***TECH TREE***: General Discussion

[S. Kroeze]

This time a rather short post, quoted from a quite popular book on this Forum. I did also like the book, though it is a bit popular. Most of these concepts don't belong in the current Tech Tree, but they were so extremely important for humanity and civilization in general that their dates cannot be neglected. I think I could correct some of these dates in detail, but quote Diamond's very words.

Villages: 9000BC (Fertile Crescent)
Plant Domestication: 8500BC (Fertile Crescent)
Animal Domestication: 8000BC (Fertile Crescent)
Pottery: 7500BC (China)
Chiefdoms: 5500BC (Fertile Crescent)
Widespread Metal tools or artifacts (copper and/or bronze): 4000BC (Fertile Crescent)
States: 3700BC (Fertile Crescent)
Writing: 3200BC (Fertile Crescent)
Widespread Iron tools: 900BC (Fertile Crescent)
(source: J.Diamond:'Guns, Germs and Steel',1998)

A remark for Tonic:
I don't think Western historians are necessarily anti-Chinese. McNeill, an American, gives full credit to the Chinese invention of the crossbow and refers in a footnote to Chinese historians. And lets not forget the Indian civilization, which developed independent of Europe and China, though it was perhaps triggered by contact with the Sumerians. The four oldest civilizations, Sumer, Egypt, Indus and China were all non-Western! I cant explain why, but I admire the Sumerians most.

[tonic]

Ancient China's Science and Technology acknowledges the contribution of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China to an understanding of early Chinese discoveries. The point I guess is the difficulty of getting the Chinese perspective from Chinese eyes.

Here's the conclusion of the chapter on Gunpowder and Firearms on the dissemination of this technology to the West:

quote: China had established sea trade with India, Persia and the Arab countries early in the Tang Dynasty (618 AD +). Saltpetre, the most important ingredient of gunpowder, was introduced to these countries through the transmission of alchemical and pharmaceutical techniques. Saltpetre was therefore called "China snow" in the Arab countries and "China salt" in Persia. The Arabs and the Persians knew only of its use in metallurgy, medicine and glass-making at first, and learned to use it in gunpowder only between 1225 and 1248, when gunpowder was introduced in the Arab countries by merchants via India. Of the Europeans the Spaniards were the first to learn about gunpowder through translating Arabic classics. Firearms, on the other hand, were introduced to the West in the course of the Mongolian expeditions. History tells us that huojian, duhuoguan (poison fire flask), huopao and zhentianlei were taken to the Middle East by the Mongolian expeditionary forces. The Arabs learned the use and making of gunpowder and firearms from the invaders and were soon producing their own. The Europeans learned the techniques later, in wars against the Arabs. The earliest records concerning gunpowder and firearms appeared in England and France only in the 14th century.

[S. Kroeze]

Dear Yin26,

I understand that you are truly busy and of course I have sympathy for it. But if you wish some fanatics including myself to continue our contributions to the Tech Tree, I think you could at least repost the "Master List", so people might possibly read it!

Sanitation:
'Centuries of technological advance culminated in the 16th and 17th centuries in a number of scientific accomplishments. Educated leaders of the time recognized that the political and economic strength of the state required that the population maintain good health. No national health policies were developed in England or on the Continent, however, because the government lacked the knowledge and administrative machinery to carry out such policies. As a result, public health problems continued to be handled on a local community basis, as they had been in medieval times.

Scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries laid the foundations of anatomy and physiology. Observation and classification made possible the more precise recognition of diseases. The idea that microscopic organisms might cause communicable diseases had begun to take shape.

Among the early pioneers in public health medicine was John Graunt, who in 1662 published a book of statistics, which had been compiled by parish and municipal councils, that gave numbers for deaths and sometimes suggested their causes. Inevitably the numbers were inaccurate but a start was made in epidemiology.

National developments in the 18th and 19th centuries

Nineteenth-century movements to improve sanitation occurred simultaneously in several European countries and were built upon foundations laid in the period between 1750 and 1830. From about 1750 the population of Europe increased rapidly, and with this increase came a heightened awareness of the large numbers of infant deaths and of the unsavoury conditions in prisons and in mental institutions.

