Modern nations are connected by everything from railways to highways, seaports to airports,
pipelines for oil to pipelines for electrons, and economic, political, and logistical systems that allow
the country to act as one interconnected organism.
Every well-developed nation these days has a way to extract resources, provide basic resources for its
citizens, import and export masses of stuff from other countries on a regular schedule, and do so over vast
distances like it's nothing.
But large polities like this are nothing new, so how was this done in ancient times?
Some empires in history were able to last several centuries, whereas others expanded
quickly, burned all their energy, and fell apart just as fast.
So when an empire in the ancient world actually got it right, how did they hold themselves
together?
If you lived in a time before Europeans discovered the actual Amazon, how would you go about
getting stuff from far away places?
[Intro]
The Roman Empire is arguably the best example to show how logistics worked in the ancient
world, plus it’s what’ll probably make more people click on this video.
Rome was far from the largest empire in human history, but to manage a realm comparable
in size to the modern United States with iron age technology for several hundred years,
you definitely need to know how to run the place.
Easily one of the most consequential, and most famous examples of what held the Empire
together was the series of roads that stretched across the empire’s territory.
In all, the Romans built around 80,000 kilometers of highways connecting the cities of the Empire,
from Antiochia to Asturica to Eboracum– all without dooming their cities to chariot-dependency–
though these would have been built for transporting lighter loads, or to resupply the military,
or the Cursus Publicus, a Pony Express-like system of horse relays where messages could
be sent from the edge of the Empire to Rome in mere days.
Although the Romans weren’t the first to use roads in this way, as the Achaemenids’
system of royal roads allowed messengers to travel from Sardis to Susa in nine days, when
a journey between these cities normally took ninety.
Even with this impressive series of roads though, often the best routes between two
cities would have been via ship, especially if you wanted to carry more than a few tons
of stuff.
I touch more on this in another video I made last year– no almost two years ago?!
Jesus Christ– but when you have the entire Mediterranean and Black Seas within your realm,
you might as well use it, what with the amount of stuff you can carry on ships, and the fact
that you don’t really need to rest until you get to your destination.
The Corbita was the most ubiquitous merchant ship sailing the seas of Rome, and even venturing
as far as India.
Depending on their size, these ships could carry anywhere from 70 to 350 tons of cargo,
be it in the form of crates, passengers (who probably had to bring their own tents), or
amphorae, which were sort of like the cardboard boxes of the ancient Mediterranean…
but made out of clay, and for transporting liquids.
The most important of which being olive oil, which was used in everything from cooking
to medicine to lighting to religious rituals, with the average Roman thought to have consumed
20 liters of the stuff every year.
Interestingly, once a ship had delivered its cargo to its destination, it would often dump
the amphorae overboard rather than be weighed down by empty amphorae, which shows just how
cheap and ubiquitous they were.
With this, Rome could set up a whole series of supply chains across the breadth of the
ancient world, with lead and tin from Britain, wheat from Egypt and Carthage, gold and silver
from Hispania, high-skilled slaves from Greece, and even further afield, with spices from
India, exotic animals from Africa, and silk from China.
When it came to things that had to be done in smaller areas all across the Empire, the
Roman Empire would use the tried and tested method of dumping that responsibility on someone
else.
The best example of this is taxes, which was done a little differently than in modern times.
Instead of the Roman government collecting a small amount from every citizen in the Empire,
a class known as the publicani would pay whatever amount the state needed from a province, before
collecting taxes from the estates and communities in said province, and maybe making a little
profit if they were lucky, who knows.
This was a practice known as tax farming, however Emperor Augustus would discontinue
But once Rome had made the transition from small Italian republic to Mediterranean-spanning
empire, arguably the most important province in the entire empire became Egypt.
If there’s something complex civilization likes, it’s predictability, and name a more
predictable river than the Nile, I’ll wait.
The Nile valley is one of the most fertile regions in the world, despite barely receiving
any rain at all.
This is in part due to the annual flooding of the river, which essentially re-fertilizes
the soil (or at least it did until they put a stop to that in the 60’s).
Of course the amount the Nile will flood in a given year could vary a lot year-to-year.
For this, they would measure the amount the river flooded in a given year using nilometers
(yes that’s what people actually call them), which were essentially these large chambers
where the level of the river’s flooding would be measured and recorded.
The Nile was also the perfect river for transportation, as the Nile flows northward, yet the winds
tend to blow southward (or from the north, as weather nerds like to put it), making it
almost comically easy to traverse the Nile.
Literally just put up your sail if you want to go south, and don’t do that if you want
to go north.
And if you want to go east or west…
no you don’t, this is Egypt.
But the Egyptians did build a series of canals, essentially spreading the water out in a web,
both for irrigation and transport.
For a country so famous for its deserts, you could go basically anywhere in ancient Egypt
by riverboat.
This allowed ruling dynasties to project power up and down the river just as easily as grain
could be delivered, or taxed.
With all this, Egypt was the breadbasket of the ancient world, often producing a surplus
of food, which was either traded with their neighbors or stored in state-owned granaries,
which were often protected by cats who hunted the mice within the granaries, hence their
place in Egyptian mythology.
But what if you don’t have access to the same sort of technology and infrastructure
as Rome or Egypt or anywhere else like that?
What if your empire is high in the mountains, isolated from any other empire, and where
the biggest domestic animal you have is the llama?
Well that is exactly the position the Inca Empire found themselves in.
The Inca Empire called itself Tawantinsuyu, meaning “the four regions”, with four
states radiating in the four cardinal directions from the capital Cusco.
Their empire was connected by an intricate series of footpaths, rope bridges, and mountainside
staircases.
It definitely wasn’t something that would’ve suited an empire like Rome, but for the Tawantinsuyu,
it worked well enough for them to administer a massive empire across the west coast of
South America, manage trade, and build amazing wonders.
In fact this setup had some advantages.
The Inca Empire spread north-to-south, meaning it encountered several different climate zones.
In addition, their empire was a lot more three-dimensional, with different settlements at vastly different
elevations.
This actually had the advantage of allowing different regions to grow different sets of
crops, so that if one crop had a terrible year, it wouldn’t affect the entire Empire.
But what about the Indian Ocean trade network?
And what about the European colonial empires, what logistical efforts were needed to keep
those afloat?
… Boats.
If you want to learn more about that, stay tuned for part two.