Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas
No, because artisans kept their secrets to themselves, and could not necessarily read the prestigious foreign languages in which the handful of handbooks were written. Projects like the Encyclopédie don't appear before the 18th century and I don't know of any evidence that they had much impact on the spread of European technology to the Muslim world, India, or China.
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Several things here
The first known Encyclopedia was
Natural History and dates from c77 CE. It consisted of 37 chapters spread over 10 books.
Latin had been standardized 75 BCE and when the Western Roman empire fell apart it became the defacto international language of what had been the Western Roman empire.
Because the Muslim world, India, and China didn't have this common language cultural exchange between their cultures and the old Western Roman Empire was limited.