And I could quote higher urban rates for the Romans as well. I gave Han China the benefit of the doubt, and used a much higher number than the sources. Given the numerous remains of Roman, and the total lack of similar remains for Han cities, gives a stronger case to the Roman claim.
That has nothing to do with what I said. What you quoted was:
You are using different definitions for Roman urbanization (communities of 1000 or 5000 people count as cities) and Chinese urbanization (communities of only 10,000 or more people count as cities). The Chinese estimates for urbanization is formulated by Rozman and Maddison, with the lowest estimate being 3.8%, because their definition of "city" is communities with populations of 10,000 or more, a extremely conservative view. It's hardly a fair comparison. On the other hand high estimates such as Zhao's put Han China at 15% urbanization. Historians such as Bairoch give double-digit urbanization for Rome because their definition of urbanization is a community of 5000 people, or sometimes even 1000.
If you gave the Han a much "higher number than the sources", then please provide a source which states that Han urbanization is lower than 3%. Give the quote and also a quote on its definition of a city. As revealed by me, part of the reason why Rozman estimated such low city counts (which is actually 3.8 rather than the 3 you gave) was because he used a conservative definition for city (communities of 10,000 or more people). More liberal estimates used by Zhao put Han urban density as high as 17% because he used a very liberal definition for city (2,000 or more people).
You comparisons are way off for a number of reasons. While a wealth of archaeological data supports the population values given for Roman cities, numbers given by ancient writers must always be taken with a grain of salt and some skeptism, especially for sources written several centuries after the fact, as Hou Han Shu (books of the later Han). Ancient writers of all cultures were notorius for exaggeration in numbers, and the ancient Chinese were no exception. Many of the cities listed, I could not find in other sources, and it they were as large as he said, there should be some remains that some archaeologist could find and discovered.
1. While I could find Linzi, the values he gave were for a time period earlier than the Roman Empire. The population of Linzi appears to be only 1/5 the number given during Roman times. Many of the other cities listed I could not find to confirm.
Please refrain from making things up. First of all the city size was calculated mostly from the Hou Han Shu. This came from the ancient
CENSUS data, whereas Roman primary sources came from a single individual giving a personal estimate of city size. There's a difference in quality of estimations. One is a systematic headcount, another is an individual guess. From archeological sources, here is an estimate of Warring States city sizes:
Jinan: 4500 meters by 3600 meters. Even if we use a low estimation of 100 people per hectare that still gives 162,000 people.
Eastern Zheng city: 5100 meters by 2900 meters. Using a low estimate on urban density(100 people per hectare), that gives 147,900.
Yong city: 10 square kilometers, which gives 100,000 people
Shouchun: 26.35 square kilometers, which gives 263,600 people
Yueyang city: 2500 meters to 1600 meters. That gives 40,000 people
Zhouyuan: 15 square kilometers, 150,000 people
Linzi: 16 square kilometers, 160,000 people (though records indicate a family size of 70,000 and that it's impossible to walk the streets without brushing shoulders, so the people per hectare should be much higher)
Xiadu: 32 square kilometers, 320,000 people (largest excavated city of the era)
Yan: 3 square kilometers, 30,000 people
As can be seen, even using an unreasonably low count of 100 people per hectare for each city, the cities of the Warring States would amount to the hundreds of thousands already. These sizes were calculated exactly like Bowman/Wilson calculated Roman city size, except with a much lower assumption for population density. Ergo before you jump to conclusions about the accuracy of archeological sources, perhaps you should keep a more open mind. Just because you don't have sources available does not mean I don't have sources available. Mine came from a 2 CE census data from the Han Shu, for all but Linzi, in which the census did not record its number. However the Shiji recorded Linzi as having 100,000 households in population and was "larger than Chang'an". Assuming a reasonable number of 5 people per household, this gives Linzi 500,000 people.
2. The Han cities did not have those values all at the same time. As the capital of ancient China moved from one city to another, the cities experience great population shifts. At the time when Linzi supposedly had 500,000 in the 3rd century B.C., Chang'an wasn't even founded yet:
Linzi did not have 500,000 in 3rd century BC, it had 70,000 households or in other words ~350,000 people. By the time of the Han dynasty Linzi's population increased to 100,000 houselholds as according to the Shiji, and was said to be "bigger than Chang'an" (according to the amount of grain transported to Chang'an, it would have the ~400,000 people, the same population it held in 2CE). In other words, Linzi had ~500,000 people (100,000 families with 5 persons per family). Stop jumping to conclusions about things you haven't researched. Most of the data came from the Hou Han Shu from a single chapter on census data. In other words the population from the cities I listed ARE of the same time, with the exception of Linzi, which would be off by ~100 years or so.
At 1 CE, for example, one chart I found puts Chang'an at 400,000, but Linzi at only 100,000, and Louyang had 200,000, Chengdu only 100,000. In 100 CE, Chang'an had only 100,000 and Louyang 400,000, with Chengdu at 70,000.
Historical_urban_community_sizes
In contrast, the Roman cities were more consistent in their populations, and many of the largest Roman urban areas remain major cities long after the Roman empire fell.
Seriously, please use at least a fraction of the basic standard for sources that you often imposed on me. Wiki is not within that basic standard. Linzi was recorded to have a HOUSEHOLD population of 100,000. One hundred thousand is the number of FAMILIES in Linzi, not the number of people. The author probably made a typo, or a mistake. At the same time LuoYang's household population was calculated at 52,839. This means that its total population is ~264195, assuming an average family size of 5. The author probably got 200,000 for its population because he assumed an average family size of 4 (which is an incredibly conservative estimate). As for the rest, it's not even within the same time period as my estimates, so the point is moot. You [falsely] accuse me of using city sizes for different time periods yet here I see you doing exactly what you accuse me of.