This period also witnessed the beginning and the rapid growth of hospitals. Hospitals founded in Britain, as the result of voluntary efforts by private citizens, helped to create a pattern that was to become familiar in public health services. First, a social evil is recognized and studies are undertaken through individual initiative. These efforts mold public opinion and attract governmental attention. Finally, such agitation leads to governmental action.

This era was also characterized by efforts to educate people in health matters. In 1852 Sir John Pringle published a book that discussed ventilation in barracks and the provision of latrines. Two years earlier he had written about jail fever (now thought to be typhus), and again he emphasized the same needs as well as personal hygiene. In 1754 James Lind published a treatise on scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.

As the Industrial Revolution developed, the health and welfare of the workers deteriorated. In England, where the Industrial Revolution and its bad effects on health were first experienced, there arose in the 19th century a movement toward sanitary reform that finally led to the establishment of public health institutions. Between 1801 and 1841 the population of London doubled; that of Leeds nearly tripled. With such growth there also came rising death rates. Between 1831 and 1844 the death rate per thousand increased in Birmingham from 14.6 to 27.2; in Bristol, from 16.9 to 31; and in Liverpool, from 21 to 34.8. These figures were the result of an increase in the urban population that far exceeded available housing and of the subsequent development of conditions that led to widespread disease and poor health.

Around the beginning of the 19th century humanitarians and philanthropists in England worked to educate the population and the government on problems associated with population growth, poverty, and epidemics. Thomas Malthus wrote in 1798 about population growth, its dependence on food supply, and the control of breeding by contraceptive methods. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham propounded the idea of the greatest good of the greatest number as a yardstick against which the morality of certain actions might be judged. Thomas Southwood Smith founded the Health of Towns Association in 1839, and by 1848 he served as a member of the new government department, then called the General Board of Health. He published reports on quarantine, cholera, yellow fever, and the benefits of sanitary improvements.

The Poor Law Commission, created in 1834, explored problems of community health and suggested means for solving them. Its report, in 1838, argued that "the expenditures necessary to the adoption and maintenance of measures of prevention would ultimately amount to less than the cost of the disease now constantly engendered." Sanitary surveys proved that a relationship exists between communicable disease and filth in the environment, and it was said that safeguarding public health is the province of the engineer rather than of the physician.

The Public Health Act of 1848 established a General Board of Health to furnish guidance and aid in sanitary matters to local authorities, whose earlier efforts had been impeded by lack of a central authority. The board had authority to establish local boards of health and to investigate sanitary conditions in particular districts. Since this time several public health acts have been passed to regulate sewage and refuse disposal, the housing of animals, the water supply, prevention and control of disease, registration and inspection of private nursing homes and hospitals, the notification of births, and the provision of maternity and child welfare services.

Advances in public health in England had a strong influence in the United States, where one of the basic problems, as in England, was the need to create effective administrative mechanisms for the supervision and regulation of community health. In America recurrent epidemics of yellow fever, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus made the need for effective public health administration a matter of urgency. The so-called Shattuck report, published in 1850 by the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission, reviewed the serious health problems and grossly unsatisfactory living conditions in Boston. Its recommendations included an outline for a sound public health organization based on a state health department and local boards of health in each town. In New York City (in 1866) such an organization was created for the first time in the United States.

Nineteenth-century developments in Germany and France pointed the way for future public health action. France was preeminent in the areas of political and social theory. As a result the public health movement in France was deeply influenced by a spirit of public reform. The French contributed significantly to the application of scientific methods for the identification, treatment, and control of communicable disease.

Although many public health trends in Germany resembled those of England and France, the absence of a centralized government until after the Franco-German War did cause significant differences. After the end of that war and the formation of the Second Reich, a centralized public health unit was formed. Another development was the emergence of hygiene as an experimental laboratory science. In 1865 the creation at Munich of the first chair in experimental hygiene signaled the entrance of science into the field of public health.

