Modern-day historians don’t even refer to those years between the end of Western Roman dominance and the rise of Europe’s medieval kingdoms as “the dark ages” anymore. It’s been shown pretty convincingly that there was a ton of stuff going on, including trade, travel, and generally sophisticated social and cultural stuff, just not tied together or centrally focused as in the heyday of the Empire.
And to add to the comments up thread about Roman tech, really it wasn’t stuff but organization and mindset that the Romans exploited. And those things required a specific type of social and cultural structure in order to even be useful, much less effective. There simply was no way you could have deployed in 8th century the equivalent of the Roman legions in say what would eventually become France. It wasn’t because no one remembered how it was done, there simply wasn’t any framework for such a thing.
CraigM
2657
The other aspect is the large scale resources and infrastructure required to build the types of projects that decayed post Lombard sacking of Rome.
Think of it today. If the USA devolved into 50 separate countries instead of a single state, consider something like the aircraft carriers. The existing ones would still, well, exist, but the ability for any single state, save perhaps California, to operate and maintain a single one would be dubious. Let alone construct a new one. After a few decades most, if not all, the existing carrier groups would be disbanded. Either dismantled for scrap, left to rust, or otherwise no longer a going concern.
It isn’t that the technology or knowledge would be lost, it is just that the resources to create and maintain one basically are only possible with access to the wealth and resources of a large state.
So it was with Rome. The aqueducts, baths, heated floors, temples, etc. all were built under the framework of a single state that had access to the forests of Germany, the mountains of Italy and Spain, the farms of France and Egypt, etc. Things like marble, wool, wood, wine, fish, etc. would be shipped all across the empire for construction of these massive projects. When the western empire was in retreat, things like the baths and heated floors in Brittania could no longer be maintained, as they used resources from elsewhere in the empire. The tech wasn’t lost, they just lost access to the people and raw materials to maintain them.
Aceris
2658
I’m sure there’s an unmitigated pedantry blog (or five :)) on this.
Essentially, much of the Roman military advantage was lost as their “barbarian” rivals formed kingdoms and learned better military approaches, often in the employ of the Romans. This helped cause the fall of the empire, leading to the breakdown the social and economic structures required to support a Roman-style professional army. Meanwhile the Eastern empire, battered by plague and arab uprisings, didn’t so much lose “Roman military technology” as evolve it according to their resources and needs, and although they never really recovered after the losses of the mid-600s they remained a powerful state and didn’t really “lose” technology.
Personally I think the social and economic structures that evolved during the Roman conquest of Italy were almost coincidentally extremely effective, both at developing trade, supporting a military and preserving themselves. The history of Rome from the late republic onwards is basically a Sisyphean effort to retain those structures in the face of pressures acting upon them to force them to change to structures more capable of accomodating a vast empire, but less capable of actually defending it.
That’s a bit of a stretch.
Religious reasons are a big part of it, but also the story of the Byzantine empire is one of gradual, grinding decline, leaving behind a hollow shell of former glories, which eventually fell. It may have been the height of European civilization for centuries, but it feels like little of its legacy lives on today in any obvious way except in the sense of what it prevented (Persian/Arab/Turkish invasions of Europe).
Yes, “early middle ages” is a much better name for it! But nevertheless I recall reading that it’s pretty clear the economic productivity was substantially lower, so there was less surplus, in states that were smaller and less centrally powerful, so therefore there was vastly less ability to support standing armies, large construction projects, powerful standing navies etc. - which were the very foundations of the Roman system that were “lost”.
The “gradual, grinding decline” is a post 1025 thing; there were plenty of highs until then.
If only we had a Christian gift-giving festival! Just imagine what that could be like? Darn you, Halloween!
dfs
2662
Dang that Halloween. What sort of perverted institution would come up with such a thing?
Thrag
2663
We should have WeenWeen. Bananas and blow for everyone!
Ween liked to cover all the bases.
If only there were a day to celebrate Jesus…
Edit: @Mark_Asher beat me to it.
“Rod of Iron Ministries”
Rod of Iron
Ministries
or
Rod
of
Iron Ministries
Also, this is some paragraph:
Moon’s congregation, Rod of Iron Ministries, also known as The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, is a gun-centric spinoff of the much larger Unification Church, founded by his late father, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah and businessman whose followers were famously known as “Moonies.” The younger Moon, who also goes by “The Second King,” split from the main church amid a dramatic falling-out with his mother about who, between the two of them, was the rightful heir to his father’s empire.
The Moonies were always nutso.
Timex
2668
Having the nuts all in one place can be a good thing.
Unfortunately the last time they were on the news was because they bought 40 acres in Texas. (June 2021) His brother owns a gun factory.
Houngan
2670
The sad thing is, they’re excellent.
Sabotai
2673
I want to know if the washing machine had been used to clean the gun, but the story doesn’t say.
Matt_W
2674
These significant seizures are just the latest successes in our fight against serious and organised crime.
They demonstrate that wherever we find the supply of illegal drugs, we will invariably find weapons and people ready and willing to get involved in serious violence.
I’m reasonably sure that those are the pants from a confederate soldier cosplay outfit.
Hmmm … “assorted WTF thread” or “The GOP are total wankers” thread? A coin flip, I guess. Either way, I can’t even with this bullshit.
To be clear, the reporter discovered the SSN’s of teachers in the public HTML of a state website, and notified them of the issue so it could be fixed before reporting on it. The “hacking” was hitting the F12 key.
