Guaporense

On another old tread (http://www.historum.com/ancient-hist...ent-world.html) I had argued that the political unification of the ancient world into the Roman Empire eventually "killed" the ancient world. Most people objected, some argued that the Roman Empire was actually good for the ancients.

So, if the Roman Empire per se did not cause the fall of the classical world, what did? How would you explain the systematic decline of all the archaeological proxies of economic activity since the 2nd century?

Examples:

1 - Number of shipwrecks: From the peak of 180 shipwrecks in the 1st centuries BC and AD to only 2 in the 8th century. Decrease of 99%.

2 - Levels of lead pollution/production: Estimates of the level of lead production show a decline from 80,000 tons per year in the 1st century AD to 4,000 tons in the 9th century. Decrease of 95%.

3 - Copper pollution: Also show a decline from emissions of 2,300 tons per year in the 1st century to 300 tons per year in the 9th century. Decrease of 85%.

4 - Animal bones: The number of animal bones found by archaeologists in the areas corresponding to the provinces of the Roman Empire show a decline from the high of 250,000 bones in the 2nd century to a low of less than 10,000 bones by the 8th century. Decrase of 97%.

Today there is no way to deny the social/economic collapse that occurred over all of western eurasia from the 2nd to the 8-9th centuries. The OP is how to you explain/interpret it?

It is a rather unique event in world history: a continuous process of decline in social complexity spanning over several centuries, from around 150 CE to 750 CE. While civilizations had collapsed before this long process of slow decline is rather unique.

Rasta

Very interesting thread. I shall keep my eye on this. It may have been something like a "perfect storm", where many unrelated causal events cooincidentally "team up" to make collapse inevitable.

Similar to the theory of the extinction of megafauna.

Darth Roach

It really depends on where and when you draw the line. If we look at western Eurasia, probably collapse of the WRE, Islamic conquests and the great migrations.

It also depends on what criteria you have for social complexity and such.

Fantasus

What is the origin of those numbers (sources)?

Fantasus

This picture seems not to fit every part of "western Eurasia". In some northwestern parts the first signs of towns began in this period.

Triceratops

There was a major plague during Justinian's reign;

BrowniesRule

If there is a ''systematic decline'' that occured over 500 years (and of course there's ups and downs to that systematic decline, and I question the name of the concept but let's go on), it can only last as long as there's stock for it to last.
In other words, destruction and disorder took a long time to spread from one place to another. Without a strong central authority which commands the workforce and its expertise, it's harder to trade, to impose law, and to build new structures, to keep account of stuff, etc. For Western Europe's population, which was mostly under barbarian authority (different lifestyle, let's be clear), life must have changed drastically with the passing generations. But for Eastern Europe's inhabitants, still under the leadership of ''Rome'' (and all the institutions it generates), life probably went by more easier, although the arrival of the Slavs and Justinian's plague clearly meant some adjustments.

Carlin

Allow me to cite Edward Gibbon:

Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. 180 But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the Barbarians, were entirely depopulated. 181b

We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of some use perhaps in the melancholy calculation of human calamities. An exact register was kept at Alexandria of all the citizens entitled to receive the distribution of corn. It was found, that the ancient number of those comprised between the ages of forty and seventy, had been equal to the whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallienus. 182 Applying this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves, that above half the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect, that war, pestilence, and famine, had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the human species. 183

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Volume 1-10 by Edward Gibbon,

In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. The impression was communicated to the waters; the shores of the Mediterranean were left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea; great quantities of fish were caught with the hand; large vessels were stranded on the mud; and a curious spectator 1 amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appearance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon returned, with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece, and of Egypt: large boats were transported, and lodged on the roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore; the people, with their habitations, were swept away by the waters; and the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day, on which fifty thousand persons had lost their lives in the inundation. This calamity, the report of which was magnified from one province to another, astonished and terrified the subjects of Rome; and their affrighted imagination enlarged the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the preceding earthquakes, which had subverted the cities of Palestine and Bithynia: they considered these alarming strokes as the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, and their fearful vanity was disposed to confound the symptoms of a declining empire and a sinking world.

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Volume 2-26 by Edward Gibbon,

AlpinLuke

Here a trend would be appreciated: if the decrease increases during the Barbarian conquests of Northern Africa, it's stable in Justinian age and then it increases again during the expansion of Islam, it's simply an effect of the reduction of the Roman commercial network through the Mediterranean Sea.

So to comment this with accuracy I would need numbers century by century.

Here the timeline indicates that it was the end of the Roman Empire to cause the decrease of lead production [not during it]

I quote:
So it was after the end of Western Roman Empire that lead production fell.

More than a continuous phenomenon this indicates a process connected with the "barbarian invasions", the decline of the Roman Empire and the end of the Mediterranean global market [of the Roman PAX].

Guaporense

Shipwrecks: Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces, J.A. Parker

Lead pollution: Greenland ice evidence of hemispheric lead pollution two millenia ago by Greek and Roman civilizations, S. Hong et al

Copper pollution: Anthropogenic air pollution in ancient times, E. Borsos et al

Animal bones: Crises and the Roman Empire, Gibbons was Right, W. Jongman