There were other advances. The use of statistical analysis in handling health problems emerged. The forerunner of the United States Public Health Service came into being, in 1798, with the establishment of the Marine Hospital Service. Almost one hundred years later, the service enforced port quarantine for the first time. (Port quarantine was the isolation of a ship at port for a limited period to allow time for the manifestation of disease.)

Developments from 1875

The work of an Italian bacteriologist, Agostino Bassi, with silkworm infections early in the 19th century prepared the way for the later demonstration that specific organisms cause a number of diseases. Some questions, however, were still unanswered. These included problems related to variations in transmissibility of organisms and in susceptibility of individuals to disease. Light was thrown on these questions by discoveries of human and animal carriers of infectious diseases.

In the last decades of the 19th century the French chemist Louis Pasteur, the Germans Ferdinand Julius Cohn and Robert Koch, and others developed methods for isolating and characterizing bacteria; the English surgeon Joseph Lister developed concepts of antiseptic surgery; the English physician Ronald Ross identified the mosquito as the carrier of malaria; a French epidemiologist, Paul-Louis Simond, provided evidence that plague is primarily a disease of rats spread by rat fleas; and two Americans, Walter Reed and James Carroll, demonstrated that yellow fever is caused by a filterable virus carried by mosquitoes. Thus, modern public health and preventive medicine owe much to the early medical entomologists and bacteriologists. A further debt is owed bacteriology because of its offshoot, immunology.

In 1881 Pasteur established the principle of protective vaccines and thus stimulated an interest in the mechanisms of immunity. The development of microbiology and immunology had immense consequences for community health. In the 19th century the efforts of health departments to control contagious disease consisted in attempts to improve environmental conditions. As bacteriologists identified the microorganisms that cause specific diseases, progress was made toward the rational control of specific infectious diseases.

In the United States the diagnostic bacteriologic laboratory was developed--a practical application of the theory of bacteriology, which evolved largely in Europe. These laboratories, established in many cities to protect and improve the health of the community, were a practical outgrowth of the study of microorganisms, just as the establishment of health departments was an outgrowth of an earlier movement toward sanitary reform. And just as the health department was the administrative mechanism for dealing with community health problems, the public health laboratory was the tool for the implementation of the public health program. Evidence of the effectiveness of this new phase of public health may be seen in statistics of immunization against diphtheria--in New York City the mortality rate due to diphtheria fell from 785 per 100,000 in 1894 to 1.1 per 100,000 in 1940.

While improvements in environmental sanitation during the first decade of the 20th century were valuable in dealing with some problems, they were of only limited usefulness in solving the many health problems found among the poor. In the slums of England and the United States malnutrition, venereal disease, alcoholism, and other diseases were widespread. Nineteenth-century economic liberalism held that increased production of goods would eventually bring an end to scarcity, poverty, and suffering. By the turn of the century, it seemed clear that deliberate and positive intervention by reform-minded groups, including the state, also would be necessary. For this reason many physicians, clergymen, social workers, public-spirited citizens, and government officials promoted social action. Organized efforts were undertaken to prevent tuberculosis, lessen occupational hazards, and improve children's health.

The first half of the 20th century saw further advances in community health care, particularly in the welfare of mothers and children and the health of schoolchildren, the emergence of the public health nurse, and the development of voluntary health agencies, health education programs, and occupational health programs.

In the second half of the 19th century two significant attempts were made to provide medical care for large populations. One was by Russia, and took the form of a system of medical services in rural districts; after the Communist Revolution, this was expanded to include complete government-supported medical and public health services for everyone. Similar programs have since been adopted by a number of European and Asian countries. The other attempt was prepayment for medical care, a form of social insurance first adopted toward the close of the 19th century in Germany, where prepayment for medical care had long been familiar. A number of other European countries adopted similar insurance programs.

In the United Kingdom, a royal-commission examination of the Poor Law in 1909 led to a proposal for a unified state medical service. This service was the forerunner of the 1946 National Health Service Act, which represented an attempt by a modern industrialized country to provide services to all people.

