> In Roman times, they probably said similar things thinking about how advanced they were compared to the Macedonians a couple hundred years back. The fall of

> In Roman times, they probably said similar things thinking about how advanced they were compared to the Macedonians a couple hundred years back. The fall of the Roman Empire, and actually really even the decline from when the city stood at more than a million people during the time of Augustus and Tiberius until the far, saw massive declines in technological knowledge and even scientific knowledge. Much of that information was not rediscovered until the Renaissance when the last remaining archives of the Roman Empire were evacuated from Constantinople to nobles and merchants across Europe during the Turkish invasion. Even today we're still rediscovering material science knowledge that the Romans and ancient Chinese had. In fact, much of our rapid advancement in technology was not even due to knew ideas, it was due to ideas that had be theorized by Greek and Roman philosophers and alchemists, and which were recorded and stored in the archives. There was real stagnation in most knowledge and technology throughout the world. In the West because of the decline of the Roman Empire (most likely caused in part due to lead poisoning and decreasing fertility of North Africa and Judea) and in the East due to constant infighting and political strife preventing unification of India or China under stable rulers for long enough to see real advancement.