By Bhavuk
Technology is one of the most crucial determinants of human progress and this fact was adequately taken account of by Karl Marx. While studying the material conditions of human societies dividing it into two components i.e. base and superstructure was one reason for it, a larger but oft missed idiosyncrasy of Marx was his focus upon the technology as it was a crucial factor in determining both the social surplus as well as the relation of production.
Technological advances made in various fields was a long and continuous process which helped in the aggregate of surplus as well as laid down a primitive stage of division of labour. We find this advance to be highly beneficial in so long as it reduced the human labour and allowed him to work longer and more efficiently, functioning more as a facilitator rather than bearing the full brunt of production himself.
We would survey the evolution of agricultural technology which started with a primitive hoe and then gradually moved towards plough which was later equipped with iron ploughshare. The harnessing of animals was the next important step in the field of technology because it not only reduced human labour but also enhanced agricultural produce. In order to store this surplus what was needed was the various vases and pots which were elegantly made through the advancement in pottery. Pottery is unique in its bifunctional nature as it represents in one sense the advancement of technology simultaneously acting as a preserver of technology accessible to us through the depictions on them.
We can also use the carvings, paintings, depictions as well as literary texts of the time. There have been full fledged texts devoted to technology like that of Vitruvius which help us gain crucial knowledge of technology of that time. The use of epics like Odyssey and Iliad may not lead us to trace a correct political history but they are surely helpful in reconstructing the technology of that time. Since the mode of production dominant in our time of study was the slave mode of production which hinged on the principle of abundant labour, we find a considerable amount of repulsion to technology, a fact adequately underscored by Perry Anderson in his book Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism.
Despite this there were few notable advances which deserve our attention. Some of them directly affected the production while others may have helped it indirectly or might have facilitated a better use of production. The first great advancement was made in the field of agriculture with a dual transition- first from the primitive hoe to the wooden plough with a ploughshare and then from the light plough to the heavy plough which helped optimize the use of the rich but heavy soil which the Greeks encountered as they kept conquering more and more territories. The harnessing of animals represented the next stage in this advancement with animal power emerging as a potent force reducing human labour as well as increasing the surplus. While in the dry areas it would suffice to have a light plough which could turn over the soil, in the areas with heavy soil not just the heavy plough but the irrigation too was an essential requirement (both for the dry as well as wet areas). This was done through an improvement in the water lifting devices which also made people more aware about the use of water power as a potent energy to help in other works as well.
All this was supplemented by improvement in transportation both water as well as land transport. It increased the surplus but with such increment the profits did not accrue to the producers more and more being appropriated by those who owned the means of production which meant the elite and the rich. Thus, instead of reducing the glaring inequalities of the ancient society, technological advances perpetuated the inequalities by furthering the ends of the slave mode of production.
Agricultural Technology
Agriculture started in our area of study at Jericho and then gradually started flourishing at other places including Fayum depression and the Mediterranean. Starting from a hoe and using one's own labour as animal domestication had not started yet what could be cultivated was one crop a year with not many options available. It was the long bronze age with changed the scenario as not only new methods and techniques arrived which included ploughs instead of hoes and pottery which could now be made by removing the water of concentration from the clay by passing it through fire.
As plough began being used around 3000 BC, first entirely wooden, we find written and inscribed documents attesting the use of plough in Egypt and Mesopotamia to this time. Evidence from China for the plough can be found around 1400 BC and a little later pictures of plough carved on the rocks of Sweden are also found. It changed the face of agriculture by freeing the farmer of his constraint of being confined to a plot instead he could now take to the tillage of fields which meant agriculture proper per se. Having tamed cattle to provide meat and then milk, it was realised that the heavy burden of toil could be shifted to the shoulder of the oxen.
This process included a yoke and harness by means of which the beast's tractive power could be imparted to it. As the broad shoulders of the ox could manage it, the ox did not suffer the fate of the horse and other animals at this stage. Neither its movement nor its respiration was affected by the yoke. If we look at the other civilizations then it was the Indian peasant who stood at the maximum advantage with the hump of the zebu bull which we had started domesticating through castration, one of the first experiments in bioengineering as well, as its hump gave better traction avoiding the problem of slippage so common to the Mediterranean agriculture.
Gordon Childe has spoken of harnessing ox power in such high regards that he wrote- "the ox was the first step to the steam engine and petrol motor." The ox power proved extremely useful in transportation as well since the sledges could be easily and effectively pulled by ox. This is also the time corresponding to which cart ruts have been found at pre-Harappan levels in India as well making the carts an innovation of the time.
