This focused on technology, but I think there are a few misconceptions which causes people to overestimate how advanced the Romans were. We think they were supe

This focused on technology, but I think there are a few misconceptions which causes people to overestimate how advanced the Romans were. We think they were super technologically advanced because of what they accomplished and their strong economy, but it overestimates their actual level of development. Most importantly, the Roman economy was built on two things that were simply unsustainable: conquest and slavery. Conquest gave the upper classes and state tons of loot to fund the government, capital expenditures, and further conquests. It also gave them tons of slaves, which I’ll expand on. Eventually Rome hit the limits of what it could feasibly conquer and hold - until that point it was in a unsustainable positive feedback loop that made it seem like a wealthier society (in the sense of the size and wealth of the upper classes, magnitude of cultural and prestige building projects) than it was. Second, slavery was a hugely important part of the Roman economy. Slavery was less sticky than US chattel slavery, so once Rome stopped conquering so much it began to decline (even though people could still enter slavery or slaves could be imported). Then with Christianity it declined even further. Slavery is what allowed the Roman industrial and manufacturing machine to work. Nobody would voluntarily choose to work in Roman minds considering the extremely dangerous conditions, and similarly the quality of life of people working in urban manufacturing (making clothes) was terrible because many cities were overcrowded (so also dangerous because of disease). Also, the reason the Roman upper class was so large and able to live such a lavish lifestyle was that they had many domestic slaves performing their household tasks, as well as educated slaves helping them with business. This IMO causes us to overestimate the productivity of the Roman economy because really they just had a way a highly unequal distribution of wealth and a way to force people to perform dangerous jobs. Also, Rome invested in infrastructure in its conquered territories. So their economic growth was driven for a long time by convergence (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics)) as they absorbed and developed poorer areas and created a more stable trading environment. This growth is also unsustainable, and when the empire starting felling apart it caused the economic regression. Even though some technologies like Roman concrete or some books were lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, most technology really wasn’t. It’s just that without slavery, a unified governing and military force, and a stable trade environment that the economy fell and priorities shifted. It was still just as hard to build big things as before, and big things like churches still got built. Arguably there was even more of a need for an Industrial Revolution because without slaves the economy couldn’t support a lot of manufacturing and resource extraction that it could before.