Replies

OK, you can believe that the City of Byzantium managed to do it all by itself ~ after all, they usually kept a 7 year supply of food on hand. They even kept records.

Unfortunately for the theory that the Eastern Mediterranean was untouched by the Dark Ages, Byzantium and Persia were both substantially overrun and conquered by the previously penniless Arabs from Mecca in a couple of decades! Byzantine legions joined the Arabs ~ probably because they got paid, and the Persian conquest followed the same pattern.

In the 7th and 8th Centuries the smart guys gravitated to the Arabs. This wasn't because the Arabs were the most cultured of folks either, but in terms of value added economics, they were putting it together and the other lingering civilizations were burning up stored capital .