It was with the coming of iron that the scenario changed as iron tools opened up virgin land for cultivation and armed fresh war-bands for conquest. Improved methods of mining and smelting, allowing the exploitation of even deep ores in the Austrian Alps and perhaps on other minefields, superior processes of casting and hammering and a reorganization of the metal trade to ensure the scrupulous collection and use of scrap had materially cheapened bronze. With iron, it could be further cheapened as iron also helped in tools making. The marked change identified by Gordon Childe has been- "mixed farming based on plough agriculture began to replace the regime of pastoralism combined with scratch agriculture (hoe)." The conical or triangular share of the scratch plough doesn't turn over the soil and leaves a wedge of undisturbed earth between each furrow because of which cross ploughing was necessary and therefore in areas where it was practiced we find squarish fields. This type of plough doesn't suit the wet and heavy soil of Northern Europe for which a heavy plough driven by ox was needed.
Pliny in the first century A.D. writes of such a heavy plough being employed in the Po valley (at the foothills of the Alps mountain)- 'deep cultivation with a heavy plough drawn by eight oxen and equipped with mould-board and coulter to turn over the soil instead of just scratching the soil as the Mediterranean and Celtic ploughs did.' The heavy plough handled the clouds with such violence that no need for cross ploughing was left. This saved peasant's labour and a larger area could be cultivated and with a change in the shape of the field from squarish to long and narrow, particular strips were formed which had immense drainage advantages. It was only through the heavy plough that a dense and highly rich alluvial bottom could be worked and taken advantage of.
We can turn to Hesiod's Work and Days and Attic black figure vases to know about the plough in detail. According to these sources the light plough was symmetrical and left a scratch on the soil and it could even be referred to as an ard which partly destroyed the weeds and partly air the topsoil. According to Hesiod, the ard had a beam (gye) which is a curved wood connecting the sole (elyma) with a draw bar (histboe) on to which the draught animals are hitched with a yoke (zygon). A stilt, equipped with a handlebar (echetle) may be attached to the sole and in front the sole may be equipped with a ploughshare made of bronze or iron.
Ploughing is frequently used in similes like the challenge offered by Odysseus to Eurymachus shows that steering a straight course for furrow is equally difficult. Most famous portrayal of ploughing comes from the shield of Achilles. Ploughing can also be attested to from a terracotta statuette found from Boetia (now Louvre). Vase painting of ploughing by Nikosthenes shows the ploughman standing behind the cart holding a long stick(goad?) with which he steers the oxen. Hesiod gives us three ploughing seasons- one in spring, one in summers and finally one in autumn, however a biennial system was the usual norm of the day which is attested to by the verb neao used specifically for the ploughing of a fallow field.
Iron impacted the world in a big way and its most direct effect could be seen in the field of agriculture for which we can again find a parallel from India of the contemporary times because with the coming of iron, forest clearance on a massive took place and the scene of agriculture shifted from the Indus basin to the Gangetic plains. Consequently we find the growth of Mahajanapads as well which signifies the second urbanization in India.
We shall now turn to other implements as well for which the words Skaptein and Oryttein occur meaning digging but we do not find any Greek term for spade is not found. Hoe is known as makele, makella and dikella. The dikella is usually a two-pronged hoe. Theophrastus maintains that dikella is better than the ard in breaking up the weeds from the fallow field. Carefully looking at the vase paintings from a palaistra we observe pickaxe and Schiering assumes that it may have been used to smooth out the field if the side of it is used for levelling. Light hoe has been called Skalis by Xenophon. Sowing was largely by hand which meant a sack with a strap going around the chest of the peasant was present and the well known yet primitive method of broadcasting the seeds was followed but the seeds could always be put down by means of a small hoe. Hesiod uses the terms drepanon, drepane or are for the harvesting sickle. Homer says it is used for haymaking with epitheton eukampes (well or beautifully bent). The large hay-scythe is an invention of later times. The most authentic portrayal of harvesting of grain is found in the description of the shield of Achilles, where not only the mowers but also the binders of the sheave are mentioned. Sickles are found in a collection in Perachora where Dunbabin feels that like spits (okelai),they may have been used as a medium of exchange in pre-monetary economy. Ample evidence is found from Rheneia tomb, Corinth and Olynthos where sometimes sickles and sometimes a pruning knife or gardener's knife is found. A curved knife is known from a series of Spartan victory inscriptions from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.
