text: Medieval Europe Diffusion theory has been advanced as an explanation for the "European miracle", the adoption of technological innovation in medieval Europe which by the 19th century culminated in European technological achievement surpassing the Islamic world and China.Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial revolution: European Society and Economy 1000–1700, W.W. Norton and Co., New York (1980)  Technological imports to medieval Europe include gunpowder, clock mechanisms, shipbuilding, paper, and the windmill; however, in each of these cases, Europeans not only adopted the technologies but improved the manufacturing scale, inherent technology, and applications to a point clearly surpassing the evolution of the original invention in its country of origin.
  There are also some historians who have questioned whether Europe really owes the development of such inventions as gunpowder, the compass, the windmill or printing to the Chinese or other cultures.
  However, historian Peter Frankopan argues that influences, particularly trade, through the Middle East and Central Asia to China through the silk roads have been overlooked in traditional histories of the "rise of the West". He argues that the Renaissance was funded with trade with the east (due to the demise of Byzantium at the hands of Venice and the Fourth Crusade), and that the trade allowed ideas and technology to be shared with Europe. But the constant warfare and rivalry in Europe meant there was extreme evolutionary pressure for developing these ideas for military and economic advantage, and a desperate need to use them in expansion.