Wootz steel

It seems like a link to a random Wikipedia page should be accompanied by an explanatory comment...

One of the things that threw me off when watching forging YouTube videos like Alec Steele was that he would take on these historical projects like Renaissance weaponry but using super-modern power hammers and such. But they actually had power hammers in the Renaissance, Wikipedia calls them trip hammers. They didn't appear in Europe until the Middle Ages, but similar devices were used in China 2000 (!) years ago.

The things you can do with just water, wind, and wood are incredible.

India prior to the Brits, should be a case study in how to integrate places like the Rust Belt in US, Afghanistan into global trade.

Each village was an autonomous unit of production that traded directly with nearby villages, silk road and through merchant ships with the world. ( In some cases they had their own local currency ! )

A single village could be directly linked to markets in Europe and China, or form part of a supply chain of villages to larger markets. Shenzen is similar being a SEZ, allowing it to trade directly with any unit across the globe.

It is kinda ironic that we went from a more libertarian trade system to a more restrictive one, as technology helped the state exert more control.

Places like the Rust belt can't directly trade with Kenya, they have to go through hordes of middle men.

Same thing happens in inner India, even though its filled with excess cheap labor in close proximity.

"They" had analogue computers [1] and steam turbines [2] two millenia ago. Power hammers a few centuries ago seem pretty mild by comparison.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle has about 35 enjoyable pages on this process, if anyone's interested.