3. You are missing a number of Roman cities that had higher levels of population than what is on your list. Ephesus had possibly 350,000 to 500,000, Smyrna had 250,000, and Pergammum had 150,000, and they were not even on your list. Values can be found:
http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm
I don't cherrypick the biggest cities from different authors, especially if they came from personal individual estimations. That makes statistics invalid. I got my estimations of city sizes from Bowmen. According to them, using city area from archeological excavations, Ephesus, Pergammum, and Smyrna were not that big.
As I pointed out, you are using populations from different periods of time for your Han cities, which exagerates the value for the Han
No, what you pointed out was merely what you negatively
ASSUMED, without any basis at all, as you commonly do to all my posts. My evidence came from the Hou Han Shu, which have a census record for city population during 2 CE. With the exception of Linzi the top ten cities were all of the same time period. Census records never exaggerate intentionally by the definition of a
census, or else government taxation would fall apart.
and you are missing some large Roman cities, which skews the results for Rome.
I did not. The source I used for Roman cities came from Bowman, who listed pretty much all relevant Roman cities. By his estimation cities such as Smyrna and Ephesus were not the largest. You cannot expect me to cherrypick the biggest number for each city for all the different estimations out there. Or else that would skew the results in favor of Rome. I could easily do the opposite and cherrypick the smallest estimation for each city as well.
If you take just the city of Antioch, at 350,000, and a population of Roman Syria of around 7 million (
History_of_Syria
), that would give 5% urban rate based on Antioch alone, and not take into account major cities like Damascus and Jerusalem found in the Roman province of Syria, so the actual urban rate would be higher.
Or take Alexandria, with a population of 500,000 and a population of Roman Egypt of 8 million (Josephus gives a figure of 7.5 million not including Alexandria), also gives a minimum urban rate of 6%, similar to the value we get with Antioch. When we take other cities into account, the actual urban rate in these areas would be higher.
If you take Smyrna (250,000), Ephesus (350,000) and Pergamum (150,000) and an Roman Asia Minor population of 15 million
http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm, you again get a minimum urban rate of around 5%.
Using the values of the large Roman cities you left out, and substituting them for cities with less population gives an average for the 10 cities of an urban rate of 4.2%. And replacing the excessive values on just the few cities I listed gives a value of 3.2% for Han China.
As explained before the reason why Ephesus, Smyrna, amongst others, were not on the list was because the estimations done by Bowman estimated them as in the tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands. I did not include the bigger numbers because that would be
cherrypicking. What you are resorting to is exactly that. You combined different sources from different authors, choosing the number you liked best (ie the biggest). On the other hand for Han China you did the exact opposite, you combined different sources from different authors and chose the smallest number. You should at least try to hide your bias.
From Bowman/Wilson, Ephesus only had a total area of 224 ha which gives 33,600 people assuming a population density of 150 people per hectare. Pergamum had 219 ha which gives 32,850 people. He does admit, however, that 150 people/ha might be too low an estimate. Nevertheless, he gives Pergamum, Ephesus, and Smyrna a maximum of 90,000 people and a minimum of 50,000 rather than a number in the hundreds of thousands. This result would not change my estimate, as my list shows the tenth largest Roman city to be 80,000.
It also shows the greater transporation technology of Rome that they could support such as large city. With the ability to transport the food, Rome's large size could not be support. Chinese cities reached Rome's only many centuries later, during Tang times, because the Han Chinese did not have the technology and infrastructure to support a city of Rome's size.
Actually, the city of Xiangyang of Qin had the same parasitic relationship as Rome, in which QinShiHuang relocated 120,000 conquered families to the capital (~600,000 people). Combined with the population already there, the population would be around the same as that of Rome’s. Yes, the source here may be prone to exaggeration and not nearly as reliable as a census, but it’s no more reliable than the sources that tell of ~1 million population for Rome (by Augustus’ self-aggrandizement on the grain dole or the like). Archeological remains on area size for Rome show a city of only ~ half the population of the supposed 1 million. I gave Rome a population of 1 million anyway.
Do have any facts to support any of those claims? You made several claims, but haven't provide any facts. You assume that the less populated south had less land cultivated, but maybe they were exporting food to support the higher populations in the north.
On average each Han family had only 70 mou of land to cultivate, as from the census records from the Han Shu. Each mou would be able to generate ~60 liters of millet per normal year. As for population distribution:
As shown the south clearly had less population than the north.
And what "commerical" crops did the Chinese grow? Romans exported cash crops of wine as far as India. What food crop did the Chinese export to India?
Wine and alfalfa were known by the Han dynasty, although they were originally from Greece(at least the former, anyway). Other major cash crops include silk(mulberry trees), hemp, and lacquer.
In any case, if the Roman population was more even distributed, it was because the Romans were more advanced in developing all their lands, not just some of them. They built large areas in cities that previously had none, not in just part of their empire, but throughout. By your own admission, the Han neglected significant parts of their empire, and did not develop the south, while the Romans developed even a far off province like Britain.
The South was only conquered from the Yue and Dai during mid-Western Han. Of course it wouldn’t be developed. Stop jumping to conclusions. You are also switching standards. First you say that if Rome and Han had the same amount of cultivated land, with the same amount of population and urbanization, then they have the same amount of agricultural expertise. Now, when it is revealed that the Han had less cultivated land, you instead say that this shows Roman superiority, whereas by your previous standard it would have been the other way around.
The source you found got that information from Perkins. The source says: "Perkins assumes per capita grain output of 570 catties (=285 kg) [from 1400 to 1933] and also that 80% of cultivated land is devoted to grain."
