Comparison between the Chinese and the Romans
Comparison between the Chinese engineering encountered in New Zealand and the Roman Engineering encountered in Cumbria and Scotland.
During my survey around the east coast of New Zealand, I was extremely surprised to note many similarities between the engineering of the two ancient cultures. One wonders who learnt from whom? Was it parallel evolution or was there an interface of learning?
Protecting walls/Man-made platforms.
The Romans prior to constructing a protecting wall or levelling a slope to provide a platform, excavated a c3.5m to 4.5m strip and hammered in small stones to consolidate the foundations. The Chinese appeared to have built their dry stone walls and platforms, as the UK hill farmers dry stone walls surrounding farmland, ie without a separate foundation. The Roman walls used rounded corners, the Chinese angled corners.
Defensive Systems.
The Chinese used a double ramparted system, with an external ditch, and another between the ramparts, the outer edge of the ramparts being inset with a stone wall. Romans tended to use a single rampart, with multi ditches, each ditch edge revetted with stonework for strength.
Defensive Towers.
Both the Chinese and Romans used defensive gatehouses and corner towers, but the Chinese towers located at Akaroa, the major fort located by this study, appeared to be 12m² and constructed outside the walls, being connected at the corners. Roman towers tended to be rectangular, and built as part of the wall, and protruded by about a metre in front of the wall, to enable a guard to scan and fire down the wall length.
Barrack Blocks.
Every walled compound and fort contained uniform lines of barrack blocks, with stone foundations. These foundations create a magnetic anomaly, hence using a MAS system, one can easily detect them. The barrack blocks had all been constructed to a standard plan. Eight rooms, 4m², unpaved, with a ninth room, always paved, also 4m². But in the larger camps the ninth room was 10m x 4m and still paved. Early Roman, ie first century barrack blocks tended to be ten rooms each 4m² also unpaved, with an eleventh paved room, with slightly larger length, for the Centurion. Whereas in a Roman fort, one would always locate a granary, there were no store rooms located at any of the twenty-one Chinese sites surveyed in New Zealand. One can only assume that the ninth room was the store room. At only two Roman sites in the UK, out of 150 surveyed, have I located small granaries at the end of barrack blocks.
Aqueducts.
The Chinese and Roman design appeared to be identical, ie a 300mm duct with its backing wings of rubble have an overall width of 1m. The aqueducts feeding the double water wheel ore crushers, three being located in New Zealand, being usually 6m wide, with a 0.75m water duct.
Ablution Blocks.
Size for size, ie garrison to ablution block size , Chinese provisions appeared to equate to the Roman provisions for a cohort. Ie Roman 6m x 6m ablution block would have been provided for a cohort of 480 men. Dunedin’s fortified block housed c512 and was provided with a 6m x 6m ablution block. Yet Akaroa, with a garrison twice as large, only appeared to have a similar sized ablution block. Whilst the Chinese discharged their waste solid discharges into the adjacent harbour, the Romans only ever discharged liquids into their harbours, and discharged solids downstream.
River and Creek Navigation.
The Chinese and Roman method of using bypass canals, fed by forcing dams, to bypass rough stretches of rivers, and their use of navigation islands were identical. The only difference appeared to be in the Chinese use of pound locks with four separate ie three pounds. Whereas the Romans tended to use flash locks, ie single lock gates for their linear islands and double-gated pounds when bypassing dam structures.
Roads.
Unlike the Romans, the Chinese three metre wide roads located in New Zealand did not have an adjacent ditch, with the ditch edges revetted with stone.
Comment.
On this recent visit to New Zealand, I was extremely fortunate to be able to make an interesting and totally unexpected survey comparison, between two highly organised cultures, both of whom, unlike in present day Britain, valued their engineers.
