[HN Gopher] The Road from Rome ___________________________________________________________________ The Road from Rome Author : diodorus Score : 15 points Date : 2021-04-16 22:19 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (aeon.co) (TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co) | greenwich26 wrote: | I'm skeptical of the author's premise because there were plenty | of barbarian tribes outside Rome's borders, who made almost no | progress in their civilization for the thousand years that Rome | stood. If Europe had fallen entirely to them, why should anything | have changed? Even the simple (re)invention of writing may have | not come for another thousand years (by which point all of Europe | would have been conquered by Arabs anyway). The point is: the | iron age is slow. | | Rather it all seems to depend on the crucial fact that the | barbarians immediately adopted the culture, religion, and | especially the (highly written) language of the Romans. Which is | highly peculiar: not often in history do the conquerors adopt the | customs of conquered. But without this transformation, I don't | believe Europe in the West would have become anything but tribes | of illiterate savages, like it was in the North. | | So if the fall of Rome was for Europe's benefit in the long run-- | and it may have been--then it's because we got very very lucky. | In the meantime, don't be too hasty to throw away today's great | civilizations. I do not think it is usually so easy to revive | them. | | P.S. The author's insistence on pausing every few sentences to | needlessly scourge "colonialism" and "slavery" and "white | supremacy" and other assorted buzzwords is very irritating. | 5etho wrote: | this p.s. is simply not true | | article is bery pleasant to read, I as a history buff even | learn few new things | alricb wrote: | Local agricultural optimums in Northern Europe played a role too. | How good was agriculture in the Parisian basin during the late | Roman empire? Was it possible for farmers to get the iron | implements and draft animals needed to make heavy soils | productive? | | Separating the Middle East/North Africa and Europe on the | "dominant state" chart is an interesting choice, since the Roman | Empire controlled most of both for centuries. Controlling a large | portion of Europe is difficult unless you're a maritime-ish power | with access to the Mediterranean. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-17 23:01 UTC)