Threshing floor(aloe) has been frequently mentioned since Homer's time. They are circular and usually have a hole in the centre into which is fixed a pole which can be turned. Rotary mills from Taxila from the first century AD show a similar working principle, the only difference being its half rotary motion since we find two peg holes which are not vertically fixed. In India it was from Himachal Pradesh that we first encountered this principle being put to use in an oil press (tailotpidayantra) through animal power. Coming back to Ancient Greece, the draught animals were hitched to the pole so that they keep the right distance. Threshing Sledge is not mentioned in classical period. Ancient Threshing floors have been found in situ near the 'Princess Tower' at Sounion in Attica. The archaeologists found a terraced and carefully paved circular platform nearly twenty metres in diameter encircled at the east by a low rim of stones, at the west by a careful cutting in the native rock. The circular platform is certainly an ancient threshing floor. Homer has dealt with the threshing of pulses in his text. The process of threshing was intricately connected with the cult of Demeter. Hesiod mentions mortar (olmos) and pestle (hyperon) made of wood and a wagon manufactured by the farmer himself. Tools made from wickerwork and clay included baskets designed to collect grapes and olives and large storage vessels for the preservation of grains and olives. Hammer, axe and other hand tools for felling trees have also been discovered.
Grafting was quite widespread and required sharp grafting knives and corresponding whetstones. This also meant that Parthenocarpy was known to the Antiquity world. The satyrs often crudely depicted on vases are treading the grapes and we find references from Odyssey also mentioning treading grapes. Description of the Shield of Achilles in Iliad refers to collection of grapes in large wickerwork baskets. Grapes were collected in large baskets and carried to a wooden pressing board (lenos). Pressing board had a spout and was placed on four supporting legs sloping slightly forward. Grapes were placed in an open basket or a closed wickerwork sack with a handle added to it and this was worked alternately with feets and knees so that the juice seeped onto the board and flowed downwards into a container (bypoknian). A vat was dug into the ground to collect the must which ferments in large storage vessels called pitboi and after fermentation it is transferred to the commonly used wine jars, ampborai.
This process was found to be associated with Anthesteria festival in Athens in the so-called pitboigia when for the first time the new wine was tasted. We also have the Olive crusher called trapetum in Latin. It consists of a large saucer( mortarium) with a cylinder (miliarium) in its midst to which two millstones(orbes) could be fastened. Similarly for the querns, pushing the rubber up and down a saddle had become worn out and rotary mills driven by donkeys had begun to be used around 100 BC. Such mills found in Italy and Spain were concomitant with the Roman expansion in Western Mediterranean. Oil-pressing, Olive-pressing and wine making have been dealt with not just because we find technology in these spheres but also because these very products have been the speciality of the Mediterranean region adding to its social surplus and consequently to its wealth. Thus they formed a significant part of the produce. In the later times when various branches of agriculture were identified and their variations studied, the Mediterranean was found to be ideally suited to Viticulture, which is a distinctive feature of the Mediterranean even today.
Construction Technology
We shall now focus on building methods which are also of pivotal importance as they include not only the palaces and Colosseum but also such basic structures like granaries intricately connected with agriculture and agricultural production thus contributing their share to the process of production. A Corinthian pinax from the seventh century BC depicts a scene of mining. In most European countries in funerary commemoration of a deceased craftsman or his patron, images were made and attempts to find a specialized guild in those images were made. The tomb of Hathery in Rome in late first century AD depicts a building crane carved in the left side of a marble that offers as a central focus the image of a monumental tomb whose construction probably necessitated the use of a heavy lifting device.
We can find the description of such a device by Vitruvius who authored the book 'The Arch'. He describes:
[T]wo timbers are provided strong enough for the weight of the load's weight and they are fastened together at the upper end by a bolt and the bottom is spread apart. The top is fastened with a block called rechamus and two sheaves are enclosed turning on axles. Traction rope is carried over the sheave at the top and socket pieces are nailed to the hinder faces of the squared timber. One end of the rope is fastened to the windlass and the windlass is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut and thus it raises load to the proper height. Such machinery with three sheaves is called trispast.
Another example is also of an image from Hathery where two workers are perched on the jib of a crane where an inverted wicker basket to protect the tip of a jib could be seen. Those two are putting a rope across a pole. The tomb depiction displays braided ropes, heavy pulley system, great planked wheel turned by shifting bodies of labourers (probably five in number), ropes around the edge of the wheel intended to be used for braking or applying extra force. It also reveals some wooden free nails to pull the rig together. Screw was used in a water lifting device made of wood which gave a lift of from six-twelve feet and was generally driven by human motive power- a man working a treadmill. Greater lifts were subsequently effected by buckets attached to an endless chain on a rotating drum, referred to in an Egyptian papyri of second century BC. A parallel could be drawn not in terms of finding an exact replica but in the principle of human power being used to draw water through buckets(pots in this case) from India where the Chullavagganikaya (350 BC) mentions a similar device named Chakkavattaka. The absence of pindrum gearing should be taken special note of. Water mill was thus an important innovation of the Ancient world as it represented the first applied use of inorganic power in economic production. We have been given a complete description of the water screw by Vitruvius who also mentions the working of water wheels and water mills. Regarding the water wheels he wrote:
Wheels are also constructed in rivers. Round their faces floatboards are fixed, which, on being struck by the current of the river, make the wheel turn as they move, and thus, by raising the water in the boxes and bringing it to the top, they accomplish the necessary work through being turned by the mere impulse of the river, without any treading on the part of workmen.
