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When I see this (a relic of the Minoan civilization), I'm reminded that civilization has undergone multiple collapses as a result of disease, war, corruption, a
by chrisco255 5y ago
When I see this (a relic of the Minoan civilization), I'm reminded that civilization has undergone multiple collapses as a result of disease, war, corruption, and famine, and in the process we lose skills and technology along the way, and only re-learn them (or alternative technologies) after we enter a period of new abundance, sometimes many centuries or millenia later.
- marcosdumay 5y agoThere were way fewer large scale collapses in our history than people assume. Localized ones are plentiful, but knowledge almost always gets preserved by some distant people. Lost knowledge usually happens because it stops being useful or because it wasn't actually widespread.
- JackFr 5y agoAlthough that is one way to get out of a local minimum. David Herlihy made the argument in The Black Death and the “Transformation of the West”, that much of feudal Europe prior to the plague was caught in a Malthusian deadlock, where labor was abundant and thus cheap enough that there was no return to investment in technology or capital. It was only when labor became scarce and expensive that investments in productivity were justified.
- chrisco255 5y agoSeveral centuries before the Black Plague, the Justinian Plague accelerated the decline of the remnants of the Roman Empire and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. In the process a lot of Roman technology and skill was lost, and the burgeoning Byzantine empire failed to reach Roman heights as a result of massive losses of human life. In addition the climate got colder as a result of volcanism and caused widespread famine. Maybe the Black Plague did shake up things in what we retrospectively look at as good outcomes, but it happened at the tail end of a long period of malaise.