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Rome's decline has far more to do with disease than moral turpitude.

Disease actually saved Rome. If the Plauge didn't decimate Attila the Hun's troops he might have taken Rome.

As the great Henny Youngman once said,"I call my mother-in-law hon-she reminds me of Attila."

The Huns were nomads from Central Asia, richtig? I remember reading soemwhere that the huns sacking Rome was caused by the Chinese Empire at that time (can't remember the dynasty). Strange?

Well, it goes like this: the dynasty found that the great wall wasn't too much of a barrier to prevent barbarians from entering the middle Kingdom so they didnt' wait for the barbarians to enter the gates, instead they went into barbarian territory and slaughtered them. The nomads, to escape, headed West and pushed the Turkic peoples (the Huns being one of the Turkic peoples) who in turn pushed the Slavs out of Central Asia into north eastern Europe. The Slavs pushed the Germans out of the Caucasus, North eastern Scandanavia and into Roman lands. Finally, Attila came along with his turkic tribes and said:"Hey, the Western donkeys can't ride horses very well" and so he moved West and sacked the Western Empire.

The White huns also invaded Central Asia and Eastern Iran and Western india, moving into places like Baluchistan and Rajasthan mixing with the Scyths there.

Genghis Khan did the same in a much more impressive way -- of course most of his energy was dissipated conquering China where his grandson Kublai Khan reigned. His other grandson was about to conquer Western Europe when he died of alcoholic poisoning -- so Europe was saved (imagine a Europe with the Mongols in charge, but then it may not have been that bad -- look below). His other descendents were pretty illustrious as well -- Timurlang or Timur hte lame who conquered cnetral Asia and iran and knocked otu the Caliphate in Baghdad and The Mughals in India who set up an Empire which was rich enough to be talked of in hushed tones by Portuguese traders.

The Mongols were also the only folks to conquer Russia -- maybe Napoleon and Hittie should have attacked from the east!