On similar lines he has described the water mill:
Water mills are turned on the same principle. Everything is the same in them, except that a drum with teeth is fixed into one end of the axle. It is set vertically on its edge, and turns in the same plane with the wheel. Next to this larger drum there is a smaller one, also with teeth, but set horizontally, and this is attached (to the millstone). Thus the teeth of the drum which is fixed to the axle make the teeth of the horizontal drum move, and cause the mill to turn. A hopper, hanging over this contrivance, supplies the mill with corn, and meal is produced by the same revolution.
We thus have new innovation in the field of water devices which would surely have been of great significance for irrigation purposes which would have increased both the surplus as well as the amount of trade with this surplus. We can make an estimate of how helpful this would've been by seeing the face of agriculture change in Punjab post canal work providing for irrigation, however, its destructive effects are also established facts of history.
The water mill first seen at the turn of first century AD around Palestine could've immensely helped reduce human labour but we do not find a large scale adoption of this technology vis a vis the reaping machine also found in Gaul around the same time. While it may seem surprising to us that despite the knowledge and occurence of these devices they were not adopted on a large scale, it feels natural when viewed in synchronisation of the then existing mode of production which was the slave mode of production. The entire slave mode of production pivoted around the abundance of labour which was provided by the numerous slaves. This fact has been adequately brought forth by Perry Anderson in his book Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism. It is this very limitation which did not see a great deal of inventions and innovations flourishing in the Antiquity period of Greece.
However there were some advances in technology and those shall be appreciated. A brief list of technological advances shall be mentioned here. Rigging and steering gear were improved and lighthouses were ably crafted. Of particular note is the lighthouse under Alexander by the Pharos of Alexandria where a tower of over 480 feet high was erected, in the lantern of which burned a fire of resinous wood. Romans contributed hydraulic cement, cofferdam and pile driving in deep water. Transportation improved too, especially road transport which can be attested by two statements one by Cato and the other by Ptolemy. Cato bought an oil press at Pompeii for 384 sesterces but to transport it over a distance of seventy miles it costed him 280 sesterces. Later on Ptolemy remarked that 'the roads radiating from Rome had been so graded that a wagon could take the load of a barge'. Ktesibios who lived at Alexandria in the third century invented a perfectly good pump equipped with valves and cylinders and pistons embodying the same pneumatic principles as old fashioned hand pumps.
During the time ranging from 150 BC to 50 AD improvements in wine and oil presses used on Roman latifundia took place with change in the shape of the millstones and their cores by which presses became more efficient and manageable. However as expected the Empire did not take much note of it to have disseminated it to other areas. A fourth century Latin author, Palladius, gives a brief description of a device used on latifundia of northern districts which was an ox-powered mechanical reaper. The initial use of mangonel has also been ascribed to Alexander during his seige of a series of forts on the North Western fringes of India.
All these technologies definitely helped reduce human labour and increase the social surplus. It was this increase in surplus which acted as the base for the superstructures of the Ancient Greeks as also the Roman Empire. It gave the base for the sprawling cities and the luxuries enjoyed by these cities with all these necessities being accrued from the rural base. Those who toiled and effected the surplus were however mostly the "have nots" of the society since the means of production were in the hands of the rich and elite. Both Perry Anderson as well as Lynn White Jr. have been correct in pointing out that for a long time iron remained an expensive metal which couldn't be bought at will by the peasants and so they had to rely either on the landlords or on the rich who employed them.
Similar is the case with other inventions namely the colossal oil and olive presses since such cumbersome machinery was absolutely out of reach for the toiling many of the ancient society. It is also the prevalent system or method of production which mattered which unfortunately for the common folks of the time was slave mode of production in which labour was abundant and those who provided this labour could be bought and sold not just like a commodity but sometimes like chattels. It is in this perspective that the technological advances of that age are to be studied and when we do so we find why there was a deterrence to technology and innovation in that time and how even if machines were discovered or innovated there was a refrain to their use in order to perpetuate slavery and with it the slave mode of production.
Bibliography
1-Childe, Gordon V; What Happened in History, Aakar Books,20162- Anderson, Perry; Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism, Verso, 1966
3- White, Lynn Jr; Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford University Press, 1974
4- Vitruvius; The Ten Books on Architecture, English Translation by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press,1914
5- Isager,Seigne and Skydsgaard, Eric Jens; Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction, Routledge Press, 1992
Bhavuk is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.
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