Han And Roman Attitudes Towards Technology

Kursat Cakar
Pd.2
Han vs Roman Around the first millennium the Han and Roman attitudes towards technology were both self-adoring, but the Han Empire focused more value on technology and technological enhancements than the Roman Empire, with evidence about the constant concern on the Han dynasty over indifference on the part of the Romans. To state, each and every document used as evidence for this essay is written by an official or any upper classmen. So these documents show no insight on technology from the view of a peasant or lower classmen. These documents provide this limited view on technology for each empire since the upperclassmen weren’t even the majority of the populations. On top of the peasants or other lower classes there were

This is very obvious straight from Document 5, Cicero, upper-class Roman political leader, On Duty, first century B.C.E. when Cicero says,” All craftsmen spend their time in vulgar occupations; no workshop can have anything enlightening about it.”. Cicero shows and has no respect at all towards any inventions that have been invented by commoners, the upper-class Romans just don’t care. On the contrary the Romans care about upper-class inventions or ideas like Plutarch explaining Gaius Gracchus who was anxious in inventing or enhancing roads Document 6, Plutarch, Greek-born Roman citizen and high official, describing second-century B.C.E. Roman political leader Gaius Gracchus, first century C.E. The romans basically viewed technology as useless unless it benefits the upper-class. Another upper-classmen also shows no care for inventions by the commoners or inventions for the commoners. On top of the upper-classmen not caring about the commoners inventions they also don’t care about the commoners considering that the roads would not benefit a commoner because they are not wealthy enough to afford transportation to even use the roads. In Document 7, Seneca, upper-class Roman philosopher and adviser to Emperor Nero, first century C.E. believed,” I do not believe that the tools for the crafts were invented by wise men.”, like the other upper-classmen he believes commoners and commoners who even make inventions are not significant and neither are their inventions. This is because the commoner’s inventions do not directly impact or benefit the upper-classmen leading them to deem the inventions and inventors useless. Although almost every upper-classmen only cared about inventions that benefited themselves there was one case where one of the upper-classmen actually had to do with an invention that benefited the commoners. “The water is