Posted on 11/16/2024 9:08:33 AM PST by SunkenCiv
They discovered that the Romans miscalculated their Persian-Sassanian opponents which caused their downward spiral, leaving them weak and allowing Islam to rise in a manner that essentially wiped out the once-powerful civilization.
The two groups were at war from 54 BC to 628 for control of territories, but the Persians and Sassanians took over Roman trade routes that were critical to their victory.
Without access to trade, the economy quickly collapsed and forced people in the Roman Empire to flee to other regions like Constantinople, the researchers discovered...
The team analyzed shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean from multiple sites, such as Marseille, Naples, Carthage, eastern Spain and Alexandria, to better understand what caused the fall.
They identified a timeline for when Roman ships, which lined the shores by the hundreds at their pea, began to disappear and dwindled down to just dozens by the second half of the 7th century...
Previous research had suggested that a plague decimated the Roman Empire in 543 AD.
But the new study found the civilization was at the height of its power, economic output and population.
Researchers looked at the number of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea and pottery uncovered at archaeology sites.
They discovered more than 16,000 pieces of pottery uncovered in Nessana - a city located in the southwest Negev desert in Israel, close to the Egyptian border.
The shards were determined to have been traded by the Roman Empire during the late 6th and early 7th centuries, which confirmed that the civilization was still thriving.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Watched this on Amazon a few months ago:
Books that Matter: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Professor Leo Damrosch)
It’s now about $3 an episode, but well done.
When you say, "pod people," do you mean human beans?
Free audiobook version of Gibbon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a95Y0na7Toc&list=PLOOwSORhCX7a44AkKxBx1_S3cuPb1-E6e
So yes, barbarian invasions did finish off the empire - but only because the empire fatally weakened itself in the generations beforehand. It's a useful lesson for today. I believe that political advantage was only one reason for Biden's open borders policy. The other reason was to secure as many able-bodied people as possible under Washington's control, because the coming years will see resource wars and conflict over the scarcest resource of all: the declining pool of working-age humans.
The Roman Empire did not maintain the fighting spirit of the Roman Republic in which, many more of the people would stand up and fight. The Roman Empire just let it all go . . . down.
The Roman economy was held up by a then-”global” system of income-stream generators:
- trade
- mining
- agriculture
- manufacturing
- seaborne activities
The Roman government would balance policies and power, trying to keep local unrest at a dull roar, where that occurred. Usually, the Romans preferred to make a deal with the locals, an arrangment to keep some calm . . . what was calculated to maintain the income stream.
You could travel for miles across barren land somewhere, and then happen upon some kind of a plantation that was the property of the sister, of the cousin, of the brother, of some guy who was high-up in Roman society.
With the changing (and rivalries) of the guard back in Rome, the ability to hang on to such investments, also changed, would dwindle eventually.
That system cost Rome, too much money and manpower, to maintain. In the face of relentless Islamic violence.
Remember Lot's wife?
the same day that Lot ran out of Sodium...
It could always P worse.
She would have died of high blood pressure anyway.
The only decadent folks were the very posh, y'know, the people who murdered Julius Caesar to save "the republic", which didn't exist anyway, since the only people eligible to serve came from about 35 extended families, and they served when they felt like it, no elections.
The Roman lifestyle was successfully transplanted into the provinces, and was adopted and/or adapted by non-Italians. The Roman army was already recruiting from among the conquered peoples by the time Augustus died, and the majority of them survived to collect land in the provinces, often where they'd served.
After centuries of reliance on the legions to protect the borders and provide internal security, whatever traditions of self-defense their ancestors had were long gone when the legions were withdrawn. That probably helped Italy, but the internecine squabbling and struggles for power weakened the central authority. Until Diocletian ended the Crisis of the 3rd Century, there wasn't even a statutory system of succession.
Other things I regard as both odd and amazing is the complete lack of a postal system, no public schools, no banking system (apart from private lending, by which some got fabulously rich, analogous to the rise of European banking in the Middle Ages), but all coupled with relatively secure movement of cargo on sea and land, relatively safe travel throughout the Empire and not too bad beyond its borders, and a tax collection system that was effective but mostly farmed out to appointees and hired hands.
On that note, turns out it's way worse than I thought. Even the logo is a big tip off. Comedy gold, but for the scholars that's really going to leave a mark:
The term pea originates from the Latin word pisum,[19] which is the latinisation of the Greek πίσον (pison)...
Genesis 2
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
Gonna need a bigger boat. No salt added, so at least it's a start.
The last western emperor was deposed in 476 (he wasn’t recognized by the eastern emperor, who still considered his predecessor, Julius Nepos, then in exile in Dalmatia, to be the rightful western emperor). The Vandal sack of Rome was in 455.
Gibbon argues that the rise of Islam was a crucial factor in the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire.Indeed, Arab armies were taking ever greater bites into the Levant -- but they weren't "Islamic" yet.
I stand corrected as to the year Romulus Augustulus was “vandalized”
The big old Mo' was born about 570, started his bogus cult around 610. The battles that broke Sassanid Persia were in 636, a few years after his death. So, no.
Sidebars that haven't been seen for a while:
I broke some of my mother's china into about that many pieces when I was little. It was an accident but boy did I get in trouble.
I had a friend from Iran, he came over here as a teenager because of the revolution.
The distinction between ‘Arab’ and ‘Persian’ was about as clear- and would get you the same pissed-off reaction if you kept ignoring it - as the distinction between Englishman and Irishman. Interestingly he was your typical Los Angeles hot rod gearhead WRT hot rods and the best printing press tech you could conceive of; but had the worst luck with women of any dude I knew (seemed to attract psychos. NO fan of the current regime, made most Miami Cubans seem like Fidel fanbois in comparison.
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