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Now, for this business of "great cities" inland in Europe during the last half of the 6th, all the 7th, all the 8th, all the 9th, most of the 10th, and a good deal of the 11th centuries ~ you have to specify what you mean by "Europe".

I am sticking with Northern and Western Europe and excluding Southern Italy, Greece, and most of the Balkans (as we now know them).

Boy, you like to twist off on tangents, don't you? Who posited "great cities"?

I said that there were numerous cities and towns throughout Europe that were occupied continuously since Roman times. You said the only population was "those who lived on or very near the ocean..." and indicated the Continent was depopulated by some staggering climatological event that no one bothered to write down. Well, Paris, London, Cologne, York, Orleans, Strasbourg, Dijon, Lyons, Narbonne, Nimes, Aachen, Toulouse, Tours, Bath, Zurich, Geneva, etc, etc. were ALL inland and ALL populated continuously. Where's this great die off you posit? Got some hard figures? Contemporary accounts? Mass graves? Dark Age ghost towns?

We now know that when you have a cool, dry period, grass thrives. Rats thrive under those conditions. Rats carry plague.

Rats thrive under lots of conditions. I suspect shipping trade, esp. granary shipments, and general accumulation of garbage and filth had more to do with rat population in Constantinople than grass growing in the nearby countryside.

You said weather has no impact?

Where did I say that? I'm saying it didn't cause the Dark Ages (tm). Of course it had impact on local areas at differing times, but a single catastrophic event did not cause civilization to stop in its tracks for 500 years, nor cause a discontinuity with what came before. There was an evolution, not a mass extinction of civilization. Roman provinces were ceded local control, and they evolved into feudal Kingdoms, governing the local population in gradually different ways.