Originally Posted by Toddw35

If the population went down so drastically in these places where did all the people go? Rural areas?

Originally Posted by Guaporense

In Athens in 350 BC the Athenian could purchase more wheat than the British in the early 19th century.

Originally Posted by Heavenlykhagan

Wage calculation for ancient periods are highly unreliable as we have no real information regarding the prices of different goods throughout the region...
the population of Attica is probably little more than 300,000, which is indeed tiny when compared to the rest of the `west`or even to the rest of Greece itself. Also the wages of many of the regions you are comparing Athens to are not cities. Netherland is a country, England is a country, and the Yangze Delta is a region as large as the Netherlands, not a city.

Originally Posted by HackneyedScribe

The athenian wages came from http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs...del/090904.pdf :

In Eleusis near Athens in the 320s BCE, epigraphic records report that unskilled construction workers received 1.5 drachms per day, compared to 1.25-2.5 drachms for skilled workers. At that time, wheat sold for 5 to 6 drachms per medimnos (c.52 liters).41 This translates to a daily wheat wage of 13-15.6 liters. For the second half of the fifth century BCE, we hear of Athenian daily wages of 1 drachm for skilled as well as generic construction workers as well as militia soldiers, and the wheat price was probably around 6 drachms, for a daily wage of 8.7 liters.42 In this case, it is impossible to establish a separate wage estimate specifically for unskilled workers but the differentials may have been modest given a slight overlap of skilled and unskilled wages in the 320s BCE.43 Even at – hypothetically – between 5.8 (i.e., two-thirds of 8.7) and 8.7 liters, unskilled laborers would have received 20 to 80 percent more than in the Roman average discussed in Section 2, while the late fourth-century BCE rate is approximately three times as high as the latter. Moreover, freedom from taxation would have raised incomes in real terms relative to other systems where this need not have been the case. These elevated levels of real incomes merit especial attention (see Section 4).

However, one must take note of the time period we are using. During the 5th century Athens was extorting tribute from her allies, resulting in the Peloponnessian war. By the late 5th century the peace of Nicias was just concluded. The Eleusis records on the other hand was taken around the time when Alexander the Great just died.

Originally Posted by Heavenlykhagan

As expected, the author used food price as the standard for measuring wage, while food price certainly shows a trend, precision can never be attained as the price of wheat differed in different regions compared to other products.
Yet food isn´t even the biggest problem, the real difficulty in determining wages in any studies prior to the 20th century is how much the sample used applies across the entire society. The study is problematic as it only recorded the wages of construction workers. People of other occupation, their population ratio, and the sex ratio and age ratio are largely absent from record. Even worse, it completely left out the population of slaves which is more or less as large as the population of citizens. Exploiting the labors of slaves would obviously create a class of high wage citizens, but it is not an objective gauge of the entire population´s living standard. And since Scheidel wasn´t trying to research GDP per capita, the graph really doesn´t show much in regard to living standard to begin with. It only really showed the wages of the workers of Athens compared to other cities, not the actual wage of the entire population of Athens, much less the GDP per capita of the city which included a huge population of slaves that does not exist in the other cities being compared to.

Originally Posted by Guaporense

They also failed to raise the rate of urbanization: Europe in the early middle ages was nothing in terms of urbanization, there weren't any real cities in Early Medieval Europe and few ones in the Middle East. Nothing compared to the cities of Graeco-Roman antiquity: 1st century Rome alone was larger than any city in the history of the world until the 19th century.

Originally Posted by Guaporense

While the rates of urbanization in Classical Greece were higher than any other society until the late 19th century Britain.

Originally Posted by Guaporense

Overall, Roman farming was not surpassed until the 19th century in terms of productivity, organization and actual effectiveness in the employment of factors of production. Roman farms were highly organized efficient productive units while medieval farming was done by serfs on a hand to mouth effort.

Originally Posted by HeavenlyKhagan

Han agriculture is 2-8 times as productive as Roman agriculture.
Nathan Stewart calculates that if hypothetical family(5 members) required 1384 to 1591 kilograms(3051-3508 pounds) of wheat per year for food, it will have had to work 20.8 to 23.9 iugera(13-15 acres) of land with a 1 to 3 yield ratio.

High end estimates given by Wuhui, puts the per acre yield at 264 jin/mou of land(modern unit). Each acre is roughly 6 mou. Thats almost 8 times more than the Roman production per acre. Even low end estimates put the per mou yield of the Han at 66.36-67.83 jin which was still around twice as high. The medium estimates gives around 100 jin/mou, which would be roughly 3 times as high as the Roman production given by Stewart.

I would also advise you not to use regional data(Roman Egypt is one of, if not the most productive region of the Roman Empire in terms of agriculture, you made it sound as if its below average, please straighten some basic facts and stop with the academic dishonesty)
At the most productive region of the Han Empire at certain parts of Guanzhong, a single mu of land could produce 10 dan(135 kg) of millet. Even less productive regions had 4.8 dan. While we don't know the amount of lands the peasants in the former have, the later fields had the average of 14 mu of land per person, that means around 907.3 KG of millet a year, or 50 percent greater than the 600 KG of Roman Egypt. If we assume lands that produced 10 dan of millet per mu to have the same person to field ratio, then it would have 1,890 kg of millet a year or over three times that of Roman Egypt.

As shown, the average Han peasant produced around 573 KG of millet a year, which itself was already slightly greater than Roman Egyptian grain production(millet is slightly more nutritional than wheat).

In terms of pure grain output, the average Han peasant outperformed the Roman ones by a large margin, the reason that Roman per capita probably rivaled those of the Han was because Europeans consumed a much larger amount of meat. However, in terms of feeding a large population, a single Chinese peasant could usually provide enough to feed 1.8 people. While meat increases nutritional value, the amount of people it could feed is very limited.
As mentioned before, the average Roman produced around 1,500lbs of wheat equivalent(not wheat itself in case you misuse the information again) while the Han peasant produced around 1,300lbs of millet a year. The average Roman consumes around 3051-3508 pounds of wheat for subsistence in a year, while the average Han peasant consumes around 2673 pounds of millet a year, so the living standard was around the same.