4 ms·

Technological progress didn't really stop when 'ancient' civilizations collapsed. First of all it was hardly happening in the first place, most people were subs

• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Certainly the economic contraction in the west was real and looked very much like a "collapse." But it was as much a product of frequence plagues with corresponding population loss as it was of some more systemic civilizational collapse. In the east, in Anatolia, the Roman civilization lived on with quite a bit more vibrancy and power than people often recognize. But in places like Britain it's pretty night and day: early 5th century still a predominantly Christian Roman province speaking Latin and Brythonic, by the end a predominantly Saxon speaking mostly non-Christian population with drastically reduced economic activity and wealth.
  • achillesheels 4y ago
    So the roads were not paved after the 4th century due to plague and not a failed civilized administration? Would you consider the Merovingians as civilized as the Phoenicians?
    • wwtrv 4y ago
      We know remarkably little about the Phoenicians, though. So it's not really a fair comparison, based on what we do and by modern standards Merovingians would probably be considered to be more civilized.
    • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      I think the story is really one of the failure of the ability to raise taxes for the maintenance of armies and civil infrastructure rather than some inherent "civilized" or "uncivilized" character of any particular people. You can't raise taxes when half or more of the population is gone. As per WP: "Some historians believe the first plague pandemic was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 15–100 million people during two centuries of recurrence, a death toll equivalent to 25–60% of Europe's population at the time of the first outbreak" And this is after a couple generations of political turmoil, other plagues, and invasions.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • wwtrv 4y ago
    There is archeological evidence that Saxons and other Germans had started settling in Britain well before the Romans officially left. They had almost successfully invaded Britain back in 367. And many had settled in Britain and seemed to be somewhat integrated into the local society, Germans served in the Roman army, their villages were in close proximity to Roman roads and settlements, indicating that that both groups managed to coexist at least somewhat peacefully of for a time. Over time Saxons seemed to have displaced the local Romano-British elite. However this process probably took at least several generations and probably had little effect on the lifestyles of most ordinary people. While the disappearance of the Roman legions must had been a shock, the transition from mainly Christian Latin and Brythonic speakers to pagan Saxons was fairly slow and probably took several hundreds of years. Also we don't really know Christian Britain was before the Saxon conquests, it's not unlikely that most British people outside of urban settlements were still pagan and only superficially Christianized. We also don't really know did the British people become culturally Saxon. According what was written down by the surviving members of the Romano-British elite it was a result of genocidal conquest. However the predominant view of modern historians seems to be that the process was much more peaceful and more akin to the Arabization of the Middle East and North Africa (i.e. the conquerors established a dual class system which incentivized the local population to adopt the Saxon language and culture because of the economic and social advantages. Also, unless the Saxons were significantly more brutal, oppressive and numerous than the Franks, Goths and other invaders this would imply that the local Britons weren't actually thoroughly Christianized since Christian populations were usually able to resist this type of Cultural conversion).
    • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      There's a lot here to respond to, and in the end it's mostly speculation, but a few things. In regards to the comparison between Franks and Goths and Saxons, it's not really the same. In those cases they took over the existing Roman state and continued its administration, leaving the institiutions of civil society much the same and even adopting Latin as a language and Roman cultural practices for themselves within a couple generations. By the time the Saxons arrived en masse in what is now England the existing Roman administration had pretty much collapsed. That seems to be the archaeological evidence in my recent reading: drastic declines in the economic vibrancy of British communities. Things like amphorae and other mediterannean trade goods vanishing. Rich people burying their wealth to hide it from invaders. And, yeah, the stories told by Gildas & St Patrick, our only real contemporary accounts from this general period, seem to agree with this: decline of local British power, retreating into small cloistered communities, Saxon (and other Germanic) raiders wea continual pest even in Roman times, yes, but after the departure of the Roman administration it becoming drastically more aggrivated, the locals were incapable of defending themselves, and the British turned to Germanic mercenaries as a defense (a common Roman tactic). Which predictably backfired. I've read two books commenting on this period of British history recently, and both disagree remarkably on the degree of cultural and physical replacement. But on the whole the genetic and archaeological and linguistic evidence seems to me to support the statements by Gildas and St Patrick: the British were on the whole replaced & expelled (to Wales, Cornwall or Brittany), or exterminated. This is reflected in part by the fact that only a few Saxon settlements carried forward on top of existing Romano-British settlements, and most adopted new names entirely. Even some prominent ones like London were left pretty much uninhabited for generations before being re-settled later.