In recent years prenatal care has made a substantial contribution to preventive medicine, for it is hoped that through the education of mothers the physical and psychological health of families may be influenced and passed on to succeeding generations. Prenatal care provides the opportunity to educate the mother in personal hygiene, diet, exercise, the damaging effects of smoking, the careful use of alcohol, and the dangers of drug abuse.

Public health interests also have turned to such disorders as cancer, cardiac disease, thrombosis, lung disease, and arthritis, among others. There is increasing evidence that several of these disorders are caused by factors in the environment; for example, the association of cigarette smoking with certain lung and cardiovascular diseases. Theoretically, they are preventable if the environment can be altered. Health education is of great importance and is a responsibility of national and local government agencies as well as voluntary bodies. Life expectancy has increased in almost every country, except where public health standards are low.'
(source: Britannica.com, article 'public health')

Especially the discoveries of Pasteur(1822-1895) were of crucial importance for the development of sanitation and opened a new era in preventive medicine. Robert Koch demonstrated the tubercle bacillus in 1882; Karl Joseph Eberth the typhoid bacillus in 1880. Soon many other disease-producing organisms were discovered.

[tniem]

While never posting in the tech tree, I have found it fascinating reading from time to time. Everyone that has contributed has done a fantastic job researching and finding this information.

I just would quickly like to say that I am seconding S. Kroeze's call for yin if he has time to repost the master list.

[yin26]

As requested...the Master List is up for review.

[Shadowstrike]

Anybody want to bother adding some of my Future Techs to the list?

[wernazuma]

just some suggestions in random order:


Trade: there is evidence that the sumerians already had trade contacts with the indus culture (3rd millenium BC). in the time of sargon of akkad (~2330-2274BC), direct trade routes reached from egypt and oman to the indus valley.

University: Don't forget the University of Cairo and many other arabian universities. the university of salerno actually was founded on very similar concepts. it is no surprise that the first european uni was in southern italy, where the arabian influence was tremendous. i think the athenian "akademia" can also be viewed as a university

Map Making: Although Babylonians already tried to get a vision of the "world", maps didn't become useful to measure distances until roman times ("itineraria"). those maps were very useful for the military, as they could act/move more effectively. The most important document of roman "itineraria" is the tabula peutingeriana.
the distances between cities and important landmarks are very exact, but they didn't care at all about the real form of the coast line or flows of rivers.
source: V.Pantenburg, Das Porträt der Erde, Stuttgart 1970


palace: there have always been special buildings for the purpose of accommodating rulers. a special mention among the early palaces deceives the "palace culture" of minoan crete (~1700-1450 BC)

library: libraries for administration date back to the ancient near east. the most important was probably the palace library of tell el-amarna (under the rule of AmenophisIV = Echnaton 1353-1336 BC)

chariot: there were actually two absolutely different kinds to use the chariot: either as a kind of "mounted archers" (the egyptian chariot) and as a kind of "heavy cavalry" to make one threatening assault on the main infantry line and "break the lines" (assyrian/hittite chariot).

phalanx: really needs an update in the master list. s.kroeze made some good points. some of the mentions in the master list are simply untrue. e.g.: hoplite was never the name of the unit, it was the name of the fighters in the phalanx (from hoplon=round shield). and before philipp, it was no " javelin throwing unit"


paper currency: as already invented in china because of a gold shortage. people had to deliver their their gold and received the paper instead. (have to look up the source). in europe, the first country that introduced it was SWEDEN.

[tniem]

yin,

thanks for reposting the master list. I am going to take a good look at it this weekend and see if I can add anything.

Thanks

[Thue]

Could we use this list in Freeciv?

Note that you must have written the text yourself, not just copied it word for word from some lexicon, otherwise there is copyright issues. (same goes for including it in civ3 I imagine)

[yin26]

Well, when I was making the master list, I tried to document all sources. But changing the wording a bit wouldn't be too hard. The challenge is in sorting out guesses from facts...

