Seed Drill : might be immediately useful, will increase food production, most likely to give immediate benefit
Repeating Crossbow : if implemented could change warfare in ME (it give untrained conscripted troops advantage), but as DominusNovus mentioned there might be other reason why it never implemented in Europe and ME like in China
Papermaking : ???, there is no immediate need to replace parchment and papyrus, with no immediate usefulness attempt to build might discouraged, it might be very complicated machine, to complicated to duplicate from drawing and description alone. Might not have enough literate population to be useful
Printing : not useful until papermaking successful first, it might be very complicated machine, to complicated to duplicate from drawing and description alone. Might not have enough literate population to be useful
Gunpowder : no immediate usefulness, mass production will be very difficult
Compass : need to find source of magnetic iron ?, might not be that useful in Med and Black Sea.
 
The repeating crossbow depended on the use of poisoned bolts to be effective, and had a very short range, so it was only useful for defending fortifications. I think the use of such missiles would have been considered unacceptable against fellow-Christians, though the Pope might have ok'd them for use against infidels.
 
All this agricultural tech would be a great boon to Byzantine holdings in the Balkans and around the Black Sea. With enough time and attention, we could see the Black Sea turn into a Byzantine lake - its no Mediterranean, but a solid core for an Empire all the same.
 
They have rockets at this point? If so there would unlikely be any immediate military application outside of scaring horses, but it might be useful as a way to send signals miles away.
 
It does seem like we're devolving into "It'd be great for all this tech", but what could the monks realistically bring back? 101 texts on technology is suspicious.

The best chance I can see is to have 4-6 books, and those are expensive, especially if hand written. Plus, they'll all be in Chinese and therefore they'll need someone to translate them (and if they have technical terms, god help you).

My hypothetical books?

1) Agricultural Primer (I imagine it'll include all the best advice for growing crops for farmers, or managing them for estate-holders, which will include both the Seed Drill, terracing, AND the heavy plow - it'll be known of, even if it isn't worthwhile as a result)
2) Analects of Confucius (I expect that the Chinese would be willing to share those ideas to Da Qin)
3) Metallurgical Primer (For the sweet blast furnace)
4) Buddhist Texts (in fact, a Buddhist Monk coming back would be quite useful for translation)
5) Daoist Texts

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I don't actually think this needs to be a sneaky sneaky job either with the monks. I'd actually wait for the Monks to come back, learn as much from them as possible, and then send a delegation with various Roman texts (maybe some military strategy texts, engineering manuals, Greek philosophies) a general/noble, and a theologian. Essentially an embassy of sorts to create closer ties, with an invitation to do the same with the Romans. A rather comical possibility with this long-range embassy (which other than sharing public news can't do much), is that the Chinese take them up on the offer, and rather than the slow overland route, send a ship (with any undesired Romans on board) to connect them by sea.

hehehe, the idea of a Chinese-Roman Embassy, one in the Nanjing/Shanghai area, the other in Constantinople tickles me.

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The question for me is, how much does this cost, and who would Justinian trust to represent him in China, that he could afford to get rid of?
 
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