• lettergram 4y ago
  “It wasn’t a collapse, technology / economy stagnated or reduced for 600-1200 years” I think most people would consider that a “dark age” or “collapse”.
  • wwtrv 4y ago
    Well there was a collapse, but it "only" lasted for 100 to 200 years and no anything close to 600. Populations in Mediterranean and European decreased sharply between 5th and 6th centuries due to the plague and climate change and growth remained modest until the medieval warm period. However there was nothing the people living at the time could have realistically done to avoid this. However outside of that period it's not that straightforward. The Roman economy was stagnant or declining well before the Western empire officially collapsed. According to some historians growth in much of the Mediterranean region stopped with the Roman conquests at the end of the Hellenistic period. But even if we assume that ~200 A.D. was the peak can we really say that there was more technological innovation and economic growth between the 3rd - 5th centuries than between the 8th and 10th centuries? Probably the latter.. And it also varied significantly depending on the area we're talking about. Italy probably took the longest to recover but it's economy was massively inflated due to wealth transfers during the Roman period. However the center of economic and political power in Europe has shifted to the other side of the alps France and Germany had nearly the double the population in 1000 AD compared to their Roman peaks. And some places like mainland Greece arguably never did until the 19th century (it was probably was past it's peak during the Roman period as well, though. A similar process occurred in the eastern Mediterranean where the center of power shifted from the coast to the inland areas (like the area modern day Iraq). And we're only taking about absolute growth here, per capita productivity probably wasn't as much affected and most of the decline in international trade (which eventually recovered) was balanced out by higher availability of land (per capita) and improvements in agricultural techniques and tools. If we're talking about technological growth, well again in some areas like architecture the decline was severe and near total (most communities couldn't afford to maintain the buildings they already had). In other areas the reverse might had happened, based on archeological evidence the average quality of metal tools and weapons in Western Europe was already much better in the 7-8th centuries compared to what the Romans ever had. The heavy plow was introduced in agriculture, water mills continued to be built. Literacy rates fell, however that was to a large degree an outcome of the collapse of urban populations. However the link between economic and technological progress and education in the ancient world wasn't all that clear.
• inglor_cz 4y ago
  One of the things that undoubtedly went down was the level of literacy. Plenty of secular Roman citizens were literate and there were many schools for young Romans who wished to find lucrative employment. Once Rome fell, the educational system outside the Church disappeared entirely for almost a millennium and the Church remained the only institution that carried on the tradition of reading and writing in the West. This must have had some impact on the tempo of overall technological progress. Just like the fact that the successor states, unable to concentrate resources as much, couldn't start big public works (channels, aqueducts) which used to require a lot of highly qualified people.
  • wwtrv 4y ago
    That's true, the decline in literacy was significant, but this is to large degree an outcome of the collapse of urban populations, even during Roman times there were relatively few literate people in the countryside. And "almost a millennium" is probably stretching it a bit, for example in Tuscany (and presumably other regions of Northern/Central Italy) most small towns or even villagers seemed to already have teachers by the 12th century and in richer cities like Florence at least the majority of boys attended a primary at least for some time (by the 14th century it's estimated that up to 30-35% of the people living in Florence could read, of course being one the richest and most developed cities in Western Europe this was probably an outlier, but then again even during the Roman times literacy probably varied significantly between Italy, the Greek cities in the east and places like Gaul or Britain).