[S. Kroeze]

I always or almost always use verbatim quotes and usually mention my source(s), because I think it's the most reliable and fairest way of collecting and distributing information. In this way I also give credit where credit is due!
It's partly professional habit and I also think I have some reputation to lose.

Dear Yin26,

I still wish your original project will be finished someday and I am still willing to help, but -as I said before- I do not have enough time. I also think you vastly underestimated the difficulty of the entire project. It is extremely hard to say something useful about Chemistry or Engineering when it's not your field of knowledge. On the other hands, scientists as a rule lack the historical understanding and the expertise to search in an efficient way for reliable literature. It is a pity that Harel thought he could handle it and subsequently disappeared...

Perhaps Vrank Prins is willing to help; he once offered help with the 'Related Threads'. And he has at least some historical background, I guess.

quote: Originally posted by Vrank Prins on 10-31-2000 07:38 AM Great, I've seen that the "Apolytonions" asked if it was possible to link things up. Maybe things could also be alfabetically indexed. And if you need any help with that ....

Wouldn't you, Vrank?

Sincere regards,

S. Kroeze

[yin26]

Yes, as far as this Tech list went, the job simply became huge. If I were unemployed, unmarried and didn't ever need to eat, it would be possible enough. Still, if enough people express interest, we can divide it up, set standards, etc.

[wernazuma]

what became of the idea to describe also the civilizations themselves? i think it's a good idea.
and i would take care of the compilation.
if there's interest, i'll start a topic on that tomorrow and begin with the aztecs or maya.
i'd suggest using the following patterns: origins, historical development, achievements, culture, religion.

[yin26]

This was originially posted by Grrr in the Master List thread, but that thread is supposed to be read-only (I guess maybe Dan or Markos opened it?).

Flight[/b]: The problem here will be defining who invented it: Santos Dummont or the Wright brothers?--NoviceCEO==I'm saying Clement Ader in 1890 A.D.--Yuvo==For all practical purposes the Warplane came into being at the end of 1914, with adoption of the machine gun. The early reconnaissance planes shot at each other with pistols and rifles, or threw items at one another. The first bombers appears to be the Sikorsky Ilya Mouremetz V (Russia) 1915, Voisin 5 (French) 1915, Siemens-Schuckert R1 (German) 1915, RAF R.E. 7 (Britain) 1915--Joseph=="Becoming interested in aerial flight, he made a balloon ascent in 1898 and then began to construct dirigible airships. After many failures he built one that in 1901 won the Deutsch Prize and a prize from the Brazilian government for the first flight in a given time from Saint-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and return. Shortly after the Wright brothers' flights in 1903, Santos-Dumont turned his attention to heavier-than-air machines. After experimenting with a vertical-propeller model, in 1906 he built a machine, the 14-bis, on the principle of the box kite, and in October he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize for the first officially observed powered flight in Europe; in November he flew 220 metres in 21 seconds." Dummont is had as the official inventor of Flight (at least for the patriot Brazilians), as he build and flew the first "heavier-than-air" machine. Unlike the Wright's flight, his' was obsorved by plenty of witness. Date:1906. Take a look at Wright, Wilbur and Orville, also from britannica.com: "American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who achieved the first powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight (1903) and built and flew the first fully practical airplane (1905)."--NoviceCEO==1933 as first flight of the DC-2 and first production run of the DC-3


WHAT!!! Flight was invented by Richard Pearce a New Zealander, His second flight was in 1891, and his first is said to be about five years prior, but was not publisised as he was utterly embarassed at crashing into a tree! It was not the damn Wright Bros, who flew controlled first but this little guy in a town called Temuka, in New Zealand, he had the fist controlled fully practical airplane flight. His third plane is kept in a hanger at MOTAT in Auckland, I don't know of web evidence.

[- Groucho -]

On the main list there appeared to be a bit of confusion over when ATOMIC THEORY should be dated. I think J.J. Thomson's 1897 experiments which lead to the discovery of the electron are the best candidate. It was his work that really set the stage for Rutherford, Bohr and all the rest.

See http://www.aip.org/history/electron/jjhome.htm for more info.