3 ms·

Lots of people died and disappeared, whole cities were abandoned, those that weren’t often had a tenth of their previous populations, people receded to subsiste

Lots of people died and disappeared, whole cities were abandoned, those that weren’t often had a tenth of their previous populations, people receded to subsistence agriculture, and literacy went to almost zero. If you took an interest in a subject and read a few books, you could be the worlds foremost expert on it. This was most prevalent in the west. Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revolution a thousand years early.

dqpb 4y ago
> Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revolution a thousand years early That’s a pretty amazing idea.
- notahacker 4y ago
  I remember reading a very entertaining story as a kid by John Christopher (typically an author of juvenile sf) in which basically the opposite happened (the protagonists are transported to an alternative 1981 in which the Roman Empire survived in stable form basically unchanged, and they're able to transform its fortunes with longbows and pendulums... although helping the underground Pope legitimise Christianity as a religion doesn't go quite as well as expected. Special props to the author for having the imagination to conceive that the pendulum could be used as a torture instrument!
  - mkr-hn 4y ago
    It's a bit older than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_and_the_Pendulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_and_the_Pendulum
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  https://physicsworld.com/a/praising-alexandrians-to-excess/ https://physicsworld.com/a/praising-alexandrians-to-excess/ Lucio Russo thinks rather it would have been the Greeks, but makes clear that neither of them approached things with the modern scientific method.
panick21_ 4y ago
Yes but most of that didn't happen when the Western Empire collapsed politically. Most of that happened far later and guess what, to a significant extent it also happened in the East where the empire continued to exist. The Justinian plague had for more to do with the things you mentioned then anything about if you lived in the empire or outside. > Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revolution a thousand years early. That's a waste extenuation.

dqpb 4y ago

> Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revolution a thousand years early That’s a pretty amazing idea.

notahacker 4y ago
I remember reading a very entertaining story as a kid by John Christopher (typically an author of juvenile sf) in which basically the opposite happened (the protagonists are transported to an alternative 1981 in which the Roman Empire survived in stable form basically unchanged, and they're able to transform its fortunes with longbows and pendulums... although helping the underground Pope legitimise Christianity as a religion doesn't go quite as well as expected. Special props to the author for having the imagination to conceive that the pendulum could be used as a torture instrument!
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  It's a bit older than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_and_the_Pendulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_and_the_Pendulum
selimthegrim 4y ago
https://physicsworld.com/a/praising-alexandrians-to-excess/ https://physicsworld.com/a/praising-alexandrians-to-excess/ Lucio Russo thinks rather it would have been the Greeks, but makes clear that neither of them approached things with the modern scientific method.

panick21_ 4y ago

Yes but most of that didn't happen when the Western Empire collapsed politically. Most of that happened far later and guess what, to a significant extent it also happened in the East where the empire continued to exist. The Justinian plague had for more to do with the things you mentioned then anything about if you lived in the empire or outside. > Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial revolution a thousand years early. That's a waste extenuation.