Mr. Cronos, like so many of your posts, you seem to live in an alternate universe.
Over 700 or so years from the founding of Rome, from Etruscan roots, their civilization advanced with many conveniences that were modern to them. Conveniences like roads (covered in hard surfaces), aqueducts to bring in water, sewers to take waste out, tiled roofs, and a highly developed mass production economy for simple items like tiled roofs and other conveniences.
All of that disappeared with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Show me the aqueducts, tiled roofs, sewer systems, and other life conveniences in the barbarian hinterlands. The new hinterlands were all led by local war-lords -- that you call NON-CENTRALIZED. And their so-called citizens (tribe members) lives were barbaric as they slowly evolved into the Renaissance.
So much for the former structured bureaucratic, organized structure of what Rome had built over many years for its citizens.
If you read history, you might want to go back to the books -- if it will help you (which I doubt).
“Conveniences like roads (covered in hard surfaces), aqueducts to bring in water, sewers to take waste out, tiled roofs, and a highly developed mass production economy for simple items like tiled roofs and other conveniences.”
And those are perfect examples of why I called it massive hyperbole.
Roman systems were kept and maintained for centuries - with little innovation. There was little to no pressure to change things and innovation was stifled.
If the Roman empire had, say, stuck together after 476 and say survived until today the world would be stuck with ancient innovations and no new ones.
how can I say that? By comparing the state of Western Europe to
1. The (eastern) Roman empire — by the 12th century, Western Europe had caught up
2. The Muslim world - again, Western Europe had caught up by the 12th century and then steamrolled ahead.
3. India stagnating from its Gupta golden age to the conquest by the turkic Muslims and then deterioration until 1947 (the Mughals were strong, but they just exploited the land and had few development)
4. China under the post-Tang empires - the Ming personified this — they first had a burst of creativity then it became “the old ways are best” and they literally burned their boats.
People did NOT return to the stone age - they may have returned to the early Republican era, but that was also temporarily until the force of innovation and multiple competing states pushed the Western world to innovate, innovate, innovate